Orange County schools help staff find affordable housing
Tangela Smith, a food and nutrition specialist with Orange County Public Schools, caught COVID-19 and pneumonia during the 2020-21 school year, which forced her out of work for months. She’s still feeling the impacts, to her finances and to her health.
“Some days I could barely walk… but I keep on going,” she said.
Smith, 53, was evicted twice from her apartments in Orlando as her medical bills stacked up and she paid rent late.
Now, through a new OCPS initiative, Smith will move into a studio apartment that charges $1,050 a month, well under the market rate. Her current place charges her $1,600, she said, so the change of address will help her meet her monthly payments and pay down her medical debt.
Palm Gardens Apartments off Colonial Drive in Orlando — Smith’s new home in August — is one of the six housing complexes that have a deal with OCPS to make district employees a priority when affordable apartments are available. Ten OCPS employees live at Palm Gardens now.
“This is just the beginning,” said Deputy Superintendent Bridget Williams, who called the housing initiative, which started about a year ago, a “significant milestone” in the district’s effort to recruit and retain teachers and other staff.
The district’s efforts tag team with the City of Orlando’s, which in 2023 used federal money to help One Stop Housing redevelop a dilapidated hotel into an apartment complex that would be marketed for lower-income residents. The development’s financing deal requires affordable rents for 30 years.
OCPS has been working to secure its employees units in that and other affordable complexes. And, along with the city, it is seeking to jointly build workforce housing on an unused school campus.
OCPS is also providing staff who sign leases in the complexes with a $500 gift card paid for by the OCPS Foundation to help them with moving expenses. Sometimes, applications fees are waived for OCPS employees, too.
The goal is to make rent more affordable in a region where the price to get into apartments has been climbing steadily, far outpacing wage growth. More than 123,700 people in Lake, Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties are “cost-burdened” renters, meaning they pay more than 30% of their monthly income on housing costs, according to the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. And teachers and other public school employees are among those struggling to find affordable places to live.
Florida has worked to boost starting teacher pay, which is now about $50,000 in OCPS, but the average teacher salary in the state, at just under $55,000, is the worst in the nation, according to the National Education Association.
“The state may not be giving us the funds that we need to pay them the salary that they’re owed, but we can do what we can do to make the burden a little less heavy,” said Teresa Jacobs, chair of the Orange County School Board, during a June 10 presentation on the affordable housing initiative.
Four other complexes that have agreements in place with OCPS are set to open in the next two years.
Taliah Rasul, a teacher at Carver Middle School, has lived in one of Palm Garden’s studio apartments for close to a year, paying $1,050 per month with utilities and internet included. Her last apartment was $2,500 per month — too much on a teacher’s salary that hasn’t kept pace with rising costs, she said.
The 10-year teaching veteran said the district’s affordable housing partnership means “everything” to her. Cheaper rent helps her save money as her two children go through college, she said.
OCPS also is working with Orlando to build housing on the site of the old Catalina Elementary School in south Orlando within the next two years, she said. The units would house both city and school district employees.
Board Member Angie Gallo said she hopes the affordable housing projects help the district hire and keep teachers and other staff. Affordable housing is not just an economic issue, its also an education issue, she said.
“When our teachers, bus drivers, and support staff can live in the communities they serve, our schools and students thrive. This program is an investment in the people who make OCPS strong,” Gallo wrote in a text.
Mark Vengroff, the CEO of the Sarasota-based One Stop Housing, said he wants to build more affordable housing units for teachers in Orange County as well as in DeSoto, Manatee and Sarasota counties, where he is also working with school districts.
One Stop Housing owns and operates about 4,000 apartment units across Florida, with about 1,100 under construction as of June.
“We believe that anyone who works deserves or should be able to afford a clean, safe roof over their head on the salary that they’re making and only holding one job,” Vengroff said.
He said the district approached him about a partnership, which made sense for One Stop since the most of the OCPS workforce falls within the income range for their units.
Carla Jones, a lead custodian at Thornebrooke Elementary School in Ocoee, has lived in Palm Gardens for about six months. She was in urgent need of housing after a death in the family forced her to leave her previous home. She heard about Palm Gardens on local TV news show and applied for a lease shortly after, she said.
She pays about $900 per month on rent for her studio unit, which she said allows her to save money and more easily afford groceries.
“I wish it was more places out there like that to help everyone, because everybody’s suffering with the economy the way it is now,” Jones said.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/07/01/orange-county-schools-help-staff-find-affordable-housing/