US News Arizona breaks ground on tiny homes for teachers amid worsening educator shortage

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Phoenix (CNN) — Desperate to find educators amid a nationwide shortage, an Arizona school district is breaking ground on an unusual recruitment tool: tiny homes for teachers.

Chino Valley Unified School District is using federal money to build 10 studio units, each 400 square feet, on a vacant lot behind an elementary school, where teachers will pay roughly $550 per month – well below the market rate for rent. The homes, expected to be finished by early fall, are designed to be transitional housing and a way to lure educators to their schools over other districts across the country.

“Districts are fighting over applicants, and we sometimes don’t get any, and we have to do with people that are not fully certified,” Chino Valley Superintendent John Scholl told CNN. “We’re hoping that these 10 units will help attract and retain teachers that we normally wouldn’t get.”

Teacher advocates see the employment crunch as a symptom of other industry problems – from low salaries, decreasing morale to waning professional respect – that should be addressed instead. And they worry about potential conflicts if a teacher’s boss is also their landlord.

But with housing affordability nevertheless a key hurdle, officials in Arizona and California have taken to building their own homes for teachers, with similar proposals also proffered by districts in Nevada and Hawaii.

 
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