This is something new. The state of Arizona is building tiny homes for teachers since teachers in many districts can’t afford to buy or rent a home in the district where they teach.
Some charter-friendly districts have built “teachers’ villages” to house teachers from Teach for America.
But this is the first I have heard of tiny homes. A tiny home is 400 square feet. It includes a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. No living room. A tiny home for teachers who don’t expect much in life.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What’s next? Pay the teachers in scrip and have them shop at the company store? From the article: “In her fifth year of teaching, Scharer makes $38,000 a year.” Good grief, that would be 1980s teacher salaries for NJ. The majority of the teachers are under 35, that says it all. AZ does not value public school teachers or education.
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“1600 students, and what do you get?
Another day older, and deeper in debt.
St. Peter, don’t you call me
‘Cuz I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.”
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Ha ha
So true
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The home pictured with the article is in the middle of a dirt field. No shrubs, no trees, no lawn, no walkways, it must turn into a mire or mud field when the rain falls. Will they do landscaping at some point?
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Here’s an interesting article.
In the red states, it’s gotten to the point where school superintendents or other school officials now feel that they have to advise prospective teachers words to the effect of …
“Going in, you need to know that financially speaking, and in terms of housing costs & your future lousy salary, that your life is going to suck royal if you accept this offer to teacher at our school / in our district. That’s why we only hire teachers that are happy with, or at least accepting of being paid and treated like sh#%.”
Boy, I bet that really puts those prospective teachers in a mood to take the job.
On top of that, after this reality filters down to kids in high school and young adults in college, think of how many people will want to pursue teaching as a career.
Here’s the exact wording from the article:
THE ATLANTIC:
“Some superintendents say they start teacher-candidate interviews with heart-to-hearts about the reality of housing costs in their communities. They don’t want candidates, especially those from out-of-state, jumping in with visions of majestic mountain peaks and not the dollar signs that go with them.”
Here’s the article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/01/why-school-districts-are-operating-as-landlords/512318/
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I just finished a thread concerning rent control. I tweeted it because our blog really isn’t for clap backs. Timely though. https://twitter.com/WorldWideEzra/status/1026475494739505152
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Tiny homes built by people who think teachers have tiny lives and don’t matter.
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Their employer is also their landlord. Good grief.
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I made my comments as orangputeh. Enough said. GRRRRR!!!
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Fancy Hoovervilles.
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“Koppvilles”
Tiny houses
Koppville dwellings
Made for mouses
‘scuse my spellings
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I knew you would see this one for what it is!
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Thank you, Susan, for sharing this piece with me. Outrageous!
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And that’s not counting that, at least in Utah, younger teachers don’t pay into the defined benefit pension. All they get is a 401K. They also cannot get health insurance in my district for the first three months of their employment, and, also in my district, they don’t get their first paycheck until October.
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Threatened Out West: This type of thing cannot continue. These teachers will not be able to escape poverty when they retire.
Can teacher retirees in Utah collect Social Security? I get $89 a month which goes towards Medicare. My ex gets $200 a month. We both retired from Teachers Retirement System of Illinois.
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Teachers in Utah do get Social Security. That’s something, I guess, but not much.
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Ugh, 401Ks, they are nothing but a scam. They were originally designed as a supplement to pensions, not as a replacement. They will never generate enough money to live on in retirement (for the average worker). During the great recession of 2008, 401Ks were decimated and wiped out. If you retire when the economy or the stock market is in a tail spin, your 401K will be erased and that’s not even mentioning management fees that could subtract many thousands from the funds.
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A lot of teachers are pushing back on this pension “reform.” I’m hoping we continue to do so, because it’s one of several reasons that Utah can’t fill a lot of teaching slots. Who wants to work with 35 or more kids per class, have low pay, pay for almost all supplies, AND have essentially no retirement?
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During the housing bubble, Wall Street investment houses like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs scammed states into investing state retirement funds in fraudulent mortgage-backed securities and got away with the scams with a slap on the wrist by the Obama Justice department: fines that were only a small fraction of the tens of billions they had made off the scams
“These public pension funds were some of the most frequently targeted suckers upon whom Wall Street dumped its fraud-riddled mortgage-backed securities in the pre-crash years.” — Matt Taibbi
And now many of the same fraudulent actors have a new scheme for fleecing state pension funds.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/looting-the-pension-funds-172774/
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I heard just the other day about a couple who had downsized to a tiny house so they could use their money to travel. Houses are now so expensive to build that no one wants to build for the people who can only afford small. Rents are so high in some parts of the country that people cannot afford to work. I met a family at a campground near Nashville that was living out of a travel trailer because the 25-30 dollar per hour wage would not pay the 1200 dollar rent. I cannot imagine spending 15,000 a year for rent. I have never had a mortgage that exceeded a third of that.
