Amazon pledges $ 2 billion for affordable housing projects near its corporate offices

Enlarge / Amazon commits money to ensure that people born make six figures can afford to live anywhere near its new headquarters in Crystal City (Arlington, Virginia).

Amazon plans to spend $ 2 billion over the next five years to invest in affordable housing in the three cities where its main offices have helped drive up house prices, the company said today.

The company will use loans, lines of credit and grants to “preserve and create” 20,000 committed affordable homes for low to middle income families in general areas around Seattle, Nashville and Arlington, Va., Where it owns. a great corporate presence, Amazon said in a press release this morning.

“Affordable housing” is generally defined as affordable for families earning 80 percent or less of the region’s median income. Amazon specifically targets households representing between 30 and 80% of the AMI zone. The MAI for the Washington, DC metro area, including Arlington, is $ 126,000, and so basically any household earning between $ 37,000 and $ 100,800 falls within that range. In Seattle, the MAI is $ 119,400, so this window would include households earning between approximately $ 35,800 and $ 95,500.

Amazon has already made two significant investments in affordable housing in these regions, the company added. The first is a combination of loans and grants of $ 340 million to the Washington Housing Conservancy to acquire an apartment complex, Crystal House, in Arlington.

“We have no control over how [housing] Markets respond to a large employer entering the market or expanding into the market, but we can play a role in how Amazon’s growth affects our local communities, ”said Catherine Buell, Head of community development for one of Amazon’s philanthropic arms. Street Journal. “Especially as we expand our presence in the business, we strive to get ahead of the problem as much as possible.”

Amazon’s commitment has won the support of affordable housing advocates in Virginia. “We are delighted that Amazon is truly making a leap forward in its investment in affordable housing,” Nina Janopaul, president and CEO of the Arlington Affordable Housing Partnership, told Ars. Amazon contributed $ 1 million to an APAH project in 2020, added Janopaul, “and we look forward to helping accelerate the development of affordable homes in Arlington with their support.”

Corporate support for Amazon’s affordable housing initiatives has also helped bolster support at the state level, Janopaul added, which benefits everyone. “So I think it’s a great partnership, this corporate leadership, and then it helps motivate the leadership of government. They work in sync.”

The Amazon effect

Amazon has been based in Seattle for over 20 years, so its effect on the local housing market has been slow to build and not always easy to separate from other factors affecting the city. In Virginia, however, Amazon’s high-profile announcement of “HQ2” in 2018 had a visible and immediate effect on already high housing costs.

Arlington has been an expensive place to live for decades, and a major boom in the construction of “luxury” condos and apartments near metro stations over the past 10 to 15 years has only accelerated the boom. upward trend. Amazon’s announcement that it would take office in an Arlington neighborhood – Crystal City, a stone’s throw from the Pentagon and Reagan National Airport – added even more fuel to the blaze.

In the six months since Amazon announced HQ2, house prices in Arlington County rose nearly 18%. Speculators stepped in first, days after the deal was released, but regular, high-income earners who just wanted to live near an Amazon job were not far behind. In August 2019, Redfin had dubbed Arlington and its neighbor Alexandria the most competitive housing markets in the country.

The housing crisis in Arlington is not only terrible for low income families, but also difficult for middle class households. When the county released its annual profile in July, the average value of a single-family detached home was $ 949,500 ($ 805,000 for a townhouse). Rents are also high: the average rent in Arlington in the 2020 report was $ 2,024 for a one-bedroom apartment, $ 2,627 for a two-bedroom, and $ 3,367 for a three-bedroom.

There are currently around 8,300 affordable units engaged in Arlington, so Amazon’s commitment to build thousands more will dramatically increase that number. As in California, however, corporate philanthropy cannot go this far without an overhaul of local politics to fill the housing gap.