Can I afford to live where I teach?

What the colors mean

• Under 25%: comfortable. Rent leaves real room for everything else.
• 25–30%: doable. At or under the 30% rule of thumb.
• 30–40%: stretched. Over the rule. Plenty of teachers live here, and they budget hard.
• 40% and up: ouch. Roommates, a long commute, or a second income, usually.

The percent is rounded to a whole number, and the color goes by that number, so 30% is “doable” and 31% is “stretched.”

The 30% rule

It’s a common rule of thumb: rent should take no more than about 30% of your gross income. It comes from federal housing policy, where HUD counts a household paying more than 30% of income for housing as “cost-burdened.” It’s a guideline, not a verdict. It doesn’t know about your student loans, child care, commute, or a partner’s paycheck.

Fair Market Rent

Fair Market Rent is the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s estimate of what a modest, standard-quality rental costs in an area, including utilities. It’s set at about the 40th percentile: roughly 4 in 10 such rentals cost less, and 6 in 10 cost more. It is not the average rent, and it’s not what a new listing will ask. HUD uses it to set housing-voucher payments.

In California, HUD sets one Fair Market Rent for each metro area (some cover two or three counties) and one for each county outside a metro area. Every district in a county gets that county’s figure.

Teacher pay

The same estimate as What am I worth?: a line through the three teacher pay points each district reported to the state (start, BA+60 at step 10, and the top of the schedule). It’s divided by 12 for a monthly figure, even if your district pays over 10 months, so it’s the average month across the year.

What’s left after rent

Gross monthly pay minus rent, before taxes and deductions. Federal and state income tax, your CalSTRS contribution, and health premiums all come out of that, so your take-home will be noticeably less.

What this map does not include

• It’s gross pay, not take-home. The share would be higher measured against your actual paycheck.
• Fair Market Rent is a modest-unit estimate. It isn’t the average, and it isn’t what you’ll see on a listing site this week, which often runs higher.
• One rent covers a whole county. Inside a big county, rent varies a lot. Los Angeles County covers both Malibu and Lancaster, at one figure. HUD also publishes rents by ZIP code (Small Area Fair Market Rents), which this map doesn’t use.
• The years don’t match. Rent is HUD’s fiscal year 2027 (October 2026 through September 2027). Pay is the 2024–25 salary report, the last of its kind, so raises since then aren’t reflected.
• One paycheck, one apartment. This is one teacher’s pay against a whole unit’s rent. A partner’s income or a roommate changes everything.
• Some districts have no pay figure. Filing the state salary report was voluntary. Those districts are hatched on the map.
• No stipends or extra pay. Special education stipends, coaching and other extra-duty pay aren’t in the teacher estimate.