America’s educators are being priced out of their communities − these cities are building subsidized teacher housing to lure them back

Jeff Kruth, Miami University and Tammy Schwartz, Miami University For much of the 20th century, teaching was a stable, middle-class job in the U.S. Now it’s becoming a lot harder to survive on a teacher’s salary: Wages have been stagnant for decades, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute, and teachers earn 5% less than they did a decade ago when adjusting for inflation. That’s one reason why there’s a widespread teacher shortage, with tens of thousands of positions going unfilled. At the same time, according to a 2022 report from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, there are more than 160,000 underqualified teachers in the classroom, meaning they don’t meet full certification or credentialing standards. This issue has become particularly acute as housing costs have risen sharply across the country over the past decade. Why become a teacher if it means you’ll struggle to put a roof over your head? In response, many states and cities, from California to Cincinnati, are exploring ways to attract and retain teachers by developing education workforce housing – affordable housing built specifically for public school teachers and staff to make it easier for them to live near where they work. In doing so, they seek to address aspects of both the teacher shortage and housing crisis.

Fertile land for housing

As professors of architecture and education and as directors of an urban teaching program at Miami University in Ohio, we work to make it easier for students to pursue teaching careers – and that includes addressing affordable housing issues in communities where they work. A key element of this work involves collaborating with local education agencies to either build, subsidize or find housing for teachers. Local education agencies are tasked with the administrative functions of a school district, and they often own large tracts of land. This land can be used to build new school buildings or community health clinics. But it can also be used to build housing – a particularly attractive option in cities where land can be scarce and expensive. California has been at the forefront of these efforts. The state’s school districts own more than 75,000 acres of potentially developable land. Meanwhile, more than one-third of the state’s public school employees are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. California’s Teacher Housing Act of 2016 set up a framework for local education agencies to build and develop housing on their land. Since then, education workforce housing complexes have been developed across the state, ranging from San Francisco’s Shirley Chisolm Village to 705 Serramonte in Daly City, California.

The nuts and bolts of education workforce housing vary. It can be financed by traditional sources, such as private philanthropy and government funds. But it can also be funded through financial tools such as certificates of participation, which allow outside investors to provide funding up front and later receive a return on their investment through rental income. In some cases, teachers are offered reduced rents for just a few years as they start their careers. In others, they’re given the opportunity to purchase their home. Third party management companies often oversee the projects, since local education agencies usually aren’t interested in property management. This also reduces the potential for any direct disputes between employer and employee. Many programs require only that residents be employees of the school district when they enter the program, meaning if someone leaves their job, they will not be displaced. In April 2025, UCLA’s CITYLab and the Center for Cities and Schools published a study highlighting some of the benefits and challenges of nine educator workforce housing projects built in California. The complexes ranged in size, from 18 to 141 dwelling units, with heights that ranged from two to six stories. The researchers found that tenants were largely satisfied with their living situations: They paid rents at far below market rate, and they praised the apartment design. They also highlighted their shorter commutes.

From tiny homes to factory conversions

Since 2020, educator housing has been proposed or developed in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and South Carolina. In Fort Stockton, a small, rural town in West Texas, the school district bought a motel in 2022 and converted it into teacher housing. In Arizona, the Chino Valley Unified School District built tiny homes for its teachers in 2023, renting them at US$550 per month.

In Baltimore, more than 775 teachers have recently been housed thanks to initiatives such as the Union Mill project, an 86,000-square-foot historic building converted into teacher apartments that range in price from $700 to $1200 per month. Teacher housing does more than give educators an affordable place to live. It can forge lasting relationships. A recent assessment of teacher housing in Los Angeles found that the community spaces and programs offered on site strengthened bonds among the residents, leading to friendships and working relationships that lasted for years.

Building community in and out of the classroom

Here in Cincinnati, our own graduates now working in schools also benefit from affordable housing options. Through a partnership between Miami University and St. Francis Seraph, early career teachers from our TEACh and Urban Cohort programs have access to affordable housing. In 2024, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati converted an old church property in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood into teacher apartments, which recent graduates can rent at a reduced rate. Most young teachers otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford living in this area.

“I wouldn’t be able to spend my beginning years as an educator in the community without access to affordable housing,” Nicholas Detzel, a graduate teacher now living in the converted space, told us in an interview. “Living in the community has been an amazing experience and helps you know your students on a completely different level,” he added. “It has also helped me relate to students about knowing what is going on in our community.” Teachers like Detzel who live in Over-the-Rhine can walk or take public transportation to the local schools where they work. Perhaps more importantly, they can better understand the world of their students. They can learn the streets that students avoid, the parks and community spaces that become popular after-school hangouts, and what community organizations offer summer programming. Ultimately, teachers grounded in the life of the community can build relationships outside of the walls of school that contribute to more trust in the classroom. Providing affordable housing for teachers and staff also helps retention rates, particularly as many younger teachers leave the profession due to low pay and burnout. Teacher housing programs are still in their infancy. There are roughly 3.2 million public school teachers nationwide, and there are probably fewer than 100 of these developments completed or in progress. Yet more and more districts are expressing interest, because they help alleviate two major concerns affecting so many American communities: affordable housing and a quality education. While the need for affordable housing spans both lower- and middle-class families, teachers or not, forging alliances between schools and affordable housing providers can serve as one path forward – and possibly serve as a model for other trades and professions. Jeff Kruth, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Miami University and Tammy Schwartz, Director of the Urban Cohort, Miami University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