This is a very big problem to our economic health. Young people are either so well paid that they can buy an expensive place, or they are obliged to,compete with a large group of people for a few affordable houses.
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AAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
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This reminds me of what philanthropist, education policy shaper George Kaiser is doing in Tulsa, only his housing is available to TFA tenants only. (https://www.tulsaworld.com/business/kaiser-foundation-building-lofts-in-brady-district-for-young-teachers/article_4d3b4857-4b91-5772-a76f-ca70c785e36b.html)
This really burns me, because Tulsa, like the rest of Oklahoma, is suffering a terrible teacher shortage, caused by terrible teacher salaries, working conditions, and, of course, federal policies (such as Race to the Top) that incentivized alternate teacher certification, which resulted in the not-so-unintended consequence of de-incentivizing traditional teacher preparation programs). I taught students trying to get certified the right way, and most of them were poor, which is why offering special deals for TFA Tulsa teachers especially angers me. Kaiser controls Tulsa and his influence ripples throughout all of Oklahoma, especially on education issues, so there’s nobody in Oklahoma who will criticize his paternalistic policies.
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There is a cabal of billionaires building “Teacher Villages” for TFA only. They get a low-interest loan, and somehow have figured out a way to profit.
No regular, experienced, licensed teachers need apply.
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At the NEA-RA a few years ago, one female teacher got something passed opposing TFA, and was met with thunderous applause from 10,000 teachers. She said something like …
The TFA-ers are getting their student loans forgiven after two years and then quitting — and that two-years-and-out stint is how they planned it from the get-go — meanwhile and teachers who have taught 30-40 years, or teachers such as me, who ar planning to teacher 30-40 years don’t get a penny of loan forgiveness.
How is that fair?
What message is that sending?
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Maybe Bill Gates would be so kind as to provide room and board for a few teachers at his 66 thousand square foot monstrosity of a house in Washington state.
He would probably not even know they were there.
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Of course he wouldn’t; teachers are invisible to Bill Gates.
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SDP: Isn’t it insulting that teachers are supposed to be underpaid and happy getting a 300 square foot tiny home.
Trump had to have the WH redecorated because he couldn’t stand what Obama had lived with.
What is it with the wealthy who never get enough? Nobody needs a 66 thousand square foot home anymore than DeVos needs 10 yachts.
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Gates held a competition to design a new kind of toilet.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Growth-and-Opportunity/Water-Sanitation-and-Hygiene/Reinvent-the-Toilet-Challenge
That would fit nicely in the teachers’ tarp. Toilets for Teachers!
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Winners of the Gates competition to reinvent the toilet.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/press-releases/2012/08/bill-gates-names-winners-of-the-reinvent-the-toilet-challenge
This was certainly more successful than any of Gates’ investments in reinventing education and teaching in the US.
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That house looks like it was designed by a committee of software engineers, by the way.
You’d think with all his money, Gates could have hired a decent architect.
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Arizona wants to go back in time to when the schoolmarm lived in quarters behind the classroom and chopped wood for the potbelly stove. In those days teachers didn’t need to take out loans to complete an education, and they remained spinsters.
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I love the way tiny homes allow you to hear every little noise out on the street.
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I taught for two years in Arizona and they put students in tiny schools (trailers) in many cases,so it’s not a surprise that they would put teachers in tiny houses.
“Ayny Rands”
Tiny houses
Tiny schools
Statehouse louses
Dime me fools
Tiny hands
And tiny brain
Ayny Rands
Are oft to blame
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Given that The Fountainhed, considered a good novel by some, featured an architect as a hero, your poem take on an irony that is deep and cutting.
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Typo city. The Fountainhead, Rand’s novel, considered….
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Then again, perhaps teachers and students in Arizona should just be grateful they are not being put in old smelly dumpsters.
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Building the infrastructure for serfdom.
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Reflects a growing quest by the super rich and powerful, and their economists, to lower expectations of this generation and those who are teaching them–mostly women.
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There was this great John Stewart segment that started with a montage of conservative Fox News folks claiming that teachers lead luxurious lives with lavish salaries.
That was the propaganda party line message back in 2011 after the Wisconsin uprisings against Scott Walker, and it was dredged up again during last spring’s string of state-wide teachers strikes.
Wait, I found the Stewart bit.
Go to 1:56 for that montage, introduced by Stewart, who kiddingly calling teachers “villains” and “greedy succubi”:
(1:56 – )
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/y2rj2g/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-crisis-in-dairyland—apocalypse-cow
After O’Reilly (who, btw, paid $35 million to just one woman suing him for sex harrassment) calls teachers’ salaries and lifestyle “lavish with a CAPITAL L’ “, we are then treated to Samantha Bee’s parody of MTV’s “Cribs”, e show that gives flashy video tours of the mansions of rockstars and rap stars.
