Architect Lauren Maass Is Building Consensus Around K–12 Workforce Housing
The rising cost of housing poses a challenge for educators who wish to live in or near the districts they serve. K–12 workforce housing offers a promising solution to make housing accessible for teachers and strengthen how districts support critical talent.
Over the past two years, Lauren Maass, Principal in Multistudio’s PreK–12 practice area, has assembled developers, housing and financial experts, school district leadership, and other key stakeholders to demonstrate the viability and impact of these projects, and her work is gaining traction.
We spoke with Maass to learn more about her efforts to make teacher housing a reality for school districts in the U.S.
Lauren Maass: The districts in California we're serving right now are all having housing issues for educators. Because we already know these districts, we had an easy inroad to start conversations about the potential to serve these kinds of housing projects, outside their more typical facility needs. We’re well-positioned to support these districts, given our strong focus on K–12 school design and housing.
LM: We began with Tony Mirenda at Kitchell and Ross Robb, a financial expert from RLR Ventures LLC. The Think Tanks were intended to be very open source, providing information to any districts wanting to discuss the potential for K–12 workforce housing. We wanted to introduce a connection between developers and school districts. This conversation led to two more Think Tanks, one in June and one in November 2024. We’ve done three now, including a specific case study in the Bay Area with a developer out of Chicago, The Annex Group.
LM: We called the first Think Tank “Exploring the Possibilities of K–12 Workforce Housing in California.” It was focused on eliminating barriers and getting districts comfortable with exploring the need, as each district needs the support of their board of education to move the process forward.
We leveraged the expertise of Royal Bank of Canada, a big financial arm for developers and a potentially good partner. Ross Robb articulated the five levers of what makes a feasible project. We also invited Corey Smith with the Housing Action Coalition, and he brought us up to date on the latest California environmental legislation impacting these projects.
The second Think Tank was called “From Concept to Completion: Leveraging Partnerships in Workforce Housing.” For this session, we focused on multiple case studies at various levels of completion in California. At this point in our programming, districts started realizing that workforce housing is doable. The case studies provided an opportunity to see the possibilities. It’s a game-changer when districts recognize that others have delivered workforce housing successfully and people are there to support these initiatives.
For the third session, we partnered with a developer, as the financing for these projects remains complex and not easily understood. Developers are beginning to see workforce housing Requests for Information (RFIs) in Colorado, Illinois, and Texas for schools and municipalities, supporting government jobs.
We took an existing site that the South San Francisco Unified School District had identified, and we ran a feasibility study analyzing the allowable building area and envelope, as well as other considerations that might increase the proposed project size. What's allowable for the zoning? How does legislation allow you to increase the size based on density? Attendees were super engaged and could start understanding how you put a project together that is feasible.
LM: More and more people have started tuning in. I’m also on the board of the Association for Learning Environments (A4LE) in Northern California. A4LE is a national institution that is very focused on progressive educational environments. Workforce housing has become a topic of interest for this group as well. The Southern California chapter approached the Northern California chapter to partner and collaborate on a webinar regarding this topic, and I was asked to be the moderator, given my experience with the Think Tanks.
That webinar occurred in mid-January of 2025 with five panelists from around California and many from Southern California. We had a representative from the California School Boards Association and the California Department of Education, along with several districts in the process (at varying levels) of delivering workforce housing, including those that were just getting started. According to A4LE, this was the most attended webinar to date, which speaks to the relevance of this subject matter and need. School districts from Hawaii to Virginia were in attendance, as A4LE advertised the webinar nationally, not just in California.
Most districts understand how to build facilities, but they know less about how to begin generating interest at a community level for workforce housing. They need to engage teams that can provide feasibility studies and tools for what is possible in housing. At the end of the webinar, we addressed how best to manage a housing project once it is leased up. Workforce housing is really intended to be "transitional" and not "permanent."
Many families and individuals are on waitlists for these new housing opportunities. Once they are accepted into workforce housing, many families and individuals need mentoring around financial literacy so that they understand how best to save up enough money over the duration of their lease agreement (typically about seven years) to purchase a home or get accepted into permanent affordable housing elsewhere in the community. So, there are many post-occupancy considerations once families and individuals are in the housing.
Post-occupancy evaluation could be a future think tank for us, given our Research Center’s strength there. It is understandable that many school communities just want to focus on education. However, they also need to focus on housing for their educators and staff. It’s currently not sustainable. Teachers can’t commute two hours a day. And when there are communities that aren’t meeting their state housing element requirements, or there’s a perception that affordable multifamily housing won’t be well-maintained and may even introduce low-income families, diversity and equity issues, such as racism and redlining, begin to pile up.
