The Widefield School District, based in southern Colorado Springs, is teaming up with Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity to work on affordable housing solutions for its employees.
The plan is to start building affordable housing that would be sold to district employees, and to make the construction part of the curriculum for some of the district's students.
Aaron Hoffman, Superintendent of Widefield School District, said the district owned undeveloped land developers had set aside.
“So we decided to partner with Habitat for Humanity,” Hoffman said.
Fourteen of the proposed 41 homes will be set aside for district employees only and built for the specific needs of the applicant.
“They will build houses that make sense for the size of the family that is applying for the house,” Hoffman said. “One of the things that they will do to make it affordable and to keep it affordable is they'll work with the home buyers to make sure that the house payment is no more than 30 percent of their family income.”
A 2022 Keystone Policy Center report found that fewer than 20 percent of homes on the market are affordable for the average teacher in Colorado.
To qualify, families must have an income that is between 40-80 percent of the area's median income.
“It's a great program and it benefits a lot of folks that would normally not qualify for conventional mortgage,” said Laura Williams-Parrish with Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity.
It's not a give-away program. Families spend a minimum of 200 hours in what they call "sweat equity". The planned purchasers are required to help build the homes, participate in classes on homeownership and financial literacy, pay a down payment, and pay a subsidized mortgage. In the end, families will be full homeowners, owning the house and the land.
The average cost to build each home is $360,000. That price reflects inflation and recently imposed tariffs.
“It is high, but it could easily be 500,000," to build the house, Williams-Parrish said, adding that houses are built with 90 percent volunteer labor.
Affordable home ownership, she said, can have a life-long, multi-generational impact.
“There's some equity that they can gain, and just the fact of having a home for the next generation,” Williams-Parrish said. “So many of our homeowners talk about, ‘I have something I can leave my kids.’ ‘They can come here for Christmas’ and things like that.”
Other school districts in the state have worked to provide affordable housing to employees. In 2016, the Aspen School District built tiny homes for employees to address a lack of affordable housing. In 2020, Eagle School District started building affordable rental houses for district employees who qualified.
Keystone's most recent report, released earlier this week, found that the majority of educators in the state are interested in district-provided affordable housing, and that a lack of affordable housing could be contributing to teacher shortages.
“The housing crisis drives career decisions and pushes many qualified teachers out of the profession entirely,” the report said.
The report also found that there are a growing number of school districts, like Whitefield School District, developing housing for teachers.
