Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.
Five Denver teachers will soon be living rent-free in a new downtown apartment building, the second housing giveaway this year focused on early career educators in the city.
The teachers will get 12 free months in the Avalon Governors Park development, a 13-story complex just south of Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, through a partnership between the Denver Public Schools Foundation and the developer, AvalonBay Communities.
The five rent-free apartments represent another small step toward the foundation’s goal of providing free housing to 150 district educators by the start of the 2025-26 school year. Last June, a different company, Grand Peaks, donated a year of rent-free living at a new northwest Denver apartment complex to 10 district teachers. Together, the two efforts get the foundation 10% of the way to its goal.
Free apartments are certainly a boon to young educators starting off at the bottom of the pay scale in a gentrifying city known for high housing costs. But the giveaways also raise questions about whether free teacher housing is sustainable and how much of a dent it can make in the broader problem.
Ashley Muramoto, a spokesperson for the Denver Public Schools Foundation, said foundation leaders know the free apartments won’t solve Denver’s affordable housing crisis.
“It’s a step in the right direction to show educators that we support them,” she said. “We’re hoping that it’s also just a starting point for a bigger conversation around affordable housing and what creative philanthropy can do.”
Muramoto said foundation officials have been asked if they’re only looking to partner with developers with new apartments to offer. The answer is no.
“It doesn’t have to be the shiny, beautiful new space that AvalonBay or Grand Peaks have,” she said. “Other developers that have apartment complexes that have existed for a long time, we’re open to that too.”
About 140 teachers, all with three years of experience or less, applied for one of the five rent-free apartments at Avalon Governors Park, Muramoto said. The winners were randomly selected from that group. There was no requirement to teach at a Denver school near the complex.
Two of the teachers will get studio apartments, which normally run about $1,700 a month, and three of the teachers will get one-bedroom apartments, which run about $2,000 a month, Muramoto said.
Generally, experts recommend that housing costs, including rent and utilities, shouldn’t exceed 30% of a household’s gross monthly income. For a Denver teacher earning the district’s base salary of $55,257, that means housing costs should be kept to about $1,400 a month or less.
But average rents in the city are much higher than that — over $1,900 a month.
The Denver district, Colorado’s largest, last year employed about 6,000 teachers. According to data from the Colorado Department of Education, they earned an average of $72,500 annually. Thirty percent of that amount is just over $1,800 a month.
Muramoto said the foundation would like to see a second round of 15 Denver teachers get free apartments at the two complexes after the first two groups’ rent-free year is up, but it’s unclear if that will happen.
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.
