In the fast-growing suburbs northeast of Denver, school districts are losing teachers not because they can't find candidates but because those candidates can't afford to live nearby. A new workforce housing initiative near the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal is trying to change that by putting homes within reach of the educators and support staff who keep schools running.
An agency listed as Rocky Mt Arsenal on Colorado's regional procurement platform is seeking developers for an attainable educator and staffing housing project, posted Sept. 16, 2026. The project uses "attainable" housing terminology, which typically means homes priced for households earning between 80 and 140 percent of area median income, above traditional low-income thresholds but well below what the market now charges in Adams County. The solicitation covers not just classroom teachers but the broader school workforce: bus drivers, paraprofessionals, custodians and food service workers.
The area around the Arsenal, a 17,000-acre former chemical weapons site converted into a national wildlife refuge, has been transformed by master-planned communities like Reunion and Buffalo Run. That growth has driven Adams County home prices sharply upward, part of a Denver metro-wide surge that pushed the median home price past $600,000 by the mid-2020s. For teachers in districts like Adams 14, School District 27J in Brighton and Mapleton Public Schools, whose salaries have long ranked in the bottom half nationally relative to local cost of living, buying a home in the communities they serve has become effectively impossible.
Colorado has been building policy tools to address exactly this problem. Proposition 123, passed in 2022, dedicated a portion of state income tax revenue to affordable housing, and subsequent state legislation made it easier for school districts and local governments to build employee housing. Jefferson County Public Schools and Eagle County Schools have both opened or announced teacher housing projects in recent years, and this solicitation appears to be part of the same wave reaching into the north Denver suburbs.
Key details, including the number of units planned, the specific procuring entity, the funding source and which school districts would be eligible, are not fully specified in the posted solicitation. Those gaps mean the full scope of the project remains unclear until a developer is selected and a contract is negotiated.
Commerce City, which sits at the center of this redevelopment corridor, has already been investing in school-connected infrastructure, including a pedestrian bridge to improve safe routes for students. The housing project would address a harder problem: keeping the adults who staff those schools close enough to afford to stay.
