DENVER — As Denver educators get ready to head back to school, a handful of teachers have one less thing to worry about as they start the school year.
Ten teachers will be living at Skyline at Highland, a brand-new apartment complex, rent-free, for an entire year.
It's the first time any real estate company has donated free apartments like this to teachers, thanks to a partnership between real estate firm Grand Peaks and the Denver Public Schools (DPS) Foundation.
The educators were selected at random in a drawing earlier this summer.
Teachers with zero-to-three years of experience within DPS were eligible to enter.
“[Denver is] not an easy place to live and find affordable housing, so that's a challenge. And then they also, as we know, teachers spend a lot of their out-of-pocket money on classroom supplies and school supplies to support their students. And so if we can alleviate one burden like housing, I think that will really help some of the other issues they have,” said DPS Foundation CEO Sara Hazel.
The president of Grand Peaks, Marc Swerdlow, told Denver7 it was important for the company to give back in a tangible way — calling the drawing "creative philanthropy."
When they thought about all the work that teachers do while also dealing with inflation and high rent prices in the Denver metro area, it was a no brainer.
“We're like, 'We've got a lot of units, why don't we give units to the teachers?' And so that just evolved into something and for our industry to do something like that... it's a huge opportunity for us to do something like that and give back to the community in a huge way,” said Swerdlow.
Joe Dailey, an English teacher at CEC Early College, was one of the 10 lucky teachers who got selected for the opportunity.
“With the money I'll be saving, I'm planning on putting half towards like a Roth IRA for retirement, and then the other half I'll probably be saving for a down payment to eventually purchase my own home or apartment, which I really didn't see a path to in the future, you know,” said Dailey. “So this is just a great pathway to home ownership for me and the family I hope to have someday.”
Swerdlow told Denver7 Grand Peaks is looking at expanding the program’s reach beyond this year.
Though it's unclear what that would look like just yet, they're working with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston's office to come up with ideas.
Grand Peaks is also hoping to replicate this initiative at its other properties across the nation.
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