It takes a village to educate a child and our village needs more affordable housing.

Heart and Home is a monthly column by Josh Ishimatsu.

At SV@Home, we believe that affordable housing is foundational to a good and just Silicon Valley. 

Affordable housing is at the intersection of so many good things.  With affordable housing, more good things are possible.  Without affordable housing, good things are more difficult.

 

In this month’s column, I want to talk about the connection between schools and housing and how we can’t have good schools without affordable housing.  Most people perceive this connection to be only about teachers’ housing – which is important – but the connection between good schools and affordable housing is about much more than teachers’ housing.

Pictured: Hyde Middle School Band performing (Darin Ishimatsu (who happens to be the author’s cousin), conducting)

Teachers and Staff

You can’t have good schools without great teachers and staff.  You can’t have great teachers and staff without affordable housing.

“Housing affordability is one of the main barriers to attracting and retaining great teachers and staff across California.”  the California School Boards Association

With the high cost of living in Santa Clara County (consistently top 2 or 3 in the nation, as we all already know too well), most teachers’ and school staff’s salaries are below what it would take to comfortably rent a modest, market-rate 2-bedroom apartment – according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2025 report, Out of Reach, the annual income needed to afford a modest 2-bedroom apartment in Santa Clara County is over $134,000, let alone buy a house.  

This means that teachers and school staff, especially at the entry levels, struggle to make ends meet and/or have grueling commutes from out of market.  No matter how much teachers or school staff love this place and their students, they’ve got to be considering that they could do the same job somewhere where housing is cheaper and where they’d have a better quality of life.  

So, if we want good teachers and school staff, we need more affordable housing.

Enrollment, Funding, and Keeping Schools Open

We can’t have financially sustainable school districts without affordable housing.

California public schools are funded in large part on the basis of attendance – on how many butts are in the seats.  School enrollment is declining in almost every school district in the County.  Which means our school districts are losing funding, having to close schools, and facing all kinds of other financial difficulties.  Even schools that are not closing campuses are cutting programs – most programs and activities that enrich the educational experience such as reading specialists, laptop computers, music, sports, afterschool programs, etc. are easier to fund and maintain with scale.  Scale is hard to maintain when you are bleeding students.  And these declining enrollments are driven by demographic shifts that have everything to do with rising housing costs.

In parts of the County where there historically have been more lower-cost housing, rising rents are forcing working class families to move to cheaper places – either South County or out of the area altogether.  Displaced larger families are being replaced by richer, smaller households, causing school districts to lose enrollment (and funding) and forcing school closures.

For homeowners in higher-cost neighborhoods, high housing values are like a form of golden handcuffs.  Families that once had school-aged children that, in another era, might have sold their home so that another family with school-aged children could replace them in the neighborhood are now staying put.  But now, aging families are not moving out.  There are different reasons why this is happening.  One is that the family may still need a large house because their adult-aged children can’t afford to live in the area on their own and have come back home to live their childhood home.  Another reason is that, even though an owner may have a lot of equity in their house, selling their home and downsizing likely means that they recognize very little equity if they want to stay within the area. They’d be looking to buy in a market where every segment of the market experienced exponential growth.  So why go through the hassle of selling your home and moving if you’re not able to pull any money out of it or if you’re not moving up unless you’re moving out of the area?  At any rate, for whatever reasons, some of the “highest performing” school districts in the County (e.g., Cupertino and Palo Alto) have been hit the hardest in terms of declining enrollment.

All of this is to say that school districts can only remain financially viable if they are maintaining appropriate levels of school enrollment.  In our current high-cost housing environment, schools are suffering because we have not built enough housing that is affordable for families.  This is NOT only about working class families, though working class families are suffering acutely.  It is about families across the income spectrum.

So, if we want financially sustainable schools, we need more affordable housing.  

Residential Stability and Student Achievement

We can’t have optimal student achievement without affordable housing.

Gentrification and displacement have documented negative impacts on student achievement (see here and here for examples of scholarly research).  The logic is simple.  In the case of displacement, moving is disruptive for a child and disruptive for their learning.  New schools, especially in the middle of the school year, means loss of social networks, different textbooks, new materials, new routines.  For gentrification, the data shows that, especially when a gentrifying neighborhood becomes more white, the remaining students of color show declines in student performance.  One narrative of gentrification is that it should bring more resources to lower-income neighborhoods.  But these new resources don’t always reach the original residents.

Residential instability undermines student achievement.  Affordable housing, especially preservation of existing low-cost housing, increases neighborhood stability.   Residential stability promotes student achievement.  Therefore, we can’t have optimal student achievement without affordable housing.

Healthy, Complete Communities

We can’t have healthy, complete communities without affordable housing. Kids do better in school when they are fully supported across all areas of their lives, therefore student performance and affordable housing is not just about housing for teachers and school staff but also about librarians, youth league coaches, community theater operators, social service providers, faith leaders, child care providers, etc.  Our current housing mess hurts almost all the professions which support the growth and development of young people.

And it’s not just about the professions that support children and youth, it’s also about the health and safety of the entire community.  Children do better in school when they don’t have to deal with housing-related health issues such as lead poisoning or mold.  Children do better in school when they don’t fear for their safety in their home or neighborhood.  Affordable housing correlates with better health outcomes for children and families (see here and here for examples of scholarly research).  And, contrary to popular belief, the data shows that affordable housing decreases crime and violence in communities (see here and here for examples of scholarly research).

All of this to say, it takes a village to raise a child and, right now, our village needs more affordable housing. 

More to Come

For more information on this topic, including our latest research, please attend our virtual Policy In Action (PIA), later this month: “Where Did the Students Go? Housing & the School Enrollment Crisis.”