Amazon has pledged to spend more than $ 2 billion over the next five years to build tens of thousands of affordable housing units in three of the e-commerce giant’s top job centers, underscoring the ongoing housing crisis that affects parts of USA where paying technology employers reside. The Amazon pledge, announced on Wednesday, follows similar pledges from Apple, Facebook and Google, all of which previously pledged between $ 1 billion and $ 2.5 billion each to resolve similar problems plaguing the Bay Area. San Francisco.
Parts of the US Amazon that it plans to invest in include the Puget Sound region of Washington, which covers Seattle, as well as Arlington, Virginia and Nashville, Tennessee, where Amazon has opened fast-growing offices. The company employs more than 75,000 people in the Puget Sound region alone, thanks to its state headquarters, and has about 1,000 employees each in Virginia and Tennessee, with plans to expand that workforce to more than 5,000 employees in each sector. . (These figures do not include Amazon’s much larger warehouse, Amazon’s seasonal and contracted workforce, which raised its employment numbers to 1 million people in October last year.)
Amazon’s announcement may have included a planned investment for New York City, after lawmakers struck a deal with the company in early 2019 to bring jobs to Long Island City, Queens, as part of a highly publicized competition that the company carried out to attract proposals from municipalities across the country. But the violent reaction of local residents and criticism from politicians, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), prompted Amazon to dismiss its controversial New York plans and instead focus on expanding its offices in Arlington and Nashville.
“Amazon has a long-standing commitment to helping people in need, including the Mary’s Place family shelter that we built within our headquarters in Puget Sound. The shelter now supports more than 200 women and children who live on the street every night, ”said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. “This new $ 2 billion Housing Equity Fund will create or preserve 20,000 affordable homes in all three regions of our headquarters – Arlington, Puget Sound and Nashville. It will also help local families to achieve long-term stability while building strong and inclusive communities. “
Amazon is spending its money primarily in the form of low-cost loans, starting with almost $ 382 million for Washington Housing Conservancy to “preserve and create up to 1,300 affordable homes on the Crystal House estate in Arlington” and $ 185.5 million to King County Housing Authority for an additional 1,000 affordable homes in Washington state. Amazon plans to announce additional investments in both regions, as well as in Nashville, in the coming months and years. The pledge also includes $ 125 million in cash donations to small businesses, nonprofits and minority-led organizations, with the goal of helping them “build a more inclusive solution to the housing crisis”.
The implicit reality of these big housing promises is that technology companies often play an important role in gentrifying and displacing local communities. This usually occurs through a complex interplay of factors related to disproportionately high wages and unparalleled benefits that allow employees to live in city centers, despite sometimes working in more rural or suburban environments, where housing is cheaper. and with less demand. And as part of its long-term strategy to help attract and retain talent, a company like Amazon has an incentive to make urban centers and the regions it transforms into major job centers into more accessible places to live.
One of the main objectives is to avoid alienating employees who cannot afford to live somewhere like Seattle or, in the case of companies like Facebook and Google, in San Francisco or Silicon Valley. Another goal is to help relieve pressure from politicians and activists who often criticize technology companies and their workforce for doing little to repay the communities in which they build their companies.