To Recruit Teachers, School Districts Are Building Homes

wewewedxfgdf•33 minutes ago

The core fabric of society - the deal that was offered by society to the people - to work in a job, own a house, raise a family, have a retirement - has decayed away entirely for many people.

crooked-v•30 minutes ago

The housing part never 'decayed', it was actively blocked by the people who already had homes. That's why you see things now like California actively overriding local zoning.

cucumber3732842•11 minutes ago

>, it was actively blocked by the people who already had homes.

You're not wrong but this is too simplistic and avoids holding up a mirror that really ought to be held up. Zoning was the "we're gonna regulate our way into utopia" of their time. The class of useful idiots who made it happen and the class of useful idiots who will go to bat for it's continuance because they make a buck on it is far broader than that.

tptacek•9 minutes ago

It's not simplistic. It is literally the core problem with housing. Zoning had a first objective of preventing Black families from moving into white neighborhoods, and then, in the 1980s, assumed a new role of driving scarcity (and thus the price of houses in areas of opportunity, to the benefit of existing homeowners).

andyferris•about 1 hour ago

We are very fortunate that my wife got to work at the local school. She now walks to work and I work from home about 4 days out of 5 workdays.

The benefits are huge in terms of time available and costs, and not needing childcare before or after school.

It’s hard to solve couples having two jobs in different places, but having at least one person get to work basically instantly and for zero cost is a massive boon to society.

The issue I saw is that the government department in charge of education is not the one in charge of housing and infrastructure, and there are no incentives to hire locally or make it easier to move locally. Instead you get teachers in suburb A travelling to suburb B and vice-versa, and no way that they can choose to swap roles. We lucked out.

OutOfHere•39 minutes ago

There is no sustained luck when it comes to working for someone. Jobs change often. Being at the mercy of one's employer is a gamble.

morkalork•21 minutes ago

It used to be like this in rural communities even up into the 70s and 80s. The town's branch manager would be young, shipped out for a few years and live in a house the bank owned and given a stipend to maintain it. Same with the postmaster and other professions.

ReactiveJelly•about 1 hour ago

A land value tax would fix this

dragonwriter•7 minutes ago

A land value tax without changes in non-tax land use regulations would not fix, and a land value tax would not be necessary after removing the non-tax land use restrictions which this responds to.

tptacek•8 minutes ago

I know the Georgism joke here, but we don't need an LVT to fix this; we just need states to override home rule on minimum density requirements for residential and mixed-use zoning. The core problem here is in fact very simple!

lokar•about 1 hour ago

Not on its own. You also need to relax or remove direct (and indirect, eg parking minimums) restrictions on residential density.

trashcan•about 1 hour ago

How?

OutOfHere•41 minutes ago

It would allow housing to be substantially denser.

dragonwriter•5 minutes ago

How would an LVT do that when the barrier to dense housing is zoning restrictions?

Changing the tax structure doesn't remove that restriction.

AvAn12•about 1 hour ago

Could just, you know, pay more…

tptacek•8 minutes ago

Teachers in major metro school systems already have quite a good deal. Rural schoolteachers really do have the deal everyone heard about in 1990s politics, but urban schoolteachers are generally economically privileged.

(That doesn't mean they aren't impacted by housing scarcity in ways that disrupt the administration of school systems; they are. But the problem isn't compensation, the problem is corrupt regulation written to prop up homeowner assets.)

dpbriggs•about 1 hour ago

Why not make housing cost less instead?

ninjalanternshk•2 minutes ago

Because we’ve been sold the story that your house has to appreciate in value 2-3 times over the period you live in it, consequently, homeowners vote against anything that lowers housing costs.

OutOfHere•42 minutes ago

They're not mutually exclusive goals. Wanting a more affording salary and scalable housing both are valid goals.

lumost•23 minutes ago

Governments may be uniquely positioned to offer housing incentives as they often own the land, and control the zoning.

To Recruit Teachers, School Districts Are Building Homes

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