Amazon Pledges $2 Billion To Affordable Housing (seattletimes.com) 33
Amazon will direct $2 billion in loans and grants to secure affordable housing near three American cities where the company employs thousands of workers, the tech giant announced Wednesday. The Seattle Times reports: In a first step in the Puget Sound region, Amazon is promising $185.5 million, mostly in loans, to the King County Housing Authority to help buy affordable apartments in the region and keep the rents low. The Housing Authority will use an initial portion of that money to help fund its recent purchase of three Bellevue apartment buildings. Amazon will also direct about $382 million to a nonprofit in Arlington, Virginia, and so-far unspecified amount to organizations in Nashville, Tennessee. Amazon said it selected the three areas where the company expects to have at least 5,000 employees.
In total across the three regions, the company projected the $2 billion would help preserve or create 20,000 affordable housing units over the next five years. The funding will "help local families achieve long-term stability while building strong, inclusive communities," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement.
In total across the three regions, the company projected the $2 billion would help preserve or create 20,000 affordable housing units over the next five years. The funding will "help local families achieve long-term stability while building strong, inclusive communities," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement.
Opposite effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Pouring more money into the real estate market without building new properties raises property prices. Based on the summary at least, it looks like Amazon is putting most of its money towards acquiring existing properties. Reducing gentrification sounds nice (and to an extent, it is, if it prevents a reduction in housing density on those properties), but it pales in comparison to building more units.
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In the cities they are targeting, there is no way they can get a permit to build affordable housing.
Everybody wants affordable housing, but they want it somewhere else. So they elect politicians that keep the riff-raff out of their communities and poor kids out of their schools.
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That may well be true, but spending even more money for property in those cities is still going to drive up prices. In the event that you can't build more housing, the only way to get housing costs to go down is to reduce demand - people need to move elsewhere.
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First thing about affordable housing, is how affordable is the land. A tent is very affordable but the majority can not afford the land to put in up in a good location.
Affordable housing has to be built on a production line, sent to site and the major components assembled on top of piers in the ground to fix it in location and then finished with an optional finish. Everything already in the major components, that is affordable but it still leads location and that is not.
Affordable housing, do they mean a
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What is the point of that? A placeholder with no sound on youtube.
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No, I live in Bellevue where they're buying the apartments. The reason why property is so expensive here is because Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks pay so well that people can afford to pay way too much for property. There's also a surprisingly large number of single-family homes here sitting empty, apparently in South Korea property in Bellevue is seen as a safe investment and some sort of status symbol. Bellevue has good schools, decent infrastructure, and not-unreasonable local government and police,
Give house loans, rather than real wages, GENIUS! (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe your workers wouldn't need your help (which Amazon will profit from) if you just weren't cunts to your employees?
This is a feel BAD story. Nothing here but a MegaCorp trying to find ways to make more cash.
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Maybe your workers wouldn't need your help (which Amazon will profit from) if you just weren't cunts to your employees?
Many progressives want to see the minimum wage raised to $15, which they consider a living wage.
All Amazon employees already earn at least that much. For unskilled entry-level workers, Amazon is a good place to work.
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Ahahahahaha!
Oh wait, you are serious? If so, I can't really talk to someone so poorly informed. Good luck at Amazon PR!
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Talk to the people who work in the Fulfillment Centers, I've worked with several that started as temps in the FCs and are now FTEs in the Corporate offices. It's hard work and unutterably boring, but the pay, benefits and working conditions are better than any job at Walmart lower than the store manager, and better than the Target or Kroger distribution centers. Amazon spent $800 million just on COVID remediation in the FCs, which is more than Walmart, Target and Kroger spent on all their stores and DCs c
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You seem to be under the illusion that because one thing is better than another thing, the first thing is good.
Amazon may be good in comparison to other sweatshops, which still doesn't make it a "good" place to work.
