Summit School District Housing Needs Assessment
Housing needs assessment for Summit School District employees, documenting housing challenges in one of Colorado's most expensive resort communities.
- Summit School District
- Summit County, Colorado
- Housing Needs Assessment Report, Employee Survey Analysis, Recommendations
When a school district can’t fill positions because candidates can’t find housing, and experienced staff leave once they start families, the problem runs deeper than recruitment. In Summit County, two-thirds of district renters want to buy a home but can’t afford to.
Half the employees planning to have children in the next five years are considering leaving.
The district invests in training staff who leave — not because they want to, but because a household earning $112,500 can afford a $315,000 home in a market where the average price tops $1 million. Only three or four single-family homes sell in that range each year, out of more than 1,500 sales countywide.
Western Spaces conducted a housing needs assessment for the district, quantifying the gap between educator compensation and local housing costs and identifying where that gap was pushing employees — longer commutes, overcrowded shared housing, or out of the county altogether. The findings gave the district data to make the argument for workforce housing as an investment in education, not just real estate.