CBS News
Free housing for educators being offered to help curb high rent prices
To address the dual issues of low teacher pay and affordable housing, a pioneering program in New Haven, Connecticut, is offering early childhood educators free housing as a solution.
This groundbreaking initiative came from the Friends Center for Children, where teachers like Kristen Calderon, struggling with the financial burdens of low salaries and high living costs, are now finding relief and stability.
Calderon, a teacher at the center, said she often chooses which utility bill to skip to avoid being homeless, even with her hourly wage being above the national average of $14.22 for early childhood educators.
“I would say to myself, OK, I didn’t pay the gas bill last month, so I can’t not pay that again. This month, maybe we’ll skip the electric bill or the cable bill. And obviously, rent was number one,” said Calderon.
Calderon said many of her coworkers often fear being homeless — something she once experienced. The single mom said she lived in a shelter when her son, Javier, was a toddler.
“Hearing gunshots was basically a nightly occurrence,” she said.
Government statistics reveal that early childhood workers earn an average salary of about $29,500 a year, barely above the poverty line for many families. But there is a disparity between the cost of high-quality child care and the salaries of those who provide it.
The cost of infant and toddler care reaches up to $22,000 per child for infant toddler care due to ratios that require four children to one teacher, said Allyx Schiavone, the educator who runs the center where Calderon teaches.
Schiavone said she knew that increasing salaries annually wouldn’t be possible. Instead, she found a new approach to help: providing free housing for educators.
“A one-time purchase with a forever return was much smarter for us than trying to raise teacher salaries annually because we can’t come up with $20,000 for each teacher,” said Schiavone. “This is not being done anywhere in the country. We are the first to provide free housing to early care and education teachers.”
This initiative has not only attracted attention for its innovation, but also for its potential to serve as a blueprint for addressing educational and housing challenges nationwide. Schiavone’s partnership with Yale University’s School of Architecture has brought this vision to life, with students designing and constructing homes for teachers as part of their coursework.
“It’s crazy to see the things that you draw and thought over actually come to fruition,” said Jessica Chen, a student involved in the project who designed Calderon’s home.
Chen found a personal connection to the mission, drawing inspiration from her mother’s career in early childhood education.
“It was incredibly meaningful and incredibly impactful seeing these things that, knowing just how much of a weight it would lift off my mom, if we had that at my house was just so meaningful to me,” said Chen.
For Calderon and her son, now 10, the program has been life-changing. With a stable and peaceful home, Calderon can dedicate herself to her students without the fear of being homeless.
“I can be a more educated and more patient and more loving teacher when I don’t have to worry about whether I’m gonna have a place to go home to or not tonight,” said Calderon.
Schiavone hopes it’s a model state and local governments will build on.
“Now there’s an opportunity to take this and have a profound impact across the entire country with regard to the early care and education system itself,” she said. “We’re having a housing crisis. We’re having an early care and education crisis. This is a way to solve two things at once.”
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Long before comic book characters dominated movie screens, actor Christopher Reeve made the world believes in superheroes with the 1978 classic “Superman.”
Reeve died in 2004, nearly a decade after an accident re-shaped his life. “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” is using interviews with family and friends and never-before-seen home videos to explore his real-life heroism.
Reeve started his career on the stage, studying at the prestigious Juilliard School and living with comedian Robin Williams. The pair had a friendship that was “more like a brotherhood,” said Reeve’s son Matthew. Reeve was in awe of Williams’ energy and versatility, Matthew Reeve said, but audiences quickly clued into Reeve’s own star power when he took on the role of the Man of Steel.
Warner Bros. Pictures / Getty Images
To his children, though, he “was just dad,” Matthew Reeve said. The documentary explores how Matthew Reeve and his sister Alexandra Reeve Givens grew up watching their dad take the stage as Superman. “Super/Man” also reveals their heartbreak over their parents’ breakup and the joy they found when Reeve re-married. He tied the knot with Dana Reeve in 1992, and the pair welcomed another child, William Reeve, later that year.
“Dana was sunshine,” Alexandra Reeve Givens recalled. “She just brought joy with her wherever she was and could find it even in the darkest moments.”
Those dark moments came suddenly, when in 1995, a near-fatal horseback riding accident left Reeve paralyzed from the neck down. The documentary allows viewers to see, for the first time, what went on out of the public’s view. Reeve can be heard talking about how he “ruined (his) life and everybody else’s,” but in a touching moment, old friend Robin Williams is seen visiting him in the hospital.
“Robin showed him ‘Hey, you’re still you,'” Alexandra Reeve Givens said. “‘You still have this foundation of friendship and people around you, who adore you. And you’re going to find those fun moments in life again.'”
That support from friends and family re-ignited Reeve’s legacy of activism. He made appearances at the Democratic National Convention and the 68th Academy Awards in 1996, about a year after the accident. Matthew Reeve said watching his father address his industry peers at the Oscars was “one of (his) most proud moments.”
“It was just a production for him to get out of bed every morning, let alone get across the country and go out in public for the first time,” Matthew Reeve said. “It was a big deal. It was a big deal to him, but it was also a big deal to the entire disability community. We stayed up in London till like three in the morning to watch that live. It’s a fond memory.”
Vince Bucci/AFP via Getty Images
Reeve also went on to launch what would become the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which is dedicated to advancing research into spiral cord injury and help individuals and families impacted by paralysis. It was his dad’s mission to find a cure, Matthew Reeve said, while his stepmother wanted to focus on improving the lives of paralyzed people and their families. The foundation and Reeve’s platform helped bring unprecedented attention and funding to spinal cord injury research.
Reeve even kept acting and realized his lifelong dream of directing with the 1997 HBO movie “In the Gloaming.” Reeve died in 2004 from heart failure at 52.
“There is a huge amount of great actors and actresses out there, where their filmography might be amazing and what they achieve on a cultural level might be amazing, but have they actually achieved anything really as a human that moves the needle for our society?” said filmmaker Ian Bonhote, who made the documentary with Peter Ettedgui. “And Chris has done both things.”
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” will open in theaters on Friday, Oct. 11.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
