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CMS ‘Teacher Village’ plan generates excitement and questions for City Council

Rising home prices in Mecklenburg County make it difficult to buy or rent on a teacher's salary.
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Rising home prices in Mecklenburg County make it difficult to buy or rent on a teacher's salary.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools on Monday laid out a broad-strokes plan to raise $30 million to $40 million, much of it from private investors, to build 100 affordable housing units for teachers. The “Teacher Village” plan would be built on CMS land — the location has not been revealed — and open in 2027, with hopes that it will serve as a model for additional projects.

Charlotte City Council’s housing committee unanimously recommended setting aside $1 million in federal money to support the project, but members said they want to see a lot more detail before they release the money.

“If we’re going to invest a million dollars, for me, I want to have some level of confidence that the project is actually going to happen,” said committee Chair Victoria Watlington. 

School board Chair Stephanie Sneed and Novant Health executive Rake McGregor, who is working with CMS on Teacher Village, presented the plan. They emphasized the struggle CMS has hiring and keeping teachers.

“We are losing our highly qualified teachers, and we’re losing them because they cannot afford to live in our community,” McGregor said. He said that “we want to come up with an innovative, thought-provoking, forward-facing potential solution that we’re looking to pilot,” with hopes that similar projects for other CMS, city and county workers could follow.

Here’s what’s known about the project, based on a document presented to the committee and remarks from McGregor and Sneed.

  • Laurel Street developers, a Charlotte company that specializes in affordable and mixed-use development, is working with CMS to craft the plan. Laurel Street worked with CMS on the Renaissance West education village in west Charlotte. McGregor says company leaders proposed the project for teachers in 2016 or 2017. 
  • CMS will provide a site worth at least $1.5 million. The location hasn’t been announced, but the timeline calls for the school board to vote on it this month. The county would also have to approve this use of the land.
  • The project would create 100 units “at a cost that is approximately one-third of what the city typically pays for affordable housing developments.” They would be offered to CMS teachers at unspecified reduced rates, with a program “to bridge rental to purchasing.”
  • The $1 million from the city would cover design, engineering and other expenses to launch the project. 
  • Laurel Street would recruit private investors to cover construction costs, with the total project running $30 million to $40 million.
  • Construction could start early in 2025, with teachers moving in by April 2027.

CMS doesn’t pay city property taxes on land it owns, and the proposal asks the city to find a way to maintain that tax-exempt status as a way of keeping the housing costs low.

City officials said that’s a complicated request that will require more study. They raised questions about setting a precedent for other affordable housing proposals.

Overall, council members voiced a mix of enthusiasm and concern. Some noted that the need, even for public employees alone, is much larger than 100 teachers.

“CMS, a strong public school system, is vital to the overall ecosystem, to Charlotte’s growing economy,” said Mayor Pro Tem Dante Anderson. She called it a chance “to help create an innovative model that we will hopefully be able to scale and be able to benefit city workers as well.”

“It breaks my heart to hear that we have teachers that are homeless, but it also breaks my heart because we have our city employees, like solid waste workers, that are housing insecure,” said council member Dimple Ajmera. She described the $1 million investment as “a no-brainer for us,” but said city staff still needs to review details.

She moved to recommend allocating $1 million for the Teacher Village project in the 2024-25 budget, “contingent on staff’s review and ensuring that there is construction funding in place before our $1 million goes out.” It would come from money that remains from federal American Rescue Plan grants during the pandemic. The full City Council would vote later on the final plan to release the money.

The committee did not vote on granting tax-exempt status for Teacher Village. Ajmera said a vote on that would have to come later.

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Ann Doss Helms has covered education in the Charlotte area for over 20 years, first at The Charlotte Observer and then at WFAE. Reach her at ahelms@wfae.org or 704-926-3859.