This workforce/teacher housing development in Bertie County opened last summer. Dream Point can house as many as 40 people. (Photo: Bertie County Schools)
Even as teachers’ salaries have risen in some states, the changing housing market has left many of them “priced out” of communities where they work, according to a recent paper by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) titled “Priced Out: The Growing Challenge of Teacher pay and Housing Costs.”
Author Katherine Bowser, a research analyst NCTQ, contends it’s more important than ever for teachers to be able to afford to live where they work. She cites recent research showing that teachers with long commutes are more likely to leave districts, be absent from work and receive lower observation scores than those who live closer.
“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,” Bowser wrote. “Yet given skyrocketing housing costs, district leaders are left wondering where the money will come from.”
Finding affordable housing has been particularly difficult for beginning teachers who earn lower salaries than veteran counterparts, Bowser said. The percentage growth of home prices and percentage growth of one-bedroom rental costs have “consistently and dramatically outpaced beginning teacher salary growth and general inflation,” she said.
Between 2019-2025, home prices increased by 47% while rental costs jumped 51%. Beginning teacher pay only increased by 24%, Bowser reported, while inflation increased 26%.
“This means that although salaries have almost kept pace with inflation, there is a widening gap between income and housing affordability,” she said.
Teachers who began their careers in 2019 have less purchasing power today than when they started, Bowser said. From 2019 to 2024 home purchase prices and rental costs increased by an average of 44% and 42% respectively while pay for teachers who started in 2019 saw an average 34% to 35% salary increase, which outpaced the 23% growth in inflation, she said.
“Despite this growth, it still failed to keep pace with the housing market,” Bowser said. “Consequently, teachers who started in 2019 in our sample districts lost purchasing power for buying or renting a home compared to when they began teaching.”
Bowser’s study examined 72 large, urban districts. It found that new teachers can’t afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in about half of the districts in the sample, even if they held a master’s degree. Rent is considered unaffordable if a person spends more than 30% of their income on housing.
In 2019, there were 18 districts in the sample where new teachers with bachelor’s degrees couldn’t afford the rent and 11 for those with master’s degrees. That number jumped to 39 in 2025 for teachers with bachelor’s degrees and 34 for those master’s degrees. Districts in Mecklenburg and Wake counties are among those Bowser found unaffordable for beginning teachers.
“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%,” she said. 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.”
The most affordable district for beginning teachers is Wichita, Kansas Public Schools were teachers pay only 18% of salary to rent a one-bedroom apartment.
In 2019, there were nine unaffordable districts for teachers with a bachelor’s degree and five years of experience compared with 29 in 2025, Bowser found. For teachers with 10 years of experience and a bachelor’s degree, there were two districts in the sample deemed unaffordable and 18 in 2025. There were no unaffordable districts for teachers with master’s degrees in 2019.
Bowser also found that homeownership, like it is for many Americans in other professions, is becoming increasingly unrealistic for teachers.
“A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that teachers with a master’s degree would need an average of 13 years to save for a 20% down payment in their region, while those with bachelor’s degrees would require an average of 14 years,” Bowser said, using 2025 data as a snapshot in time to estimate the number of years required to save a 20% down payment based on 10% annual savings that accumulate over time.
In 2019, homeowners’ monthly housing payments in 46 districts were unaffordable for beginning teachers with a bachelor’s degree and 41 for those with a master’s. By 2025, 54 districts were unaffordable regardless of degree attainment.
Meanwhile, in 2019, homeowners’ monthly housing payments were unaffordable in 36 sample districts for teachers with a bachelor’s degree and five years of experience and 52 districts in 2025. For teachers with a bachelor’s degree and 10 years of experience, homeowners’ monthly housing payments were unaffordable in 29 districts in 2019 and 47 districts in 2025. Homeowners’ monthly housing payments were unaffordable in 22 districts for teachers with master’s degrees in 2019 and 44 by 2025.
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