A teacher who sleeps in his car. Rising costs of housing in Kansas City. Modest teacher’s salary. These are the drivers towards PrincipalsConnect’s new program: A+ Advocates.
During fall of 2023, Carol Hallquist learned of a teacher who was sleeping in his car. An educator expected to care for and teach students five days a week was struggling to make ends meet after a former roommate pocketed his rent money, leaving him without money for an apartment. He was saving up for a new place to live, but until then, his only home was his car. This didn’t sit well with Carol. How could a person impacting students every day return “home” to his car to eat dinner, unwind from the day, and sleep for the night? Carol knew she had to do something. So, she recruited Kansas Citian Colleen Hernandez, a national housing expert for the Bush and Obama administrations, to join the cause. After Colleen hosted a focus group with Kansas City teachers, the need became clear. Teachers needed help finding affordable and safe housing. From there, A+ Advocates, a program of PrincipalsConnect, was born.
A+ Advocates seeks to fulfill two needs for teachers. First, educators need safe and clean housing options within their budgets. Finding an apartment takes hours upon hours of research and in-person visits to find a good fit. Instead, Colleen took on this task by researching 85+ apartment buildings in Kansas City. After she narrowed down the apartment list based on location, square footage, and cost, she decided to visit the remaining apartments. She took apartment tours, walked the grounds, and even checked out the dumpsters. From there, A+ Advocates narrowed down the list to 16 apartments. Our website provides information on these apartments, including basic information on units and contact information, and saves educators times while giving them a head start on finding housing.
Second, the focus group exposed an area of frustration for teachers. Many educators are looking for a roommate and would prefer the roommate to also be a teacher. However, there was no way to be connected to other KCPS teachers. A+ Advocates found a roommate matching tool called Diggz and worked with them to set up a KC teacher matching program. Now, educators can join this app to find KC teachers who are also searching for a roommate for free.
All of this information lives on the A+ Advocates website here. This detailed information, including the list of 16 apartments and instructions for setting up a Diggz account, is available for viewing by KCPS educators who join the A+ Advocates community using their KCPS email.
