Where Can Teachers Afford the Rent?

I have spent 50% of my income in rent every year since I graduated from college in 1992. In the metro NYC and NYC boroughs, the rent is too high and fosters extreme credit card debt and a lack of savings and financial safety net, and prevents homeownership. I suggest the municipalities start to tax religious organizations and use the money to subsidize rent for the lower middle class/blue collar housing, or demand a rent freeze and limit landlord profits. Something has to give. I can't afford to buy a place, and I can't keep paying rent when I am aged, so what happens? Cat food and living out of a car in my "retirement", ie. just too old to keep working?

Before weeping openly for public-school teachers, do recall that not too long ago, 80% of high school ''grads'' in NYC were too illiterate to fill out job applications and at least one student went home to ask his parents when the school was going to start taling about math and plants and stuff like that - because all the teachers were doing was political training for future progressive voters.

This is a reflection of how little we actually value education and educators in this country.

What's odd is that teachers hold the future in their classes taking care of our most important commodity, our children.

About 75%of college teachers are now contingent. They work for 1000$ per credit hour making far LESS than teachers K-12. Please do that calculation!!

Sole breadwinner? Are you kidding? Except for high-end professionals, the sole breadwinner has gone the way of the dodo bird. Things will continue to get worse for everyone else until that Zillow Rent Index reverses direction. It takes two incomes to raise a family for most people. That extra paycheck goes directly into the housing market, driving demand and prices up.

Other countries value education more than we do. Teachers are highly paid and respected in a number of societies across Europe and Asia. Teaching is seen as an honorable profession in almost every nation on the planet save ours. When I was in high school 20 years ago, a bunch of people in my graduating class wanted to become teachers. Of that bunch, only a handful genuinely wanted to enter the profession and they were the ones I felt would actually be good at it. The rest were selecting it because they didn’t know what else to do or, as one girl put it to our Shakespeare teacher, she wanted the summers off. This shrug-I-guess-I’ll-be-a-teacher group weren’t the high achievers of our grade. The valedictorian and salutatorian of my class, by contrast, both became doctors. No one was actively encouraging the smart kids, the ambitious kids, the kids who were going somewhere, to become teachers. Those kids became doctors or engineers or trained as linguists or got into West Point. Another started a successful photography business, someone else opened an art gallery, and a third became a successful chef. None of them, save those I mentioned who were genuinely passionate about it, went into education. Of those handful, I think three are still teaching today. The rest either transitioned into something else or left the profession to become stay-at-home parents. We need to convince smart people that a career in education is worth their time. Our country will be better off for it.

Many contributors here omit an important point suggested by the article: teaching is itself at least if not more than a full-time job. The numerous teachers who work at second jobs are unable to give their all, and education of our children is perforce beneath the level it should be. Actually, teachers should be prohibited from working second jobs during the school year, and their salaries increased to a level that compensates them fully for this concession.

My students and I are currently working on an income feasibility study of teachers in Arkansas. We are looking at all 75 counties and this is a real issue not only in cities, but rural America as well. Teacher incomes are not keeping up with the cost of living whether you are in urban or rural. Rural teachers are over extended by being more than just a teacher, as they wear many different hats in their schools, making using per hour calculations of $5 dollars an hour.

It’s “The New York Times” but no mention of the percentage for New York City. For shame!

I started teaching at San Diego State in 1970, with little savings but no debt. In June of my third year I was able to buy a modest Spanish-style house in a good neighborhood, Mission Hills, for $33,000. Today, Zillow estimates that house at $879,000. After three and a half years I moved on to an even more modest house in La Jolla. When I sold it in 2005, the mortgage payment was $521. A starting professor, even in one of the more highly paid disciplnes, could not replicate those purchases. Rents for a two bedroom in my old Mission Hills neighborhood reportedly are $3500 to $4000. But teachers and professors are not the only trades caught in the real estate crevasse. And yes, I have a nice DB pension, with benefits, but it took thirty-five years of work, and my own paycheck contributions, to earn it.

I think that the author is not using the data correctly. I cannot debate the rent calculations, but I do debate the teachers earnings comparison. Most teachers have something that the vast majority of working people don’t have, a defined benefit pension plan. Which mean that they will have a guaranteed earnings stream after they stop working. The better calculation should take their current earnings and ADD their future pension benefit. Then compare THAT to what everyone else is earning who has to fund their own retirement plan out of current earnings.

Go, Pittsburgh! You're the top at the bottom!

Is the article author a New Yorker? How can anyone say Westchester, NY, teachers are underpaid for 180 days/year of classroom instruction? For example: Average Salary Salary Range Kindergarten Teacher $62,600 $32,380 - $105,740 Elementary School $73,380 $45,090 - $108,340 Middle School Teach $74,940 $49,340 - $109,710 High School Teacher $77,750 $51,400 - $111,960

Citing starting salary for public union workers is very disingenuous, even a five-year or 10-year veteran would have yielded very different results. Very often these unions negotiate salaries that benefit the veterans at the expense of the new workers, in addition to giving them a terrific "low starting salary" talking point to trot out whenever they can.

