Friends Center Opens Rent-Free Teacher Housing “Village”

by Brandon Cortes

Friends Center teacher Aurora Coon with Schiavone at Thursday’s grand opening. Coon, who will soon move into the village, said the program “sounded too good to be true.” Credit: Brandon Cortes Photos

Visitors tour the newest home in Friends Center’s rent-free teacher housing village on Howard Street, designed and built by Yale School of Architecture students.

Aurora Coon fell in love with caring for young children as a teenage babysitter. For years, she didn’t believe she could afford to make it her career.

On Thursday evening, Coon stood among a cluster of newly built homes on Howard Street and told a crowd she will soon move into one of them — rent-free — as Friends Center for Children celebrated the grand opening of what it calls the nation’s first rent-free teacher housing “village.”

“This opportunity to move in here means so much to me and my family, allowing both me and my husband to pursue our career goals and providing us with safety and stability as we do so,” said Coon, a head preschool teacher at Friends Center since 2024.

The village, at 75 Howard St., houses eight early childhood educators in homes designed and built by students at the Yale School of Architecture. Friends Center, a nonprofit that runs four early childhood centers in New Haven, began offering rent-free housing to its teachers in 2021 as a way to raise their pay without raising tuition for families.

Coon said she once worked with older students — as a third- and fourth-grade teacher, a cooking teacher, and a summer camp director — because early childhood education didn’t seem financially possible.

“It just didn’t seem feasible to pay off my student loans and pay my living expenses if I went into that field,” she said.

When she learned about Friends Center’s housing program and its commitment to paying teachers a fair wage, she said, “it sounded too good to be true.”

Even so, she said, “it’s still challenging to make ends meet and pay rent each month. Moving into teacher housing will be such a relief for me and my family.”

According to Friends Center, the average early childhood teacher in Connecticut earns about $34,600 a year. CEO Allyx Schiavone said free rent amounts to roughly an $18,000 raise, and that while the industry loses about one in three teachers each year, Friends Center’s turnover is low.

Schiavone said the idea began in January 2020, when Friends Center asked how it could do more for its teachers without asking families to pay more. “What if a teacher didn’t have to pay rent?” she recalled asking.

Teachers are chosen based on need, Schiavone said in an interview with the Independent, with priority given to those with the lowest incomes and the most dependents, often single mothers or people caring for siblings. 

Schiavone said Friends Center supports teachers who leave for better jobs. Each tenant has a lease with a pre-agreed market rent, she said. “They just pay market rent, and they can choose to stay or they can move on.” Each teacher is also paired with a financial mentor to help them save toward goals like buying a home or earning a degree.

The Howard Street homes were built through the Yale School of Architecture’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, in which first-year students design and build a house each year. Yale School of Architecture Dean Deborah Berke said this year’s house was designed and built by students over the past nine months.

Yale President Maurie McInnis, an architectural historian, said the project reflects “an environment not of ‘either or,’ but of’ both’” — one in which Yale and New Haven, and early childhood and higher education, are valued together.

Schiavone said Friends Center’s housing is funded largely through philanthropy. 

Susan and Greg Melville bought the organization’s first properties, and Yale contributed the design and construction work for free, while Friends Center paid for materials. Friends Center owns the homes. Schiavone said the organization’s housing totals about $3.8 million for 24 units across several properties in the city, and that it received $250,000 from the state’s Community Investment Fund as a pilot, with plans to apply for more.

Schiavone also thanked donors Karen Pritzker and the Vlock family.

New Haven State Rep. Al Paolillo, who said he lives nine houses up the street, recalled watching Yale students at work on the homes in the mornings, at night, and on Saturdays. 

“We have to value our teachers and our paraprofessionals and our early educators,” he said. “We don’t do that in society right now.”

Schiavone said Friends Center is advising similar efforts in Georgia, Missouri, Michigan, and Massachusetts.

In her remarks, she spoke about what it means for educators to be undervalued for years. “It can become hard to separate what you’re paid from what you believe you’re worth,” she said.

Coon called the village “a stepping stone towards something even more monumental.”

“Together, we can create a future where early childhood educators are paid what they are worth, families have access to high-quality, affordable childcare, and young children receive the excellent education that they deserve,” she said.