Help is on the way for New York City teachers who want to both live and work in the Big Apple: the city is financing two apartment buildings in the Bronx designed exclusively for teachers (and their salaries).

It sounds a little bit like Melrose Place to us, but the new apartments could help teachers decide to stay in the city rather than move out to more affordable suburbs. The new apartments, which will take two years to complete, will cost approximately $806 per month for a studio and $1,412 for a three-bedroom apartment--rock bottom prices for New York. Financing will come from bonds bought by the city's Teacher Retirement System (which may find itself utterly broke once it makes good on the new pension deal it made with the UFT and below-market loans offered by the city's Housing Development Corp.

Another big city with big-city housing prices is making an offer to teachers who want to both live and work in the city. San Francisco is offering first-time home-buying teachers $20,000 interest-free loans to help with the cost of a down payment. And, if the teacher stays working in the school district for 10 years, the city will forgive the loan completely.

The city has set aside $1 million for the housing incentives, which would be enough to cover loans to 50 teachers.