Localities in high cost areas have to pay more than localities in low cost areas for the same occupations; whether it's teacher, cop, or civil servant at a desk in a big gray office. The high cost locality has to pay more, and it has to tax more to raise the money. And the workers in those areas have to pay more in federal taxes not because they live better but because they have to make more to live the same. So the teachers in San Diego and New York and Seattle have to pay about $2,500/year more for the federal government than the teachers in Birmingham and Memphis, And with the SALT deduction now useless, the localities in the high cost areas have to raise taxes even more. It's an endless loop which the new federal tax code has made worse.

As a public school teacher in Sacramento, I am all in favor of awareness about how housing costs might drive people away from the teaching profession. That said, I question the data here. In the 4 main school districts in Sac, the average starting salary for teachers is $47.6k. Nothing to get excited about, but using those numbers, the rent figures reported represent 48% of income. Still too high, but not the 65% reported in the table. And the vast majority of us are not in year one, or in the least educated portion of the salary schedule. My full-time pay is approximately $90k a year. Yes, housing in California is expensive, but teaching isn’t the life of poverty many people make it out to be (at least where I live). The “pity the poor teacher” messages make me cringe, because there might be a lot of amazing future teachers out there who make other career choices not knowing that they can be rewarded both intrinsically and financially in this profession.

It’s not just teachers who can’t afford housing in most major metro markets. Don’t forget all the other degreed state employees who make equal to or less than teachers. Early career teachers don’t make a large salary, that’s for sure. But mid-career teachers can do pretty well. Most non-managerial public employees make no more than teachers and do jobs that are just as important. Housing in many metro areas is way too expensive for almost anyone, not just teachers.

I absolutely agree that most K-12 teachers are underpaid in the US. As if it is even a question. That said, I wonder what assumptions were used in determining the "typical" local rent. Dwellings of about the same size no matter the city? Or with the same number of rooms? Did they consider that young people in high housing cost areas often split costs with roommates? Again, I am questioning the real life comparability of the percentages for the various cities, not the overall conclusion that new teachers are inadequately paid.

There are comments here on the fairness of income distribution in our capitalist society. Unless we have a planned economy, fairness in compensation will never happen. But it's not necessary to think in terms of fairness. We should think in terms of investment, in keeping with the capitalist system we have. We are under-investing. We get what we pay for. The bottom 20% of every college class goes into teaching. I would only tell my child to go into teaching if I were rich and could subsidize them. Talent goes where it is compensated in this land of milk and honey. We express our values with our dollars.

Another way to uniformly increase teacher salaries would be to exempt full time teachers in public schools from federal and state income taxes. This might result in average salary increase of 15-25%. While this of course wouldn’t be fair across the board because the teacher in Pittsburg where housing costs are low and the teacher in San Jose where they are ungodly would get the same tax break, at least it wouldn’t require congress to agree on raising minimum wages which is way more difficult.

This is clearly a reason to raise wages, however NYC politicians have been influenced by business interests that receive tax subsidies to constantly build oversized commercial office buildings and huge luxury condominiums. To pay for better salaries taxes have to e raised on luxury housing unless they also include middle income units and low income units in their new buildings. In a recent article the NYTimes stated that 25% of these luxury units are empty since 2013 and many have been rented instead of sold. If they were not allowed to be rented 50% would be empty. So if they are not willing to lower the prices of these units to make them more affordable for public employees, simply seize them through eminent domain, or raise the taxes significantly on them until they set aside a number of these units for teachers to live in. There is no purpose in creating a real estate market where only those with twenty million dollars or more can afford to purchase. A salary of $100,000 will produce $60,000 after taxes and benefit deductions. A one bedroom apartment for $3500 is $ 42,000. Teachers without Masters degrees earn about $52,000. With a Masters degree and ten years of service they will earn $100,000 and then be able to afford a one bedroom apartment. This is tied to poor planning by the public sector and a real state philosophy where huge developers get constant tax breaks due to their past political donations. It is easy to change but the wealthy will cry foul.

And people are shocked that teachers go on strike. What makes this additionally egregious is that many teachers spend their own money to buy supplies for their pupils. Go into any office supply store in August and you'll see people with loaded carts. Those are teachers, buying what the schools don't provide. Basic stuff.

It has always astonished me that ball players earn millions of dollars a year for running and grunting, and we pay teachers $30,000 in most parts of the country. Yes, in parts of NYS and NJ, teachers can earn $100,000 a year after many years. A good teacher is worth every penny, and more. Summer vacations? Not if you're conscientious enough to prepare a new course or rethink a course for September. Christmas and spring vacations? Spent correcting papers. Oh well. We are a stupid country. Ball players.

And consider that most teachers are required to have a Masters degree. Rent and student loans can eat up nearly their entire salary.

What’s really disconcerting is that we pay people who do no work at all, investors, more money than we pay teachers. And we tax them less too. America’s priorities are all out of whack. We used to cherish education. Now it’s just another vehicle for the banks to get rich from student loans. We had better get our priorities straight or our country will cease to exist as we know it. It has already changed for most people, and not for the better.