LM: I’m a good resource connector. Multistudio provides thought leadership for this market, along with our experience in school design, mid- and high-rise buildings, and city design. Although some companies may specialize in housing, they're not necessarily plugged into the needs and servicing of K–12 districts, like we are.
I’m also working with Mark Goodman with A4LE, the publisher of Learning By Design, on an article about K–12 workforce housing that is expected to be published in October 2025. I also just appeared as a panelist for the Construction Management Association of America’s (CMAA) webinar, which featured a strong focus on the management of workforce housing projects prior to occupancy and post occupancy.
Given our experience with education and housing, we hold many of the building blocks to support school districts in making these projects a reality. The State of California, specifically the California Department of Education, is trying to set up "seed money" to best support the pre-development costs. While this has not yet been realized by California legislators, we hope to remain at the forefront of sharing these kinds of ideas and resources.
LM: There’s a lot of work to do. You need to help influence the board of education members for K–12 districts. You have to be out in the community. There are a lot of misconceptions around how much teachers make. Many community members know their teachers and staff are probably underpaid, but I don’t think they understand the immense financial pressures and the unavailability of even slightly affordable housing in the greater Bay Area.
It’s also challenging to change minds about the idea that all school funding needs to go to the students. We hope to bring the community along to ensure they understand the needs of working for a school district and how much their teachers’ financial security is dependent on the security of their workplace and home environment.
LM: At the Michelle Obama School, the district implemented a staff and teacher support suite. While there exists a suite dedicated to special services for their students, there is also a community room and a professional development room, which are intentionally tied to the library and the administrative offices to support teachers with their continuing education needs. West Contra Costa Unified School District and the superintendent at the time aimed to create a place for professional development to continue as the entire school teaching experience is centered on project-based learning, which requires ongoing training. There’s a new kind of awareness around the training of teachers and staff to support this new pedagogy. It is so important to provide teachers with spaces to engage with their continued learning.
Mission Bay School for the San Francisco Unified School District is comprised of three programming components: an elementary school, a linked learning hub for high school students, and a professional development suite for teachers. Although the current design and construction no longer includes a professional development suite, the district is building observation areas for teachers to observe students in each grade-level suite. These areas are special rooms where the teachers can observe students and learn, share notes and experiences, while witnessing teaching in real-time.
The new pedagogy at this school includes co-teaching with two, three, or four teachers serving an entire grade level, and they need to be able to train teachers to adapt to this model.
LM: We’ve started looking at how to serve school communities better; our work can develop into other projects, regardless of scale or typology. Housing seemed like a logical need that has increased over the years.
Recently, we have expanded our reach to offer housing through additional student housing opportunities. We completed a 500-bed project for San Francisco State University called Manzanita Square, and we recently completed Spartan Village on the Paseo for San José State University. Spartan Village was an adaptive reuse of a hotel converted into student housing.
We have successfully completed several net-zero-ready projects in K–12 school districts. Our understanding of energy-efficient building systems affects our housing work. We intend to lean heavily on sustainability for K–12 workforce projects, along with amenities that support welcoming and gathering.
We know that from these student housing projects and our other housing designs, including the Chorus high-rise tower, that amenities are extremely important. Our post-occupancy evaluation work in our Research Center informs how we can develop new concepts to support well-being and belonging. Workforce housing for teachers may include amenities, such as a daycare center or preschool, to better support these families and individuals. We have learned through student housing and mid/ high-rise housing that there may be value in a multigenerational approach, where workforce and senior housing may even be integrated. It’s been rewarding to work on schools that are full-service community schools. The Michelle Obama School and Mission Bay School offer more than just an education. They are a full-service community school that provides English as a second language tools, financial literacy, and even assistance with tax returns.
LM: More and more community-serving projects are being imagined, and not just housing. Our Fattoria Public Market in Santa Clara County is designed for farmers to have a year-round place to sell crops. We are starting to see significant community-driven developments that link thought leadership, innovation, politics, and social economics.
When we began these Think Tanks, I wanted to learn more about the challenges for school districts beyond education and facilities. Putting a complex partnership deal together to develop workforce housing is difficult. I wanted to give others permission to be curious about and learn the complexities of these projects and understand that K–12 workforce housing is actually doable. That is my biggest takeaway. If you have the right partners and community to support this effort, it's very achievable.
Lauren Maass and the Multistudio PreK–12 school design team will soon provide another Think Tank in support of K–12 housing. Explore Maass’s work and perspectives on LinkedIn.
