To recruit teachers, school districts are building homes

The core fabric of society - the deal that was offered by society to the people - to work in a job, own a house, raise a family, have a retirement - has decayed away entirely for many people.

We are very fortunate that my wife got to work at the local school. She now walks to work and I work from home about 4 days out of 5 workdays.

The benefits are huge in terms of time available and costs, and not needing childcare before or after school.

It’s hard to solve couples having two jobs in different places, but having at least one person get to work basically instantly and for zero cost is a massive boon to society.

The issue I saw is that the government department in charge of education is not the one in charge of housing and infrastructure, and there are no incentives to hire locally or make it easier to move locally. Instead you get teachers in suburb A travelling to suburb B and vice-versa, and no way that they can choose to swap roles. We lucked out.

Teacher recruiting wouldn't be so hard if pay weren't lockstep, as it is in so many places. Unions demand this, and it keeps some potentially-effective teachers out of the profession (and keeps old lousy ones in, unfortunately).

It used to be like this in rural communities even up into the 70s and 80s. The town's branch manager would be young, shipped out for a few years and live in a house the bank owned and given a stipend to maintain it. Same with the postmaster and other professions.

A land value tax would fix this

Could just, you know, pay more…