Quick Take
As school districts face challenges retaining staff and teachers due to the rising cost of living in Santa Cruz County, they’re also trying to push forward one potential solution: building and renting out their own workforce housing at below-market rates. Santa Cruz City Schools hopes to have workforce move into a development by 2027.
As school districts face challenges retaining staff and teachers due to the rising cost of living in Santa Cruz County, they’re also trying to push forward one potential solution: building and renting out their own workforce housing at below-market rates.
So far, just one local district – Santa Cruz City Schools – has passed a bond to support funding a housing project and hopes to break ground in early 2025. Two others, Pajaro Valley Unified School District and Soquel Union Elementary School District, say they are in the process of placing potential facilities bond measures on the November ballot that could also fund workforce housing.
Coming off a successful bond measure that will raise $371 million for a variety of projects, Santa Cruz City Schools is aiming to break ground next year on a workforce housing project on a parcel of land owned by the district off of Swift Street on the Westside, near the old Natural Bridges Elementary School campus. Spokesperson Sam Rolens said the district hopes to have teachers moving into the new project by 2027.
Initially, the district planned to build an 80-unit project at a cost of $30 to $40 million. Over the past month, however, as the developer and architects developed new budgets, they realized the cost had dramatically increased since the original projections in 2021 and 2022, to about $60 million today.
The developer and architects brought their update to the school district’s governing board and presented two options, according to Rolens.
One idea was to scale back the number of units to lower the cost of the project. Another idea was to increase the number of units so that the district could earn more in subsidized rent payments.
Rolens said the board approved a plan to add an extra 20 units to the project, for a total of 100.
“Where we are right now is restarting the pre-permitting process with 100-unit design and seeing how that goes,” he said.
The City of Santa Cruz is hosting a virtual community meeting May 6 for neighbors to be able to learn about the project and ask questions.
PVUSD’s governing board discussed options for a bond measure during its March 13 meeting but voted to hold off on making a decision because two of the seven board members were absent.
During that discussion, Trustee Kim De Serpa said that all board members should be present and it should be a unanimous vote to approve a bond.
“I do hope that we can all come to a unanimous decision on this,” she said. “And I think that it shows some solidarity as we go out to our community and ask them [to approve it].”
Trustees also asked for more information on facility needs and workforce housing to be included when it comes to the board again for a vote.
PVUSD spokesperson Alicia Jimenez said the district plans to bring the item back for a vote during a May meeting, at which point the new superintendent, Heather Contreras, will be at the district.
Option A is for $315 million and Option B is for $195 million. Both options would give the board the ability to decide if some of the funding would go toward workforce housing.
Chief Business Officer Clint Rucker told the board that workforce housing would cost about $60 million and would come from the bond funding. Interim superintendent Murry Schekman told Lookout on Tuesday that the district hasn’t yet picked a site for a potential workforce housing project or finalized plans for how many units it might include.
In addition to potentially funding the workforce housing development, the bond would go toward infrastructure improvements like replacing and repairing roofs, plumbing and heating, ventilating and air conditioning, upgrading electrical systems, modernizing outdated classrooms and improving play structures and playgrounds, among many other projects.
Soquel Union Elementary School District Superintendent Scott Turnbull said the district is still in the early stages of exploring a bond for the November ballot and doesn’t know yet if workforce housing might be included.
“We are not quite far enough along in the process to know at this point if we are going to include workforce housing in a potential bond,” he told Lookout.
At Live Oak School District, the exploration of workforce housing has been paused, according to governing board president Kristin Pfotenhauer.
“Workforce housing is currently on hold,” she told Lookout in an email. “We haven’t decided on a bond for November yet. We have until August to determine this.”
The district was considering developing on the district-owned property located at 1777 Capitola Rd. Community Bridges’ Meals on Wheels program and Senior Network Services have been providing senior services there for decades.
In May 2022, the district served the two organizations an eviction notice as part of a plan to build workforce housing on the site, and since then, the district and the organizations have been trying to negotiate how to move forward.
Pfotenhauer told Lookout that the district is still working on an agreement.
“We hope to have a two-year lease proposal for Community Bridges on the May agenda,” she wrote. “We will be following up with Senior Network Services on a similar lease proposal.”
Community Bridges spokesperson Tony Nuñez told Lookout he doesn’t think that’s likely at this point as they haven’t come to an agreement.
All of Santa Cruz County’s single-school districts and San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District said they’re not considering workforce development projects. Scotts Valley Unified School District wasn’t reached for comment.
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