Teachers looking to make Gilroy home will get a helping hand
from the school district.
Gilroy – Teachers looking to make Gilroy home will get a helping hand from the school district.
Gilroy Unified School District trustees unanimously approved a resolution that gives $5,000 to each teacher toward the purchase of a new house. In return, teachers must stay five years. The plan will help the district – which has a reputation of getting new teachers, training them and losing them after about two years – to attract and retain quality employees, staff and trustees said.
“We’ll get our money’s worth with this type of investment,” trustee Javier Aguirre said.
The board agreed to loan money to new teachers who are first-time homeowners purchasing a house in Gilroy. Teachers would not have to repay the principal or pay interest for five years regardless of whether they stayed with the district.
If they continued to work in the district for five years, the loan would become a grant. The teacher would not have to repay the district, which would instead subsidize the house out of its general fund. The expenditure – capped at $90,000, or 18 housing loans – is worth the increase in likelihood that teachers will start a family in Gilroy, trustee Denise Apuzzo said.
“Once you’ve bought a house, you’re in,” she said.
The proposal restricts teachers to purchasing homes with South County Housing, which set aside 18 below-market houses for district employees. The nonprofit provides affordable housing to low-income families and sells the houses for as low as $250,000 for a two-bedroom house depending on the buyer’s income level. This price is 64 percent below the median home price in Gilroy of about $700,000.
The organization wanted to give first priority to teachers because “The health of the school system is something that benefits the whole community,” district director of housing development Jan Lindenthal said.
The district, city of Gilroy and South County Housing forged a similar agreement in 2003 to provide assistance to employees purchasing below-market homes. Five teachers purchased three homes under that agreement and received $5,000 loans. All five teachers still teach in the district.
“It did serve its purpose to attract and retain qualified teachers,” Gilroy Teachers Association president Michelle Nelson said.
Association members would like to see the program expanded, Nelson said.
“Five thousand dollars is not going to go that far in today’s market,” she said.
The loan should be increased and should not be restricted to South County Housing, Nelson said. Apuzzo echoed this last concern during discussion prior to the resolution’s passage.
“If we approve this, we’re opening up a can of worms,” she said. “But it’s one that needs to be opened.”
The district should provide assistance to teachers that purchase houses through other developers, who might provide special deals for teachers or be selling smaller, more affordable houses, Apuzzo said.
“We should be prepared to expand this program,” she said.
Trustees agreed district staff should investigate other resolutions to provide assistance through other developers. In the meantime, the resolution would help stem the high turnover that has plagued the district in recent years, Aguirre said.
“I think we’re going to have, as we had this year, the challenge of filling positions,” he said. “It’s going to get more and more difficult as we go forward and as more teachers retire. This is taking positive action in that area and it’s looking for longevity.”
