Where is the leadership? Do school boards just not communicate with cities about the need for teacher housing, or it it that city leaders think it’s a school district problem (so they just keep rubber stamping high end homes)? All these well-heeled parents in affected communities can’t figure something out? Isn’t this the innovation hub of the US? It’s so bizarre to me that other than handwringing nobody acts.

Sounds like Mr. Talcott's issue is more one of geography than money. If your spouse is getting a degree at Davis and you work in Belmont, it looks to me that splitting the middle would be to live near Antioch due to minimizing or equalizing both commutes. Pick a different school to get a PhD or find a different high school to teach in that are closer together. Otherwise, suck it up for a few years, get the PhD completed, have the spouse find a job on the Peninsula, and move closer to work. I'm not sure what this story has to do with affordable housing. If they lived in Belmont, they'd be griping about how the spouse has a 6 hour commute each day to attend Davis. Don't quite get this one...

Three out of these four teachers have a child.

It costs approximately $275,000 to raise a child from birth to 18 years.

If you choose to have a child, you're choosing to spend a lot of your money on things like diapers, formula, day care/nanny, clothes, toys, car seat/stroller, and other expenses. Therefore, it will be more of a struggle to buy a house.

Having a child is optional; having a roof over your head and money to pay your bills it not. If you can't afford a house, how will you afford a child?

I guess I tend to be more sympathetic towards teachers who are struggling but don't have a child since they are doing everything they can to afford housing. If they have a child and then complain that they can't afford a house, I think, "Well, raising a child is expensive! That was your decision."

From the above examples, the takeaway shouldn't be 'look how far away they have to live.' The takeaway needs to be 'look how long it takes to get from here (school) to there (home).'

Our transportation infrastructure is atrocious compared to most other modern metropolitan areas, and THAT is the reason why commuting from less-expensive locations is not a viable option for so many, and one of the primary reasons why local housing is so expensive; it forces more people to compete for the same housing to avoid a multi-hour commute.

I have experience living in London, for example, and it's not uncommon for workers to live on the outskirts of that metropolitan area and commute to high-paying jobs in London proper. That's feasible in that metropolitan area because they implemented a comprehensive public transportation infrastructure that provides broad coverage, making longer-distance commutes viable.

In the entire bay area, we have a grand total of 1 public transportation route into SF and the peninsula: the bart tunnel. That's IT. That's terrible. We need more, and there's no reason to not have more: we're already taxed up the wazoo on transportation-centric sales taxes and bonds.

We need more public transportation. GET IT DONE!

Although you might be technical right, where are we as a society if we judge having a child purely by economical means? Where are we as a society if we deny our teachers to have children by themselves? What kind of teachers will they become? Sorry but your comment is from a world I do not want to live in.

It's not that simple. Since the Bay Area is a giant group of individual cities, doing anything like regional transit means dealing with politics in each one that the line would run through. BART could have circled the Bay if not for San Mateo pulling out during the initial construction. Caltrain could have been electrified by now if not for Atherton continually trying to derail the process. All of these efforts would be infinitely easier if all of the cities were converted to boroughs under a single city government, but that's unlikely to happen unless the political gridlock preventing these problems from getting fixed causes the state to come in and reorganize things.