A New Haven-based childcare center is continuing on its mission to ease the financial strain on early childhood educators by building rent-free homes for staff.
Friends Center for Children’s newest home will house Eric Gil, 23, and his co-worker, Justin Cross, 25. Gil's brother will also live in the house.
“Not having to worry about making rent will help me tremendously in becoming independent, and it will give me and my younger brother our own space where my worries will be fewer so that I can perform my job even better,” Gil said.
By this fall, eight employees and their families will be living rent-free. And by 2028, the number of educators housed will jump to 24, according to Executive Director Allyx Schiavone.
“This solution, this unique model that we're here to celebrate, is so much more than housing,” Schiavone said as she stood in front of the newest construction. “The underlying concept of the Friends Center teacher housing initiative is to challenge the way that our country funds early childhood education.”
Schiavone said the project began in 2019 as a unique approach to low educator wages (the average early childhood educator makes $29,500 a year) and high costs of living.
She compared it to planting a garden of perennials instead of annuals — making sure that the investment in the staff goes beyond a paycheck.
“With an annual salary benefit of $550,000 on our $3.75 million total investment into teacher housing, we capture a 14.7% rate of return and are able to recoup our original investment in less than seven years,” Schiavone said.
The project is in partnership with Yale University’s School of Architecture — graduate students design and build the house as part of their training.
“To be able to partner with the Friends Center allows us to harness the ambition and the optimism of my students to provide for deservedly dignified housing to the teachers of the Friend Center,” Yale School of Architecture’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project Director Adam Hopfner said.
Friends Center for Children serves more than 100 kids in New Haven with three more centers under construction, including one that used to be the Cine-4 Theater on Flint Street.
