San Francisco's School District Spent $105M To Build Affordable Housing for Teachers — And That's Just the Beginning

The San Francisco Unified School District opened its first affordable housing development, Shirley Chisholm Village, “a 135-unit housing complex in San Francisco’s oceanside Sunset District. Built on district-owned land, with affordable rents and preference given to SFUSD educators.”

As Nate Berg explains in Fast Company, “The $105 million project was developed by the nonprofit MidPen Housing with a design by San Francisco-based BAR Architects & Interiors in association with G7A | Gonzales Architects, and in coordination with the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.”

The units are reserved for residents who make between 30 and 100 percent of the area median income and represent a growing movement by school districts to use their resources to provide workforce housing for educators and district employees. The district has three additional housing projects in the works.

The building includes a fifth floor work-from-home area and gathering space separate from the private living spaces. “Though the project was not required to include parking under the city’s zoning code, the developers chose to include some underground spaces, partly to assuage neighborhood concerns about street parking and partly at the request of the educators who helped guide the design process.”

Prior to the housing development, the lot was vacant, with the community using it as a park. To address the loss of this communal space, the development includes a public plaza, playground, and seating area accessible from the street.