Instead, Stewart’s version of …
“Cribs: Teachers Edition”
… focuses on teachers’ supposed “luxurious” homes lifestyles. (Stewart’s mother is a teacher, btw.)
That montage of Fox News creeps blathering about how well off teachers are is just breathtaking. “How can they lie like this with a straight face?” is all I can think while watching this. The “Cribs” segment is a spot-on parody of the real “Cribs” from MTV — the editing, slow motions, handheld shots, musical score… it’s brilliant.
Samantha Bee marvels at one teacher, who is “living the dream” with a luxurious bed — a bed taking up the one-room of the teacher’s one-room apartment:
“Wait! You’ve got a TOP sheet AND a BOTTOM sheet?!”
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Jack: LOVED it! At last someone understands my ultra lavish lifestyle. I know where all the $10 buffets are in my area.
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The really important question is this: How many teachers can you fit in a tiny house?
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“TFA” (Tiny for America)
“Teach for less” is what they say
Motto of the TFA
Penny shaved is penny earned
By Wendy Kopp, with teachers burned
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Well, it’s not as if teachers were doing important jobs, like building unneeded submarines for cave rescues. It’s only tech bros who need living space to incubate their creative ideas.
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Given the very tight squeeze (2 feet) at one point in that cave, I think what Musk came up with was more of a sardine can than submarine.
Imagine being crammed into a very narrow, totally dark rocket tube. That’s exactly what it was.
He should have had to put his own kids — or himself or gilrfriend — into it before putting anyone else’s into it.
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“To boldly go where no billionaire has gone before: Cave Trek”
You need a lot of space
To think of something teeny
It’s really not our place
To knock a techno-weeny
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Some people are profiting and it ain’t teachers.
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I’m surprised they gave them tiny houses when tents would have been more than sufficient
Tents for America!
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SDP, surprised that you didn’t say, “Tents for Teachers!”
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Although “Tents for America” makes a nice acronym: TFA
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Tents for Teachers is also discriminatory.
TFA is an equal opportunity employer.
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“Tarps for America” would be even cheaper.
Who needs sides on their house anyway?
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SDP: The 300 square foot tiny house for teachers is starting to look better with every comment.
How about a reserved spot under a large bridge? Teachers could be provided with a thermal blanket.
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SDP, YOU’ve got it!
Tarps for America! Arizona has a good climate. Perfect!
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Depends on what you mean by America. Puerto Rico still doesn’t have enough tarps.
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Thermal-blankets for America”
Now, yer talking.
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I hope someone from TFA is reading this.
But I think it’s only fair that we should receive a cut of the considerable savings that are achieved with our ideas.
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Arizona has a perfect climate for tarps, but the rattlesnakes and scorpions might pose a bit of an issue.
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Actually, when I lived in Arizona, I did a lot of hiking in the Sonoran desert and always used just a tarp (no tent) precisely because the tent was unnecessary weight.
Encountered both rattlesnakes and scorpions but never in my sleeping bag.
Besides, most of them stay in the Arizona state house.
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Christine,
It’s all relative.
For the million plus homeless in the US a tiny house — or even a tarp — is something they can only dream of.
I actually have a lot of respect for people who choose to live in tiny houses because they are setting an example for the rest of us. Most houses are much bigger (and wasteful) than what people need. Some (like Bill Gates mammoth 66,000 square foot house) are grotesquely so.
But I still have a problem with what TFA is doing because they are basically looking for ways of avoiding paying teachers a decent wage.
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In Denver, the district had talked about offering apartment rentals for affordable housing for teachers, and some grant is supposed to be available to teachers for down payments on buying a house. All instead of a living wage!
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Sarah: Hope Trump or the GOP doesn’t find out about grants for teachers so that they can afford a house. They would be lumped in with the greedy, lazy poor people who want food and subsidies for affordable rents.
HUD plans on cutting these subsidies and raising rents up to three times more. How many people out on the streets is acceptable?
A decent minimum wage and decent salaries for teachers would solve a lot of problems. Can’t do that because the wealthy and corporations needed huge tax cuts. The military and NSA need billions more.
This makes no sense to me but Trump followers think its working well.
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There is always an ulterior motive involved, isn’t there?
They offer short term grants (that they plan to cut in the future) to avoid paying decent wages.
And they (people like Andrew Cuomo) fund a few charters to avoid paying public schools the billions that they are owed.
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Tiny homes for tiny teacher salaries for tiny learning and teaching stemming from tiny civic awareness and skills and tiny civic participation all amounts to tiny brains and tiny, dwindling amounts of human and civil rights.
But the resistance movement is growing and anything but tiny. It’s YUGE!
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