Texas districts build their own housing to tackle affordability

PECOS, Texas (KXAN) — A school district in West Texas built an apartment complex to offer a more affordable housing option to its teachers, a solution that came up this week in a new report released by the state about this growing problem.

The Pecos-Barstow-Toyah Independent School District, which is based in the town of Pecos in Reeves County, now has its own 64-unit teacher housing complex. District leaders spent approximately $19 million to build it because staff members had trouble finding housing there due to its remote location and the demand from the oil and gas industry. Plus, rent for these apartments built by the district is offered at a price below the average for units in the area.

“It is very challenging to find good, quality housing and so districts, to attract and retain highly-qualified teachers, are having to find innovative ways to do that,” Superintendent Brent Jaco said Wednesday. “We took the step of building an apartment complex, and so far that’s paid great dividends for us.”

Jaco said the district had its lowest turnover this year out of the four years he’s served as superintendent. At least 30 new teachers also started at the district to fill openings, and now all but about two of the apartments are occupied at the district’s complex.

“While it will take a few years for us to recoup the money spent on the apartment complex, which we really weren’t looking to make this a profit, it was more of a marketing deal and to make sure that we could attract highly-qualified teachers to have in the classroom was a bigger concern,” Jaco said. “So far, it’s been very successful and very beneficial for the district.”

Larger school districts in Texas are also pursuing similar developments. Austin ISD would like to build two apartment complexes for teachers at the Anita Ferrales Coy campus, which currently houses an alternative learning center in east Austin. In July, the city’s planning commission approved a rezoning request at that site, which could help move the project forward. If approved by the Austin City Council, crews could break ground on the complex and the modernization of the school sometime in 2025.

The Texas comptroller mentioned employers taking on these kinds of projects in a report released Tuesday that outlined ways to perhaps improve housing affordability in the state. As Glenn Hegar noted in the report, “Housing supply is the crux of the affordability issue, and there are no easy, clear-cut fixes to this challenge.”

However, some suggestions to encourage more home construction included the state working to reduce property taxes, increasing funding for low- to moderate-income housing programs as well as offering incentives to increase the housing supply at the price range where it’s most needed. He also advised local governments that they could do their part by possibly making the permitting process simpler and looking into more public-private partnerships to address housing affordability.

Acting on some of those ideas could come next year when state lawmakers return to the Texas Capitol for a new session on Jan. 14.

Education issues are likely to dominate the next regular legislative session beginning in January. Gov. Greg Abbott would like state lawmakers to finally give the green light to families using public dollars to help cover the cost of their children’s private or homeschooling. A Texas House of Representatives committee met earlier this month to begin discussions about creating such a program next year, which made Democratic lawmakers revive their calls to instead raise teacher pay and increase funding for public schools.

Interestingly, something nearly every Texan appears to agree on right now is that the price of housing is a problem. A survey published recently by the University of Houston and Texas Southern University found that 90% of Texans consider housing affordability a problem in their part of the state — with 44% considering it to be a big problem and 46% saying it’s somewhat of a problem. This came after pollsters talked to 2,257 respondents during the period between June 20 and July 1.

That survey also found that 54% of Texans favor government policies intended to increase the amount of affordable housing for lower and middle-income Texans, while 26% oppose these policies.