Housing and Education: An Interview with Allyx Schiavone
Apr 01, 2025
In this installment of our ongoing Housing and... series, we explore how housing intersects with early childhood education—and why supporting teachers and families in stable, affordable homes is essential to school readiness, workforce stability, and long-term community success.
“Housing and…” is CHFA’s ongoing interview series that explores how housing intersects with and influences key sectors that shape our communities, including health, education, economic opportunity, and more. Each installment features insights from thought leaders, highlighting the critical role housing plays in shaping broader societal outcomes.
In this installment, we turn our attention to early childhood education as we talk with Allyx Schiavone, Executive Director of Friends Center for Children in New Haven. Allyx has been a leading advocate for holistic early education and workforce development. In this conversation, we’ll explore the connection between housing and school readiness, parental engagement, and teacher well-being, as well as the role the Teacher Housing Initiative is playing in promoting financial security and intergenerational wealth-building.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Marcus Smith: Was there a particular moment in your experience as an early childhood educator when you realized housing was a critical factor, not only for the children you serve but also for the adults in their lives, including teachers?
Allyx Schiavone: The type of education I’m involved in is about supporting the whole child. When you think about the whole child, you naturally start considering the environment around them—the adults in their lives. Then you ask, what do adults need to be their best selves? If high-quality early childhood education is truly about creating space for young children to thrive across all domains—cognitive, social-emotional, physical, language, artistic—then we have to ensure that the adults surrounding them have the support they need to show up as their best selves.
Parents and teachers need to have their basic needs met. We know this intuitively, but also scientifically—there’s a direct correlation between adult stability, well-being, and capacity, and how children thrive. Their mental health, physical health, and emotional well-being are all deeply interconnected. And yet, we don’t lean into this knowledge enough.
On a personal level, my early life was often chaotic and unsafe. I carried that with me well into adulthood. And I’m not unique—we all have moments in our early lives that shape us. When young, developing brains experience instability, when they don’t have safe, supportive adults around them, their biochemistry changes. If we know early supports and interventions allow children to thrive, why aren’t we making a greater commitment to supporting the adults who care for them?
That’s the overarching premise that led us to housing, but there’s a more specific story behind how we got there.
MS: How did the Teacher Housing Initiative come about?
AS: We were trying to solve a crisis. Right now, the average salary for an early childhood educator in Connecticut is about $33,600. That median wage is lower than 97% of all other jobs. And it’s no coincidence that 97% of this workforce is female, disproportionately women of color. This is a systemic issue—our society does not value women and children the way it should.
We made a commitment: We are not going to pay women to live in poverty. The first step was to raise salaries. But raising salaries means increasing our budget, and that money has to come from somewhere. We looked at our options:
- Charge parents more – Not feasible. Parents of young children are at the lowest point in their earning potential.
- Get more state or federal funding – It’s not happening fast enough, if at all.
- Increase philanthropic support – Helpful, but not a sustainable systems fix.
So we got stuck. And when we got stuck, we asked a different question: If we can’t find more money, can we remove an expense? We surveyed our teachers and found that rent was, by far, their largest financial burden. Only one of our 29 educators owned a home. Some were couch-surfing to save money. That was the moment we decided to focus on housing.
MS: So how does the Teacher Housing Initiative work?
AS: We purchase or build housing and provide it to educators as a salary benefit. This removes their largest expense—housing—without burdening families with higher tuition or increasing our annual fundraising needs.
Instead of asking donors for recurring support, we asked for one-time investments to purchase housing. This was a much easier conversation: Would you rather donate $20,000 per year per educator forever, or help us buy a home that provides this benefit indefinitely? The response was overwhelmingly positive.
The housing units are tailored to each resident. We don’t believe in cookie-cutter solutions. We have everything from studio apartments all the way up to a three-bedroom house because people’s needs change. Some teachers plan to stay for two years, others for seven. People have different on and off ramps to the initiative so you have to have these different units to allow people to flow in and out of what they need at that time.
We don't want people to feel beholden to a job just to afford housing. So right now, if an employee in Friends Center housing moves on from the Friends Center, we have a provision in their lease that turns the cost to market rent for the time that they stay in the home.
MS: Looking beyond housing stability, is there a long-term financial mobility component?
AS: Absolutely. We provide financial coaching to help educators set goals—whether that’s saving for a home, investing in education, or something else. We pair them with a fiscal partner and an emotional well-being coordinator to help them navigate the transition from just surviving to building a future.
62% of our educators in housing have gone back to school to further their degrees. That means when they leave, they won’t just have savings—they’ll have the ability to earn a higher salary. 100% of people in our housing have higher attendance rates and lower attrition rates. This is the impact of meeting people’s basic needs.
MS: This initiative has gained quite a lot of attention since it rolled out. Are other organizations looking to replicate this model?
AS: Yes! We’re actively working with organizations in Michigan, Massachusetts, and Georgia. Each location is adapting the model to fit their community’s needs. For example, in Battle Creek, Michigan, the housing is owned by a community organization rather than the employer. That way, educators have housing stability even if they change jobs.
In Boston, we’re exploring a model where family childcare providers [i.e., people who offer childcare in their homes] live in houses for seven years and then take ownership of them. The transfer of wealth in our society revolves around property ownership, and early childcare providers and teachers have been shut out of that. With this initiative, the goal is to create opportunities to invest in self and homeownership-- building a business and a home.
MS: What would it take to scale this in Connecticut?
AS: With the Teacher Housing Initiative, we're investing in a better way. We're tackling the intersectionality of the two crises in our state: housing and childcare. Right now, this is privately funded. That’s not a long-term solution. The challenge is that our systems are siloed. Would scaling this initiative fall under housing dollars or early childhood funding? It's a harder thing to get the systems to start interacting and intersecting and make the adjustments. We need political will.
MS: What's one thing you would change about how housing and early childhood education intersect?
AS: I would change the way we, as a society, view early childhood investment. We underinvest in children and then act surprised when we see negative outcomes later in life. We need a pathway for investing in programs that work. We need our leaders to be bold, to be transformational.
The Teacher Housing Initiative is proof that this works. Now, we need decision-makers who are bold enough to implement it at scale.
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Marcus Smith is the Director of Research, Marketing, and Outreach at the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA), where he helps drive statewide impact through data-informed strategies and compelling storytelling. With over two decades in mission-driven roles, Marcus has dedicated his career to expanding access to affordable, stable housing. His prior experience includes leadership in healthy housing initiatives at Connecticut Children's Medical Center and community development with Sheldon Oak Central. He holds a BA from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA from the University of Connecticut.