For years, Silicon Valley has taken as gospel that teachers are among those hardest hit by the region's housing crisis.

``Lots of teachers have to live in places like Salinas, Patterson and Modesto because they can't afford to buy homes here,'' Roccie Hill, executive director of the Housing Trust of Santa Clara County, said in January. ``It's a harrowing commute, it's a frantic lifestyle. They never get to see their own kids.''

But a Mercury News analysis of home ownership rates has found that the overwhelming majority of teachers who work in the heart of Silicon Valley also live here -- and in homes they own. In this respect, teachers fare far better than the average Silicon Valley worker, including those with college degrees.

The results raise fundamental questions about the true nature of teachers' economic situation and how best to improve it.

In past years, some cities, including San Jose, have launched housing assistance programs for teachers. One local school district built a 40-unit apartment complex for those newest to the profession. And now Silicon Valley business and education leaders want to put a countywide parcel tax on the November ballot, in part, they've said, to help teachers strapped by high housing costs.

But according to newly released census data:

• At the peak of the boom, in 2000, 87 percent of teachers who worked in Santa Clara County lived here. An additional 9 percent lived in nearby Santa Cruz, Alameda and San Mateo counties. Less than 2 percent commuted in from Contra Costa County or the Central Valley.

• Contrary to popular belief, about two-thirds of the teachers who lived and worked in Santa Clara County owned homes here, compared with 51 percent of the overall workforce age 21 and older living in the county and 61 percent of those with at least a bachelor's degree.

• Teachers also owned homes at a higher rate than many other professions, including software engineers, network administrators and accountants.

Combining salaries helps

Among those who were able to break into the area's housing market are math teachers Channy and Paul Cornejo, who earn a combined annual salary of $125,000. The couple, both 31, came to the Bay Area from the Philippines in 2000 and have been teaching for about 10 years.

``They told us the cost of living is high because this is the Silicon Valley, but it's OK,'' said Channy Cornejo, as she unpacked boxes in January in the $350,000 townhouse the couple recently bought in a gated community in the East San Jose hills. ``We didn't even have to use the loan program the city has for teachers.''

Experts attribute teachers' home-ownership rates to their pay scales and marital rates.

Although starting salaries remain low -- $31,000 in some districts, about $1,200 more than in 2000 -- the average schoolteacher's salary has jumped more than $8,000 to $57,990 since then, for working about nine months out of the year.

Teachers also marry at a higher rate than the general workforce, often to spouses who also work and can help pay the mortgage.

According to census numbers, 63 percent of all teachers in the county were married in 2000, compared with 56 percent of all workers. Of teachers living in the county who owned homes, 45 percent were in two-income marriages, compared with 30 percent of all homeowners.

``My wife is the breadwinner, which is probably why we were able to buy a house,'' said Cupertino elementary school teacher Shawn Davis, 34, whose wife is a development director for a theater company. The couple bought a two-bedroom condominium in 2001 in South San Jose.

In many ways, the myth about teachers' plights was based on real experiences that appear to have been blown out of proportion.

Between 1997 and 2002, median home prices soared in Santa Clara County by 82 percent. At the same time, districts struggled with a number of obstacles in recruiting and retaining teachers: In addition to the cost of housing, there were growing student enrollments and the booming job market that lured some away from the profession.

In addition, between 30 and 50 percent of educators leave teaching within their first five years, according to the California Research Bureau.

``We were losing a lot of teachers,'' said Larry Aceves, superintendent of the Franklin-McKinley Elementary School District in San Jose. ``There was one year, 1999 or 2000, we had to hire 80 or 90 teachers, about a fifth of our staff.''

The alarm helped put a more sympathetic face on subsidized housing and the special bond measures to support it. Suddenly, housing assistance wasn't for welfare mothers alone, but for teachers, police officers and firefighters.

``It just got to be accepted wisdom that most teachers didn't own houses, even though there were no stats on it,'' said Doug Shoemaker, policy director for the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California.

Although home ownership remained robust for teachers in the 1990s, it slipped from 76 percent in 1990 to 66 percent in 2000, while the rate for the general workforce dropped one percentage point to 51 percent.

Whether a parcel tax is needed to help teachers with housing is debatable. The bulk of the proposed tax would go toward raising student achievement, business and education leaders say. But under one scenario being discussed, about a quarter of the $195 property owners would pay annually, however, would fund a $2,000 annual bonus for every credentialed teacher in the county.

A blue-ribbon commission, including former San Jose Mayor Susan Hammer and Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group CEO Carl Guardino, recommended last year that the move was needed to help recruit and retain teachers strapped by housing costs and to improve education.

The Mercury News found that if there is a problem for teachers, it is among those under 35.

At the peak of the boom, only about a third of teachers younger than 35 who lived and worked in Santa Clara County owned homes. That is still about 9 percentage points more than the overall under-35 workforce.

``Between my car payments and paying off the wedding, we're still living paycheck to paycheck,'' said Cassie Zuanich, 30, a first-grade teacher in the San Jose Unified School District, who earns $50,000. ``We can't afford to buy anything.''

Mass retirements looming

The ranks of younger teachers may swell in the coming years because an estimated 40 percent of current teachers are set to begin retiring within the next decade.

Economist Michael Dardia of the Burlingame-based think tank The Sphere Institute said a parcel tax ought to be targeted to this group to have the most impact.

``If you're going to invoke the high cost of housing as one of the reasons for the bonuses, I can't imagine why you'd give a bonus to someone who already owns a house,'' Dardia said.

Paige Price, a Mountain View teacher who bought a condo in downtown San Jose two years ago with financial aid for teachers, is willing to give up a bonus to help new teachers. ``It seems to make more sense to give it to the people who need it the most.''

But in order to win political support, advocates of a universal bonus say every teacher must benefit. A spokesman for the California Teachers Association said all teachers deserve a slice of the tax because they are underpaid.

``As we held forums throughout the county, in addition to younger teachers talking about finances, older teachers were talking about a sense of support and respect,'' Santa Clara County County Schools Superintendent Colleen Wilcox said. ``The bonus is to recognize them.''

A bonus would help Davis, the Cupertino teacher, recoup the $300 of his own money he recently spent on a bookshelf for his classroom. But it's not necessary, he said, to increase home ownership among teachers.

``I lived in an apartment for six years that was the size of a closet,'' he said. ``Home ownership takes time and patience, but teachers can do it.''