Priced out: The growing challenge of teacher pay and housing costs
By Katherine Bowser, NCTQ, May 8, 2025
Imagine that you are training for a marathon. Midway through your preparation, the organizing committee announces that the race will be 30 miles instead of the standard 26.2. A challenging, yet manageable, adjustment. On race day, you learn that the distance has again been increased, this time to 40 miles. Though unprepared, you begin running and hope for the best. As you hit the 10-mile marker, the distance increases a third time—to 60 miles. At this point, you realize your goal of finishing the race is unattainable and you make a graceful exit. This ever-changing finish line mirrors what teachers face with housing affordability. While salaries increase over time, dramatic changes in the housing market have left many educators in an unwinnable race for one of our most basic needs: an affordable place to live.
It is imperative that teachers can afford to live in the communities they serve. Recent research found that teachers with long commutes are more likely to leave the district, be absent from work, and receive lower observation scores than those who live closer.1 To retain a high-quality teaching staff, it is in districts’ best interest to pay teachers enough to afford housing reasonably close to where they teach. Yet given skyrocketing housing costs, district leaders are left wondering where the money will come from.
NCTQ’s 2023 District Trendline on housing affordability and teacher salaries identified the most and least affordable school districts for novice teachers to rent or buy homes. To build on this research, we examined 72 large, urban districts to answer the following research questions:2
Have novice teacher salaries kept pace with increases in housing costs since 2019?3
Can novice teachers afford to rent where they teach? Has rental affordability changed since 2019?
Is homeownership affordable for teachers?
Between 2019 and 2025, housing costs increased by 47–51% on average, far outpacing the average 24% growth in beginning teacher salaries….
Five years into their careers, teachers’ salaries don’t stretch as far in the housing market as when they started teaching….
New teachers can’t afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in about half of the districts in our sample, regardless of whether or not they hold a master’s degree….
This year, rent for a one-bedroom unit costs over 40% of beginning, bachelor-degree-holding teacher salaries in 10 districts, with four surpassing 45%. (Hawaii’s statewide school district is tied for 2nd-least affordable at 46%.)
For beginning, master-degree-holding teachers, San Diego Unified School District (CA) remains the most unaffordable district (45%) and there are four more in which rent constitutes over 40% of salaries. (Hawaii’s statewide school district is tied for 2nd-least affordable at 43%.)
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CB: Data Dive: Why New Hawaiʻi Teachers Can't Afford To Buy A House - Honolulu Civil Beat