Wake County leaders want to build affordable housing for teachers, school employees and the general public next to five Wake County schools, though leaders said Wednesday they can't legally give school employees exclusive housing or priority.
County and school district leaders presented their proposal Wednesday to the school board and county commissioners during a joint board meeting.
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School board members and commissioners were largely in favor of the effort, concerned only that they couldn't reserve it for county employees. Votes to approve the work could take place as soon as this fall, with the plan to get some housing up within about 3.5 years.
As part of a broader land-swap proposal, the county is considering building affordable housing on unused school property.
Leaders see it as a way to add affordable housing units in areas of the county that are considered more expensive, especially as growth across the county creates a housing squeeze.
Many school employees, in particular, can't afford to live where they work and even live outside of Wake County. That's especially true for earlier-career teachers who work in southern and western Wake, according to a district study.
An accompanying survey of workers during the 2024-25 school year found half or more of teachers, bus drivers, instructional assistants and wage workers said they believed they could not afford to live in Wake County. About 40% of them said they'd considered quitting their job because of the county's high housing costs.
"With the growth that we’re seeing coming, it’s likely we won’t have any municipality with affordable housing," said Glenn Carrozza, an assistant superintendent overseeing school planning for the district.
The presentation notes an intent to give priority to Wake County Public School System teachers and employees, but county leaders said Wednesday that the county doesn't have the legal authority to actually prioritize county employees. They would need a local bill from the state legislature to give them that authority, said County Attorney Allison Cooper. Other counties have that, but Wake does not.
The five schools with unused land would be Carpenter Elementary in Cary, Morrisville Elementary, Hilburn Drive Academy in Raleigh, Heritage High in Wake Forest and Salem Middle in Apex. In the case of Carpenter, the school board would need to declare the unused land there "surplus" to allow for the housing program.
A spokesperson for the county told WRAL News many steps still need to be taken and they don't expect all school sites to end up in a final plan.
"Some sites have been identified as potential affordable housing opportunities, including opportunities that could benefit WCPSS teachers and employees, while also serving the broader community," spokeswoman Kate Maroney wrote in an email to WRAL News on Tuesday. "At this stage, the focus is on affordable housing generally, rather than a specific population."
It's also unclear how many units could be built, in part because technical surveys haven't been conducted on the land at those schools.
"We think a healthy number of units can be built," said Mark Perlman, deputy housing director for the county.
The county is floating a number of housing types across the five schools, including patio homes, townhomes, attached and detached single-family homes, multifamily housing and cottage courts.
Affordable housing for teachers isn't a new concept, though there is no current program in the Wake County Public School System for offering it.
Addressing a growing need
The county doesn't have the money to give teachers housing assistance, Carrozza said.
"But we do have land," he said.
The county would help finance the work via tax credits, which would allow them to put restrictions on the deeds that would limit rent and income qualifications to a certain percentage of area median income. Those restrictions could be in place for 30 years or longer, depending on the deal with the developers.
"This is super exciting," said school Board Member Jennifer Job. Job cited a recent WRAL report on Wake's comparatively low teacher pay, when compared to similar metropolitan areas in nearby states. The district pays better than nearly every other school district in North Carolina, however.
The school board still wants to improve pay, Chairman Tyler Swanson said.
"This is not an opportunity not to address compensation... this is an opportunity to reshape the narrative about affordable housing," Swanson said. "These are our EMS workers, they’re law enforcement, they’re teachers."
Job urged leaders to find a way to help anyone who may live in the affordable units build wealth, perhaps through ownership opportunities. Fellow School Board Member Chris Heagarty said he thought that could still be achieved through renting, if low enough rents helped people secure enough economic mobility to leave.
Teacher housing --- once known as teacherages --- was common 100 years ago when public schools opened in rural areas and teachers new to the area needed a place to live. Back then, teachers shared a home.
Those setups are largely extinct. More modern versions resemble multifamily housing targeting early career teachers who might otherwise struggle to afford to live near the schools they teach at. They're still seen as a recruitment tactic.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Hoke, Buncombe and Bertie counties are among the school districts in North Carolina that have or will soon have some form of a teacher housing program designed to be more affordable than other options on the market. Durham has a partnership with Duke University to house Duke teaching graduates into two houses on Duke's campus.
The affordable housing initiatives have been welcome in some places, though also lamented for being needed at all.
The cost of housing is rising across much of North Carolina at a far faster pace than teacher pay.
In Wake County, the price of a home has doubled since 2010, according to Carolina Demography, and rents have increased by nearly 50% since 2014, according to real estate app Zillow. Teacher pay hasn't kept up with that pace, though it is set to go up this year by an average of 8% in state base pay.
The housing deal is a part of a larger land swap proposal from the county. The county wants to trade the control of some of the land it jointly owns with the City of Raleigh in the eastern part of the city to the school district in exchange for land the district owns in west Raleigh near the state fairgrounds. The county wants the land near the fairgrounds for additional county offices.
The county is already planning to build a new animal center on the eastern Raleigh property but believes the school district could build both a middle school and an elementary school just south of it. Wake County currently controls the planning and use of that portion of the property, although the land is jointly owned by the county and city.
Carrozza said that the district's growth has slowed for the long-term but noted that part of Wake County is a pocket that keeps growing and is likely to need new schools.