This article illustrates a fundamental challenge faced by the charter school movement. Charter schools are publicly funded, yet privately managed under the terms of a charter with a governing body, whether it be the state, a local authorizing board, a local school district, or a university. Even though charter schools are public schools, and often serve the neediest children in a given area, they rarely receive adequate funding for facilities. According to the Center for Education Reform, as of January 2003, just a decade after the first charter school opened its doors, there were nearly 2,700 charter schools serving more than 684,000 students in 36 states and the District of Columbia. However, the troubles charter operators face as they struggle to find and finance adequate facilities threaten to retard this growth. Moreover, at the individual school level, instruction can suffer as crucial resources are diverted to solving the real-estate problem. This situation endangers the basic accountability equation that served as the rationale for creating charter schools in the first place. A number of states and private foundations are working to address this inequity. Their innovative solutions, profiled in this paper, have the potential to provide charter school students with the productive learning environments they deserve. ["A Building Need: Charter Schools in Search of Good Homes" was written with Julie Landry.] (Contains 3 figures.)