Amazon will spend another $1.4 billion on its Housing Equity Fund, a 2021 pledge with an initial goal of spending $2 billion on 20,000 affordable homes.Amazon says it has since spent $2.2 billion to build or preserve more than 21,000 affordable homes. The $1.4 billion announced this week will help it do the same for 14,000 more homes near Arlington, Virginia, the Washington State Puget Sound region, and Nashville.Houses are offered to families in the community who make between 30% and 80% of the area’s median income. Amazon says it’s aiming the initiative primarily at first responders, teachers, health care workers, and others whose salary increases may not keep up with escalating rent.According to the AP, most of Amazon’s money goes to nonprofit and for-profit developers as loans so Amazon can make money out of its investment in the form of interest payments. Amazon also said that 80% of the homes it has built have had help from government funding. Google tried something similar in California. The housing developer it partnered with backed out of the deal in late 2023, though Google says it’s still working on building low-income housing in and around its headquarters. Microsoft also has an Affordable Housing Initiative that had pledged $750 million of as early 2022. And in 2019, Apple pledged to spend $2.5 billion to tackle the California housing crisis.
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Of course, one reason these initiatives are needed are because of the tech giants themselves. Their presence, and the high salaries of their employees, drive up home prices and make it difficult for anyone not pulling a six-figure tech salary to own or even rent a home.
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