San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has announced a new program to provide affordable housing units for 500 teachers by the year 2020.
According to abc7news.com, this program is part of the mayor's efforts of helping the educators during the city's housing affordability crises. Mayor Lee said that "investment in teachers is an investment in the success of the city."
San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Richard Carranza said "Living and working in the community in which you teach and make this investment is incredibly important to the fabric of the city."
Lindsay Donellan, a middle school speech therapist, is one of the first lucky teachers to benefit from the program as she was able to buy her first home in San Francisco.
Mayor Lee said "Today we know that about 70 percent of our public school teachers live in the city, but we also know the housing crisis means that number could change dramatically very quickly." The program includes building of homes "specifically for educators, renewing a program that offers down payment loans up to $20,000 that are forgiven if the teacher sticks around for at least 10 years."
Mayor also said that the program is "to keep as many teachers here [San Francisco] as possible."
According to sfmayor.org, Mayor Lee explained the program in detail. He said "Our new strategy to create opportunities for 500 teachers and educators to find affordable housing in San Francisco- from homeownership to rental subsidies to dedicated teacher housing to eviction prevention - is another step in finding real solutions for our City's housing affordability crisis. Introduced together with the Board of Supervisors, the $310 million affordable housing bond on this November's ballot will give voters an opportunity to support another step toward creating more affordable housing for the future, and get us closer to delivering more than 10,000 permanently affordable homes available to low and middle income families by 2020."
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