The town I live in has been touted as having the best school system in the state or at least the second best, which was the reason why we moved here from the city six years ago.

When we moved here, the median price of a three-bedroom house was $250,000. Today, even after a year of slower sales elsewhere, that price is close to $495,000 and climbing.

The teachers in the school district, by and large, cannot afford to live here. Neither can most of the administrators. When school is delayed or canceled by bad weather, the reason for the action is not because the children cannot get to classes (everyone walks). It's that the staff cannot make it in from the lower-price towns scattered around it.

A recent study by the Center for Housing Policy and Homes for Working Families revealed that health care workers also are being priced out of homeownership in most U.S. metropolitan areas.

The study, Paycheck to Paycheck: Wages and the Cost of Housing in America, found that licensed practical nurses would not qualify to purchase the median priced home in an astounding 187 of the 202 metro areas studied, followed by registered nurses at 115 and physical therapists at 104, while nursing aides and home health aides are priced out of homeownership in all the metro areas studied.

"With Americans living longer and the baby boomer generation aging, our communities will need more health care workers to meet the growing demand," said Kent Colton, the chairman of the center and senior scholar at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. "However, if these workers cannot afford to become homeowners, as this study shows, it will likely become difficult to attract a sufficient workforce. It is also clear from this study that housing affordability concerns stretch beyond the health care field to a spectrum of other occupations."

"The lack of affordable homes for America's working families is nothing short of a crisis, but solutions do exist," said Beverly L. Barnes, executive director of Homes for Working Families.

One of the people proposing a solution is J. Ronald Terwilliger, former chairman of the Urban Land Institute, who has committed $5 million to the creation of the ULI Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing.

The center will address one of the most critical issues facing urban areas across the country by supporting the development of housing affordable to moderate-income workers, including teachers, nurses, firefighters, government workers, and police officers.

Terwilliger, chairman and chief executive officer of Atlanta-based Trammell Crow Residential, has long been has been a leading advocate for affordable housing. With people increasingly shut out of decent housing close to their jobs, the need for a center devoted to workforce housing is more important than ever, he said.

Although some markets have recently experienced home price declines, "Housing that is close to jobs will stay out of reach for many people who work in our communities," Terwilliger said. "As a result, working families who are neither very low-income nor high-income are being pushed farther and farther away from employment centers, adding to traffic congestion and sprawl. It's hard on these families, and its inefficient growth. We are aiming to turn this situation around. Our ultimate goal is to achieve a measurable increase in mixed-income workforce housing in communities across the nation."

Plans call for the ULI Terwilliger Center to be based in Washington, from where its staff members will work with ULI district councils, housing-related organizations, and various public- and private-sector representatives in several urban areas to create models of mixed-income workforce housing design, development and financing that can be applied to other cities.

Initially, the center will focus on Atlanta, Washington and Southeast Florida. In each, the center will develop a plan to increase the production of mixed-income housing over a specified time period; to expand available project financing where necessary; and to support developers in completing projects. The goal is to produce at least 3,500 units of new workforce housing in the three markets within five years.

The center also will identify barriers to workforce housing production (such as inflexible zoning and building codes) and work to eliminate those barriers by raising awareness of the affordability gap and by advocating changes in public policy.

"In my view, mandatory inclusionary zoning is one of the most effective tools to get housing built that people can afford, and it does this in a mixed-income housing context," Terwilliger said.

"Because it results in mixed-income housing, inclusionary zoning benefits people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to live in a market-rate environment. It gives people who make up the bulk of a community's workforce an opportunity to live closer to their jobs."