Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools launches new initiatives to help teachers with housing

CHARLOTTE — They’re priced out of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, but still teaching here. Finding affordable housing is often a real challenge for teachers who struggle to make ends meet.

Leaders with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools are looking at a few ideas to lower the cost of housing for hundreds of educators like Shannon McLeod, who say they’re constantly getting a lesson in how to make their own ends meet.

“What really keeps me teaching is my love for students, it’s definitely not the salary,” McLeod told Channel 9′s Jonathan Lowe.

An educator for a total of 11 years, McLeod has spent the last six teaching math at Westerly Hills Elementary School in west Charlotte.

“When I migrated here in 2018, my rent was $950, right now it’s over $1,400,” McLeod said.

For a single person living in Charlotte, life is often unaffordable for CMS teachers.

“It has been a struggle for me, but I can say so many other people share the same sentiment,” McLeod told Lowe.

That’s why last month, CMS launched the “At Home in CMS” initiative. It’s a $30 million effort to ease the burden of housing costs for its teachers, funded through public and private partnerships.

“We know that the largest expense that our teachers have is usually their delling, where it is that they reside,” said CMS Chief Executive in Residence Raki McGregor.

McGregor is helping lead the initiative that’s hoping to get the teachers down payment assistance, apartments rented below market rate, single-family homes, and possibly a village of housing for teachers.

“We actually have teachers that are already in the process of being evaluated for those homes,” McGregor told Lowe.

In the four months since the program launched, the district says more than 150 teachers from six Title One schools have started paperwork that’s getting them on the path to homeownership.

“The banks here continue to show up,” McGregor said.

But McGregor says they’re trying to encourage more involvement from local private businesses in the hopes of helping even more educators. They’ve also brought on a heavy hitter in Charlotte business to be an ambassador: Hugh McColl, the former chairman and CEO of Bank of America.

Now retired, McColl has thrown his support behind “At Home in CMS.”

“As we have done in the past, the business community has pitched in in housing, affordable housing,” McColl said.

McLeod sees this initiative as a real potential to recruit and retain teachers.

“It offers a sense of hope,” McLeod said.

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