Over the past four years, the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley—working in partnership with cityLAB at UCLA and the California School Boards Association (CSBA)—has devoted a significant portion of our work to a single, urgent question: can California school districts use land they already own to house the educators they struggle to keep?

We are proud of what that effort produced, and with our funded work on this project now concluded, we are taking stock of what we learned, the knowledge we produced, and where this work is headed.

What We Set Out to Do

California’s intertwined housing and educator staffing crises have been well documented. Teachers and school staff across the state are being priced out of the communities where they work, leading to high turnover, long commutes, and in many cases, departures from the profession altogether. These challenges fall hardest on districts serving large numbers of low-income students—the very schools that can least afford disruption.

Education workforce housing (EWH)—multifamily rental housing built on school district–owned land and leased at below-market rates to staff—has emerged as a meaningful response to these crises. California’s Teacher Housing Act of 2016 opened the legal pathway for expanding EWH, and a growing number of local educational agencies (LEAs) have taken up the challenge. Our role was to make that path navigable for more of them.

What We Produced

Our work resulted in four major reports and a public resource:

Housing California Educators: Development Strategies and Guidance (March 2026) — Our final report offers practical, stage-by-stage guidance for LEAs moving through the development process—from early exploration through construction, leasing, and ongoing management. A companion design report by cityLAB-UCLA addresses architecture and design considerations.

How California’s County Offices of Education Can Advance Workforce Housing for Educators (September 2025) — This white paper outlines how California’s county offices of education can support school districts in developing educator workforce housing—through training and technical assistance, brokering regional partnerships, and in some cases leading or co-developing housing projects directly.

Housing California Educators: Insights from Nine Education Workforce Housing Developments (April 2025) — After years of tracking the field, we documented nine of the EWH developments that had been completed or were near completion in California, drawing lessons about financing models, governance, design, and what it actually takes to get a project built.

Education Workforce Housing in California: Developing the 21st Century Campus (2022) — Our foundational report, produced with cityLAB-UCLA and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, examined the landscape of EWH in California and made the case for why districts should consider it. A companion handbook provided practical guidance in an accessible format.

Property Lookup Tool for Education Workforce Housing

Our interactive Property Look Up Tool maps potentially developable land across all California LEA-owned properties, with district enrollment, teacher salary, and student demographic data now updated to 2024–25. Users can select any district or individual property to explore estimated acreage and building square footage.

What We Built with CSBA and cityLAB

Our partnership with CSBA and cityLAB went well beyond writing reports. Together, we ran a series of training academies for school board members, district administrators, and other LEA leaders interested in pursuing EWH projects—providing technical assistance, peer learning, and direct consultation to districts at various stages of the development process. Dozens of LEAs participated in these convenings over the life of the project.

Fortunately, CSBA is continuing this work. Their education workforce housing program remains active, with resources, tools, and support for LEAs pursuing projects. All of our publications—along with training materials, templates, survey tools, and more—are available on CSBA’s education workforce housing page.

Looking Forward

The problem of educator housing is not solved—it is, if anything, more acute than when we began. But the field has moved considerably. More projects are built or underway, more districts have engaged seriously with the question, the policy landscape has improved with legislation like AB 2295, [2025 bills], and a body of knowledge now exists that simply didn’t before.

Our funded work on this project has concluded, but the resource library we built with CSBA—and the relationships forged among districts, developers, and policymakers—will continue to support new projects for years to come. We are grateful to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for making this work possible, and to CSBA and cityLAB-UCLA for being great partners to do it with.

For more information, visit CSBA’s Education Workforce Housing page or Center for Cities + Schools at https://citiesandschools.berkeley.edu/major-initiatives/education-workforce-housing/.