[ad_1]
Flanked by screens full of charts detailing the alarming gap between housing costs and revenues in the Puget Sound area, Microsoft President Brad Smith presented the largest philanthropic engagement in a Seattle suburban theater. never granted by the company: $ 500 million, mainly in the form of loans, to support affordable housing. .
The Redmond, Washington-based technology giant's announcement marks a breakthrough in ensuring that housing availability keeps pace with employment growth in US cities in full swing expansion. In the case of Microsoft, the call to arms is the result of a comparison between Seattle and San Francisco.
"Business leaders have begun to talk about the need to think about the future of this region," said Smith, referring to the Seattle Challenge Roundtable hosted by former Washington Governor Christine Gregoire in the summer. 2018, after Seattle City Council pbaded and repealed a large corporation. tax to finance affordable housing. "We concluded that Greater Seattle had become" San Francisco North "."
Since 2011, housing prices in the region have increased by 96%, while median household income has only increased by 31%, according to data collected by Microsoft and Zillow, based in Seattle, with the 39, badistant Boston Consulting Group.
"We are all aware of what we've seen change in this region over the past decade, especially over the past five years," Smith said.
Although Smith acknowledged the complexity of the problem, he summed up the problem with a simple calculation: "Jobs were created in our area, but the region did not build houses or housing units for all people. who would occupy them.
Powered by Amazon, which has not promised a promise similar to that of Microsoft, Seattle has become the fastest growing American city of the decade. Microsoft has recently announced a substantial renovation and expansion of its campus, which will create more jobs and more residents.
"We have all witnessed this tremendous growth and we have all benefited from it," Smith said.
Despite the construction of nearly 85,000 new units in King County since 2010, teachers, nurses and police have moved to less expensive suburbs and have long trips. In 2011, Redmond had more low- and middle-income households than high-income households. Last year, high-income households had become a majority.
"Many people who play a vital role in our communities can no longer afford to live there," Smith said.
This conclusion has led Microsoft to make affordable housing a new philanthropic priority, along with education and transportation, as part of the company's vision of a "healthy society." In other words, Smith said, the company realized that its own low-income workforce, such as bus drivers and cafeterias, and the neighborhood's middle-income jobs – schoolteachers who educate the children of software engineers – have been re-established, hurting everyone's quality of life
Microsoft's philanthropic donation will create a $ 225-million revolving loan fund offering affordable housing developers lower-than-market rates to invest in middle-income housing in six cities in King County and a $ 225 million injection into the federal low income housing tax credit market of King County, including Seattle. The latter will lower the market price of federal tax credits, essential for subsidized apartments. The remaining 50 million will be spent on efforts to combat homelessness. At the same time, the company is calling on local authorities to relax land use restrictions and is asking the state to increase its housing trust fund from $ 100 million to $ 200 million.
The movement has gained praise. "Microsoft's efforts to research and understand root causes and significant solutions are even more impressive than Microsoft's unprecedented commitment," said James Madden, of Enterprise Community Partners, a housing developer. affordable non-profit organizations having consulted the project.
Microsoft cited the Silicon Valley Housing Trust as a source of inspiration. Some Bay Area technical officials have recently attempted to solve housing problems, such as Salesforce's Mark Benioff's support for a San Francisco homeless tax, inspired by the failure of the Seattle effort. The Chan-Zuckerberg initiative has also taken precedence over affordable housing. This week, Kaiser Permanente announced its first investment in the housing sector in Oakland.
Rick Jacobus, an Oakland-based affordable housing consultant, is expecting more announcements in 2019. "The degree of public awareness of this problem has reached such a point that it can not to be ignored even by those big institutions that do not play the problem, he says Quick business. "But the rise has been painfully slow because the teams of technicians have been busy running to stay on the cutting edge of technology."
When asked if Microsoft was the White Knight who came to Seattle and the King County Rescue after several years in which the local government had failed to pbad a major plan to fund affordable housing, he proposed a different metaphor.
"Microsoft is not the white knight, but we ride a white horse," Smith said. "There are many white horses in this area; now we have to start a mess. "
Gregory Scruggs is an award-winning Seattle-based journalist and coordinator of the Puget Sound Chapter of the Solutions Journalism Network. His writings on cities, land, culture and place appeared in the book New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and VICE.
[ad_2]
Source link
