When you compare the cost of living in major US cities to public school teacher wages, you come across a predicament. Many educators are often forced to leave the communities where they teach because they can’t afford to live there. Schools, on the other hand, are fighting to keep those teachers in the district. Affordable teacher housing is one viable option to alleviate this imbalance, which could encourage retention, involvement, and help combat the teacher shortage.
School districts nationwide know this issue well and feel its effects, even in our hometown. Austin Independent School District (AISD) has explored allocating several million dollars to create affordable teacher housing options. Doing so would help teacher retention by controlling the cost of rent—which has risen to a monthly average of $1,799 in Austin, Texas.
There are a lot of factors to consider when it comes to creating affordable teacher housing, and cost is an important one. If construction companies can’t find reasonably priced materials or keep a building project on schedule, the project might not successfully work as affordable housing—the living units might be too expensive to build, too difficult to construct, or remain unfinished at the start of the next school year.
Modular construction is a building method that can help make affordable housing a reality. The process of creating module-style units at an offsite facility helps utilize existing building materials at manufacturing sites. Additionally, modular construction projects are more likely to finish on time when compared to traditional construction projects.
Of course, there’s no one right solution to creating affordable housing, but modular construction has become a proven building method to realize this goal. As always, you should choose the building method that best suits your project.
Modified shipping containers are commonly used as modular construction building elements and they’re growing in popularity. Manufacturers can modify shipping containers into building-block-like modules that are simple to stack and combine once they arrive onsite.
Transforming containers into units that are both comfortable and practical for living is now common. Modified container units are durable, easy to maintain, and make a great solution for affordable housing communities (just check out this project we worked on for LifeMoves). Container-based, multi-family-styled communities can also help make the most of smaller plots of land thanks to their density. By offering more living units on less land, school districts and communities can spend less on land and still accommodate teachers.
If school districts and cities truly want to make a difference in affordable housing for teachers, modified shipping containers just might be the solution.
Falcon Structures is a shipping container modification manufacturing company working to build a better world by pioneering the use of container-based structures. Falcon modifies boxes to become storage units, workspaces, bathrooms & locker rooms, living spaces, industrial enclosures, and multi-containers. Learn more about our experience manufacturing modified shipping containers here.