It’s the only major city that can make that claim.
A kitchen in a recently sold $150,000 Detroit home.
I had just read Mike McShane’s Forbes’ piece about how the housing market is intersecting with education and, like my coworkers who watched the Love is Blind Season Six Reunion, there were gasps, confusion, and a need for more information and resolution. (McShane focused on San Francisco where, despite a $66,918 salary, a first-year teacher can’t even afford a shared apartment.) I immediately set off in a thither. I wanted to know: where can teachers afford to live?
According to Forbes, housing affordability is when your mortgage is 28 percent or less of your annual income. The other 72 percent is where living comes in. According to me, that means being able to cover your basic needs and having enough left over to, maybe, afford a baby shower gift, or a flight to your friend’s wedding, or flowers for your mom. It means a once-in-a-while trip to the sauna, or donating to a cause you care about, or getting your kids a new bike when their little legs outgrow their current one. You know, living!
So, after a long day working in schools myself and armed with a stack of cookies and milk, I made a list of the thirty biggest U.S. cities. Then I checked the median home price in each (Wow! What?!). Then, I plotted starting teacher salaries for each city. And the only city on the list where the numbers work is…Detroit, Michigan?
Beginning teacher salaries vs. % median housing cost.
I know. I had the same reaction. But you can check the numbers. In Detroit, a first-year teacher with a sole income of $38,500 could afford a home twice the median sales price, like this recently sold $145,000 beauty. In crushing comparison, a San Francisco teacher would need to earn a starting salary of $288,514.29 to afford a home in The City by the Bay. In Nashville, the number is $96,942.86 — cheap by comparison but still well beyond the reach of most teachers.
In the 1960s, single earners could afford to own a home in a major city. They could also do things like buy cars and groceries. But sixty years on, those who dedicate their lives to the profession of teaching are left strapped for cash.
For great educators, teaching is a career, not a steppingstone. It’s a long game that requires long-game earnings, whether to start a family or hit a quality-of-life baseline.
As a nation, we’ve come to expect teachers to be some kind of superhuman nun figures. They’re supposed to teach kids and guide them toward achieving grade-level standards, sure. And they should be data experts! View kids as whole beings, not just numbers! Be rigorous! Make learning fun! Hit every standard! Communicate with families constantly! Always work with small groups! And more!
Meanwhile, teachers’ salaries stagnate (due to deprioritized school-funding reform), pay doesn’t keep pace with inflation, and teachers are shamed for asking for more money. Is it any wonder there’s a growing shortage of teachers?
I often imagine a world in which teachers can do a regular, big, busy job within the workday and then, when the school day ends, leave immediately and pick up their kids from daycare they can afford, put gas in their car that they can afford, go pick up a pizza that they can afford, and end up at a home they can afford. This is living.
This world is possible, at least the affordable home part in Detroit, but how do we right size in every other big city? McShane’s take is smart – school choice can help. “If we assign children to schools based on where they live,” he writes, “and then restrict how many homes can be built there, we will drive up the cost and exclude poor and middle-income families. If we’re not going to do anything about bringing housing costs down, we can do our best to sever the connection between where students live and where they can go to school.”
I get most excited about the world where tax dollars are more effectively used (through local millages, ESAs, school choice), where we pay teachers more, and where a first-year Nashville teacher is just boot-scootin’ their way down Broadway to their newly purchased condo, having bought a round and tipped the band, all with their nearly $100,000 salary.
It’s hard to imagine a teacher shortage in this world, right?
