(Source: MIRS.news, Published 07/30/2024) Traverse City education and business groups are planning to use a $5 million grant it received in the last budget to create housing units for school employees as a way to address the region's teacher job openings. 

Earlier this year, the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative – which is affiliated with Michigan State University – found that from fall 2013 through fall 2022, total teacher vacancies reported in Michigan's public schools grew from 590 to 1,351.  

Grand Traverse County Superintendent Nick Ceglarek said his current staff is struggling with rising housing costs. He mentioned that two staff members have already left this year, citing an increase in their rent and an inability to afford it.  

"A part of this is to attract . . . but it's also to retain our highest quality staff," Ceglarek said on this week's MIRS Monday Podcast episode, discussing the K-12 housing project in which the state is investing . "We're absolutely open to the fact that we might have staff members that are losing their housing, that might have to apply for one of these units as well."  

Heads of the Grand Traverse Area Catholic Schools, the Traverse City Area Public Schools, Interlochen Center for the Arts and Northwest Education Services have come together to form "the Coalition for educator housing in the Traverse City area."  

In April of this year, they submitted a letter to House and Senate legislators requesting support for a housing development in Blair Township, approximately four miles south of Traverse City. They proposed that units be set aside for educators and support staff earning between 50 percent and 80 percent of the area's median income.  

Although the first phase of the project is anticipated to cost $23.5 million, according to the coalition's April letter, the recently signed budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 appropriates $5 million in General Fund spending to go toward the development.  

According to Rocket Homes, the real estate agency, the median sold price of homes in Grand Traverse County is $408,333, with the cost of a two-bedroom home growing by 7.2 percent since June 2023, reaching more than $321,000 this summer.  

"Current studies have the median home value north of $430,000, and for incoming educators, those just coming out of college, obviously, that is not an attainable amount to purchase a home," Ceglarek said. "We are indeed extending job offers to speech therapists, school psychologists, educators, support staff members . . . and while they're enthusiastic about accepting, they are very quickly turning after a couple of weeks and recognizing they can't afford to live in the region."  

Gaining support from community leaders and figuring out a proposal was a two-year process, said Superintendent John VanWagoner of Traverse City Area Public Schools.  

Moving forward, VanWagoner explained on the MIRS Monday Podcast that the coalition will be submitting an application to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority for further support and hopes to have shovels in the ground for the project next summer.  

"We are not interested in just creating another market rate housing complex that we know (will) fill with people, but really not the affordable housing that we need, especially for educators in this area," VanWagoner said, whose own district has about four or five vacancies, and is particularly searching for a teacher in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  

For 2024 alone, VanWagoner said the district has about 25 retirements scheduled. He believes the project that the coalition is taking on – an effort to support new school employees with guaranteed one- and two-bedroom apartments – will be a huge thing to advertise.  

"Unfortunately, we're probably still at least a year in our minds from (having shovels) in the ground to be able to do it, but when we have that we do think it'll give us at least one more tool in our toolbox of trying to bring people that are quality educators in northern Michigan," he said.  

Ceglarek said he anticipates educators and support staff will use the project's units as transitional housing, residing there for up to three years at an affordable housing rate, helping them save enough money to obtain permanent housing in the near future.  

Also on the podcast segment was Warren Call, the president of economic group Traverse Connect.  

He said since the COVID-19 pandemic, the area's experienced almost exponential growth with house prices doubling in many instances.  

"People frankly from all over the world realized that they could bring their remote job or bring their hybrid work to Northern Michigan, and certainly we want to welcome them, and we benefit from them immensely, but at the same time, it does present those challenges that housing prices have doubled. Rent is much higher than it used to be, and there's been (difficulty keeping) up with that demand," Call said, explaining that the demand ranges from one-bedroom apartments to full family homes.  

He said for some of the preexisting education staff, they have owned their homes for quite some time. As those staff members transition out of the workforce, Call predicts that the new and young individuals brought in to replace them will "have a harder time affording our existing housing stock."