With the recent purchase of a three-unit home on Mather Street, the Epiphany School in the Melville Park section of Dorchester now owns six residential properties close to its campus next to Shawmut station. The school offers the housing units to faculty members at below-market rate costs as an incentive to keep teachers who might not otherwise be able to afford living close to the school.

The house at 48 Mather St., bought for $895,000, will give the school three more units of residential space. The other properties are at 154 Centre St., 20-22 Mather Ct., 218 Centre St., 228-230 Centre St., and 232 Centre St.

Some of the properties are shared living spaces and some are apartments.

“It’s great for retention of teachers,” said Dr. Michelle Sanchez, Epiphany’s principal who has lived in faculty housing for 10 years. “That wasn’t the intent when we first did this, but that has been a clear impact. Teachers can live in this housing, save money, and then purchase their own home.
“You’re not going to get rich being a teacher, but you’ll live in a situation here where your housing is significantly reduced and that puts you on a path to creating generational wealth by owning a home.”

Head of School John Finley said the school runs an Early Childhood Education program, then shepherd the children while they attend other elementary schools and bring them back for grades 5-8 at Epiphany. Many of the teaching fellows and some faculty live on campus alongside their students in the neighborhood, and their rents are deducted from their salaries at rates far below current rental costs to pay for the housing.

“We’d love to purchase more housing,” he said. “We wouldn’t normally have bought 48 Mather because it needs a lot of work, but we needed this housing…That’s the first home that’s gone on the market in eight years. When it happens, we’re highly motivated to make a purchase happen.”

Finding good teachers is hard and keeping them is harder– with housing costs being a key reason. Finley said the average Boston charter school teacher lasts two years, and the average public school teacher stays about four years. The Epiphany School averages around 14 years for a lead teacher.

A prime example is English and Writing lead teacher Steeve Joazard, who graduated from Epiphany in 2004 and went on to high school and college. He returned to Epiphany as a teaching fellow and met his wife there. Faculty housing allowed them to make decisions about where they want to live, not where they have to live.

When 48 Mather St. went on the market, Epiphany was quick to buy it so they could expand their faculty housing program.

“We didn’t want to be pushed out of the city; that was an important stand we wanted to make – living in the city where we teach was really important,” said Joazard. “So, we set in place a plan to purchase a home and start a family. Living in Mather Court faculty housing was such an influential stop for where we are now because we were able to plan out our future there…There were so many things I didn’t have to worry about – electricity, water, and cable.”

Math teacher Troy Harvey said faculty housing has helped him to grow as a teacher by staying at Epiphany with trusted mentors. “Without it, I’d be living back at home with my parents, which I don’t want to do,” he said. “I’m able to be the adult I want to be, have my own space, but also learning to be mindful of the community.

“I’ve been able to pay off school loans, and…I’ve been able to have the freedom to grow into the teacher that I’ve wanted to be since I was a kid…If you don’t have to think about the housing piece, it makes life so much easier.”

Current teaching fellows Oronde Alfred, Lorra Marseille, Morgan Monteiro, Cirse Mendoza, and Madeline Lawson all live in shared spaces in the teaching fellows’ home, and equate it with dorm life with a more mature setting with co-workers.

“It’s good for bouncing ideas off each other, and for going on social outings together. It’s also good for their students, “said Mendoza, because they get to share school and community together.

Teaching fellow and Epiphany alum Oronde Alfred said having faculty housing has allowed him several freedoms, including the ability to advance his career with more classes without having to take a second job.

Alfred, who graduated from Epiphany in 2014, said not having to worry about rent gives him the flexibility to advance his career. “Rent would be $2,000 or $3,000,” he said. “Not having to pay that kind of money for housing allows me to save my money and make real plans for the future. If I wanted to take additional classes, I wouldn’t have to work another job to make that happen.”

Finley said he has talked with other leaders from the charter and BPS worlds about their programs. Meg Campbell, the founder of Codman Academy Charter School and a former Boston School Committee member, has advocated that BPS investigate turning underutilized properties into teacher housing.

Finley said it’s an idea worth exploring and one they’ll continue to expand upon. “It’s hard to know if so much of what we do – including faculty housing – is scalable, but it does show a model that has worked,” he said. “I think it’s a win-win for us…Would it work for BPS or others? I don’t know. But if you talk about what housing costs teachers, if you took half that off the table, it would probably be a fortune. It is an idea.”