Denver's public school teachers are increasingly commuting from Aurora, Commerce City, and as far as Greeley because they can't afford to live in the city where they work. Now Denver Public Schools, the state's largest district, is trying to fix that by building homes on its own land.
The district is partnering with private developers to build workforce housing for educators and support staff, from teachers to bus drivers and food service workers. A starting teacher in DPS earns roughly $55,000 a year. A median Denver home costs around $650,000. A two-bedroom apartment routinely rents for more than $2,000 a month, consuming nearly half of a teacher's gross monthly income. The math doesn't work.
DPS serves about 90,000 students and employs around 15,000 people. Like districts across Colorado's Front Range, it has watched vacancies climb as housing costs outpaced wages. Between 2019 and 2023, teacher vacancies in Colorado roughly tripled, pushing some districts to hire uncertified teachers under emergency authorizations.
Source: NationGraph.
The housing initiative, posted to the district's bid portal on Sept. 30, targets what the district calls "attainable" housing, a term typically used for units priced for households earning 80 to 120 percent of area median income. That range is well above deeply subsidized affordable housing but still below what Denver's market currently delivers.
The model DPS is pursuing has precedent. Jefferson Union High School District in Daly City, Calif., opened 122 educator housing units in 2022 using surplus school land, tax-exempt bonds and a mission-driven developer partnership. Jefferson County Schools in Colorado announced a similar initiative in 2024. The idea: school districts sitting on underused land in expensive metros are quietly holding one of the most valuable tools available to them.
Colorado's legislature helped clear the path. House Bill 22-1287 encouraged school districts and local governments to pursue workforce housing development, and voters in 2022 passed Proposition 123, which created a dedicated state affordable housing fund. Denver voters have also repeatedly approved housing and education bonds. The DPS project draws on that policy foundation.
Notably, the housing plan extends beyond teachers to include paraprofessionals and other support staff, who typically earn considerably less than certified educators and are often left out of workforce housing programs entirely.
Superintendent Alex Marrero has publicly championed housing as a retention strategy for at least two years. The district has faced significant pressure on multiple fronts, including enrollment declines tied partly to families being priced out of Denver and ongoing board disputes. Whether developer partners step forward, and on which district-owned parcels, will determine how quickly any housing could actually get built.
