Since Teachers Aren't Paid Living Wage, Communities Are Providing Subsidized Housing, May 25, 1921

The City Teacherage

With only nine ballots against it, Lumberton has carried a bond issue of $30,000 for the purchase of a site for a high school and to pay for a teacherage already erected.

Lumberton is a good town, but the best thing about it is the evident determination it has to make itself better yet. And it is going about it in a sensible way when it undertakes to take care of its schools by paying early, if not first, attention to the teachers.

Greensboro might well take a leaf out of Lumberton’s book in this respect. Every year there is a wild scramble here to secure suitable accommodations for a hundred or so teachers. Even with the enormous amount of building going on, Greensboro is a crowded town, and there is no immediate prospect of any great relief.

If the city were to provide an apartment house for the exclusive use of teachers in the public schools, it would make the profession in Greensboro many times as attractive as it is now. It is not altogether, or even chiefly, a matter of expense; the city might charge rental enough to recover interest on its money, and still finds its quarters in great demand.

But even if such a building were a dead loss, from the financial point of view, it would be well worth while in that it would tend to strengthen the teaching staff of the schools; it would make it easier for the superintendent to secure good teachers, and very much easier for him to retain them, once secured.

From The Greensboro Daily News, as reprinted in The University of North Carolina News Letter, May 25, 1921