Education Housing Partners, Inc.

Due to the high cost of living and the challenge of housing affordability, municipalities and other public agencies have a particularly difficult time recruiting and retaining employees in many of California’s most desirable areas. Education Housing Partners, Inc. (EHP) is Thompson | Dorfman Partners’ response to this crisis impacting many of our public institutions.

EHP provides a full complement of development services to school districts and other public agencies to promote the creation of high-quality, publicly owned housing communities for teachers and other public sector employees. These services range from project feasibility to building design and entitlement, permitting, construction buyout, construction management and turnover/lease-up. To date, EHP has been engaged on over two dozen projects seeking to create teacher/staff housing communities. EHP’s developments are structured to be fully financed, requiring no funds from the sponsor, and self-sustaining, with below-market rental rates covering all operating and financing costs. Completed properties are leased to employees at significantly below-market rents, typically providing residents the opportunity to create some savings with the objective of entering the for-sale market.

EHP provided full development services on a “turn-key” basis to the Santa Clara Unified School District for the construction of its 70-unit Casa del Maestro rental housing community. These services included preliminary financial feasibility, completion of due diligence, selection and contracting of the design team, unit mix and programming recommendations, coordination of design, entitlement and permitting processes, budgeting of construction and soft costs, selection and negotiation of the general contract, construction management and coordination of turnover and warranty work. Casa del Maestro was successfully completed in June 2002.

EHP was subsequently retained by the San Mateo County Community College District to implement the same scope of services for College Vista, a 44-unit community in San Mateo for its faculty and staff. College Vista opened in December 2005 and has been fully occupied since. There are more than 80 employees on the waitlist for the College Vista development. EHP was also retained to be the design/build contractor on the 60-unit Cañada Vista in Redwood City which was completed in 2010.

Casa del Maestro, which was the first publicly owned teacher housing development in California, has served as a prototype for public agencies across the U.S. and is commonly used as an example of a successful approach to creating workforce housing. EHP’s teacher housing developments have received numerous awards and recognition for concept, design and financing and Casa del Maestro received the prestigious ULI Jack Kemp Workforce Housing Models of Excellence Award. Moreover, Casa del Maestro Phase I and Phase II, College Vista, Cañada Vista, and other public employee housing developments are opportunities for Thompson | Dorfman to give back to the community. EHP provides its services to the project sponsors at cost and all ownership of the project is retained by the public entity.