Amazon providing $23M for affordable housing in Seattle

SEATTLE (AP) — Amazon stated Thursday it’s offering $23 million to assist minority-led organizations construct or protect greater than 500 new reasonably priced housing models in Seattle — the most recent spending by a tech firm to ease a extreme housing crunch the trade has helped create.

The dedication comes from Amazon’s Housing Fairness Fund, a $2 billion initiative launched in January 2021. The fund has up to now invested greater than $1.2 billion to create or protect over 8,000 reasonably priced houses throughout three areas the place the corporate has workplaces: the Puget Sound in Washington state; Arlington, Virginia; and Nashville, Tennessee.

“When our metropolis’s companies and personal companions step up, like Amazon is doing by way of this important funding, we will speed up progress addressing troublesome challenges like housing affordability,” Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell stated in a information launch asserting the funding.

The excessive salaries tech corporations pay have helped drive up housing prices within the cities the place they function, pricing many individuals, together with lecturers, nurses, firefighters and restaurant workers, out of the communities the place they work.

The trade was lengthy criticized for failing to deal with that, however in recent times tech giants have taken huge steps. In 2019, Apple dedicated $2.5 billion towards reasonably priced housing within the San Francisco Bay Space; Google devoted $1 billion; Microsoft stated it might present $750 million in housing grants and investments within the Puget Sound area; and Fb, now Meta, stated it might spend $1 billion to assist handle the housing disaster in California by creating as much as 20,000 new reasonably priced housing models.

The Amazon Housing Fairness Fund provides grants and low-rate loans to housing suppliers that create or protect reasonably priced houses, with an emphasis on supporting households incomes 30% to 80% of an space’s median revenue.

The brand new investments are the fund’s first in Seattle correct, although it beforehand has put cash towards housing elsewhere within the area, together with close to transit stations in SeaTac and Bellevue.

Catherine Buell, the fund’s director, famous the housing disaster is disproportionately affecting folks of coloration. That was one cause it was vital to work with nonprofit organizations and actual property organizations led by Black, Asian and Hispanic companions.

Amazon is working with three organizations — the Mount Baker Housing Authority, El Centro de la Raza and Gardner World — on 4 housing tasks, totaling 568 models in south Seattle neighborhoods that function giant populations of individuals of coloration and which have quickly gentrified or are susceptible to it.

Three of the 4 tasks concerned can be reasonably priced for these making as much as 60% of the world median revenue — that is $54,350 for a single individual or $77,650 for a household of 4, in line with the Seattle Workplace of Housing. The fourth, a brand new condo constructing by Black-owned Gardner World with 122 models, principally studio and one-bedroom, will serve those that earn as much as 80% of the world median revenue, or $66,750 for a single individual.

Within the information launch asserting the investments, David Tan, govt director of the Mount Baker Housing Authority, referred to as the funding a “game-changer.”

“The Fund is a supply of reasonably priced, affected person capital that provides builders much-needed flexibility in financing our tasks,” Tan stated.

Copyright 2022 The Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials will not be revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.