João Marinotti, Indiana University In late October 2025, as much as US$2 billion vanished from a digital marketplace. This wasn’t a hack or a bubble bursting. It happened because one company, Valve, changed the rules for its video game Counter-Strike 2, a popular first-person shooter with a global player base of nearly 30 million monthly users. For years, its players have bought, sold and traded digital cosmetic items, known as “skins.” Some rare items, particularly knives and gloves, commanded high prices in real-world money – up to $1.5 million – leading some gamers to treat the market like an investment portfolio. As a result, many investment-style analytics websites charge monthly fees for financial insight, trends and transaction data from this digital marketplace. In one fell swoop, Valve unilaterally changed the game. It expanded the “trade up contract,” allowing players to exchange – or “trade up” – a number of their common assets into knives or gloves. By flipping this switch, Valve instantly upended digital scarcity. The market was flooded with new supply, and the value of existing high-end items collapsed. Prices plummeted, initially erasing half the market’s total value, which exceeded $6 billion before the recent crash. Although a partial recovery brought the net loss to roughly 25%, significant volatility continues, leaving investors unsure whether the bottom has truly fallen out. Many of those who saw their digital fortunes evaporate immediately wondered whether there was anything they could do to get their money back. Speaking as a law professor and a gamer myself, the answer isn’t what they want to hear: no. In fact, the existing legal structure largely protects Valve’s ability to engage in this sort of digital market manipulation. Players and investors were simply out of luck. The Counter-Strike 2 crash reveals a troubling reality that extends far beyond video games: Corporations have built exchange-scale investment markets governed primarily by private terms-of-service agreements, rather than the robust set of public regulations that oversee traditional financial and consumer markets. These digital economies occupy a legal blind spot, lacking the fundamental guardrails of property rights, meaningful consumer protection or even securities regulation.

Your digital ‘property’ isn’t really yours

If you spend real money on a digital item, it may feel like you should own it. Legally, you don’t. The digital economy is built on a crucial distinction between ownership and licensing. When users sign up for Steam, Valve’s platform, they agree to the Steam subscriber agreement. Buried in that contract is a critical piece of legalese stating that all digital assets and services provided by Valve, including the Counter-Strike 2 skins, are merely “licensed, not sold.” The license granted to users “confers no title or ownership” at all. This isn’t meaningless corporate jargon; it’s a legal standard routinely affirmed by U.S. courts. The legal implication is clear: Because players only license their skins, they have no property rights over them. When Valve changed the game’s mechanics in a way that collapsed the items’ market value, it didn’t steal, damage or destroy anyone’s “property.” In the eyes of the law, Valve simply altered the conditions of a license, something that its terms-of-service agreement allows it to do unilaterally, at any time, for any reason.

Consumer protection laws don’t apply

While the Counter-Strike 2 crash may seem like a violation of consumer rights, current laws are ill-equipped to handle this type of corporate behavior. Lawmakers have begun addressing concerns about digital goods, primarily focusing on instances where purchased movies or games disappear entirely from user libraries. For example, California recently enacted AB 2426. This law requires transparency, prohibiting terms like “buy” or “purchase” unless the consumer confirms that they understand they will receive only a revocable license. As commendable as this law is, it protects only against confusion and loss of access, not loss of market value when platforms rebalance virtual economies. Valve can comply with consumer transparency laws and still adjust the supply of digital items, rendering them valueless overnight. Ultimately, current consumer protection laws are designed to ensure users know what they are licensing. They do not, however, create ownership interests or protect the speculative value of those digital items.

Game items are treated like unregulated stocks

Perhaps the most significant legal vacuum is the absence of financial regulation. The Counter-Strike 2 economy, a multibillion-dollar ecosystem with dedicated investors and third-party cash markets, looks and behaves like a traditional financial market. Yet, it remains outside the purview of any financial regulator, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Under U.S. law, the primary standard for determining whether an asset should be governed as a security is the Howey test. According to this Supreme Court precedent, an asset is a security if it meets four criteria. Securities involve an “investment of money” in a “common enterprise” with a reasonable expectation of “profits” derived from the “efforts of others.” Counter-Strike 2 skins arguably meet all of these criteria. Participants invest real money in a common enterprise – Valve’s platform – with an expectation of profit. Crucially, that profit depends on the “efforts of others.” The SEC notes this prong is met when a promoter provides “essential managerial efforts” that affect the enterprise’s success. Valve controls the game’s development, manages the platform and – as the recent update proves – dictates item supply and scarcity. If a publicly traded company unilaterally changed its rules in a way that predictably tanked the price of its own shares, regulators would immediately investigate for market manipulation. So how can Valve get away with this? Three things cut against the skins’ status as securities. First is their “consumptive intent” – skins are primarily game cosmetics. Second, there’s no way to convert the skins into dollars within Valve’s own ecosystem. In other words, third-party markets allow users to cash out, but these markets operate outside Valve’s own immediate control. And finally, the Howey test generally governs assets, such as stocks and bonds, that grant investors enforceable rights. Valve’s licensing scheme attempts to circumvent this by ensuring players hold nothing but a revocable license. In my view, the $2 billion crash is a wake-up call. As digital economies grow in financial significance, society must decide: Will these markets continue to be governed solely by private corporate contracts? Or will they require integration into more robust legal frameworks, such as securities regulation, consumer protection and property law? João Marinotti, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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link: https://stmdailynews.com/cash-trapping-how-to-protect-yourself-from-this-sneaky-atm-scam/