Most people become more financially secure as they advance in their careers. San Francisco’s teachers, it turns out, actually have it worse, unless they want to live with a roommate, college-style, forever.

A rookie teacher in the city makes $4,473 per month. That teacher has to spend 51 percent of his or her income before taxes to rent half of a two-bedroom apartment, sharing it with a roommate, the Apartment List report concludes.

But let’s say that by a teacher’s fifth year on the job, living with a roommate is getting old. Living solo in a one-bedroom San Francisco apartment will eat up 69 percent of the teacher’s income. And 10 years into the job, if our teacher wants to really spread out in a palatial two-bedroom apartment with a spouse and kids? The price tag will be 73 percent of the paycheck.

At every level of experience, San Francisco’s educators must pay more of their income for housing than anywhere else in the country.

Think the answer is the far-flung suburbs? The report figured that Pittsburg and San Pablo are the only semi-nearby places where San Francisco teachers can live without spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent. As anybody who commutes from there to the city knows, that will take a couple hours out of your day.

“Certain jobs have to be local: police officers, teachers, firefighters,” said Andrew Woo, a data scientist at Apartment List. “We want to make sure our cities continue to be affordable for those kinds of workers, and so far, it seems like San Francisco is really struggling to make that happen for our teachers.”

According to Woo, even other cities with expensive housing are managing to pay their teachers more. A 10th-year San Francisco teacher currently makes $74,799 max.

“Boston teachers in year 10 make close to $93,000,” Woo said. “Even in Chicago, which is much more affordable than San Francisco, they’re making $87,000 in year 10.”

San Francisco district officials say salaries are low because California’s funding for education isn’t keeping pace with the rest of the country, and the district prioritizes spending the money it does get on keeping class sizes small.

So in the meantime, what is the city doing? Um, not much. In April, I wrote that a working group charged with building teacher housing had made zero progress identifying sites or a way to build on them. Since then, the group has — gasp — set up a meeting. Its first in two months.

Nothing that comes out of the working group — “working” is a generous adjective — will come in time for Etoria Cheeks. She has submitted her resignation to the San Francisco Unified School District and isn’t sure where she’s headed next.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Tuesdays and Fridays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com, Twitter: @hknightsf