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For someone with minimal skills and education it's a not-terrible place to work. The mines are gone, the factories are closing, truckers will soon be a thing of the past, and the railroads are mostly automated now. Construction and landscaping, two seriously shitty but moderately well-paying jobs, are now mostly doe by foreigners. Where are they going to go? If they do find a job as a security guard or dishwasher those jobs won't be around for much longer either.
No, I'm under no illusion that it's a "go
Amazon eats the planet (Score:2)
Sad (Score:1)
Amazon knows it doesn't pay a living wage so it gives away money for affordable housing. Amazon ultimately wants the state to accommodate its profit motive through subsidized housing. I can see our dystopian future already.
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Amazon forced its Fulfillment Center contractors to pay their employees double the minimum wage and provide benefits, in addition to providing quite a few benefits out of its own pocket. All the contracting companies whined that they were going to go bankrupt if they had to pay their people $15/hr+benefits, but of course in reality none of them did. Now other retailers are having trouble finding competent people to work in their distribution centers because the good ones are going to the Amazon sites. Un
Actual Effect: (Score:2)
Affordable housing means bringing diversity to neighborhoods that are "insufficiently diverse."
After all, there's already plenty of affordable housing in highly diverse areas already, right?
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Bellevue, Washington, is "insufficiently diverse"??? What planet do you live on? 39 percent of Bellevue residents were born in another country. In my neighborhood the neighbors on one side are from Tajikistan, on the other side is a Gringo/Mexican couple. On the other side of them is a Korean family, across the street from us is a Filipino household. Two doors up from them is a lesbian couple. My wife and I are Gringo/Peruvian. I work in security, my wife was in retail, neighbors include landscapers,
So whatâ(TM)s the catch? (Score:1)
Or⦠(Score:1)
They could, you know, pay their employees a livable wage.
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https://www.payscale.com/resea... [payscale.com]
Amazon.com Inc pays its employees an average of $102,325 a year. Salaries at Amazon.com Inc range from an average of $59,867 to $153,812 a year.
If you can't live on $102,000 a year then there's something wrong with you.
More fake charity from big tech... wonderful ... (Score:4, Interesting)
As others already said, Amazon could get a lot more out of using some of its massive profits to make a better, less stressful working environment for its employees!
Playing the role of lender for low income housing is a joke, really. Banks loan money all the time for such projects. If they're refusing, there's something wrong with the business plan. Either like some are saying -- they're wanting it built in areas where the residents don't want it and are fighting to prevent it from happening .... or people aren't coming up with sensible long-term solutions.
I just purchased a small house myself that's literally just a few blocks down the street from a big low-income/affordable housing project. This one (about 100 units) really only works without creating too many problems for the surrounding area because the city not only funds the housing itself, but has an all encompassing program rolled in with it where residents have daycare there for their kids while they go to work and a number of other programs on site, such as a "head start" early learning program for the kids, and after school programs for the teens. They also provide free breakfasts for the kids before school in the morning, and have some other activities for seniors and other residents, held in a community center type building they built in the center of the project. Essentially, once you take them up on the offer to get subsidized/cheap housing for you and your family -- you've got this whole support system there that encourages you to work and be successful.
Even with all of that? I won't lie. Just the sight of all of the rather ugly buildings lined up in rows, plus the stream of people walking up and down the street at all hours to buy food and drinks from the nearby gas station is enough to drive property values down around here. I got my house really cheap, partially for that reason. But really, crime isn't a big issue here -- which is the assumption people automatically make about it.
When they just pay out money to build one of these projects initially and then declare it "complete"? That's when you usually just create new problems for all the existing area residents. As a general rule, people don't respect or take much pride in something that was essentially just handed to them.
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re: bezos (Score:2)
Huh? What ever made you think I was suggesting Amazon should be "friends / family" with employees?
The issue is, they're worried more about their public image than in spending money towards a goal of making a work environment that would keep contractors and employees from bad-mouthing them in the first place.
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When they just pay out money to build one of these projects initially and then declare it "complete"?
This is Bellevue, not Pittsburg, the local government is actually run by people who know their heads from a hole in the ground.
How (Score:1)
Company store (Score:2)
Next, they'll offer housing subsidies for their employees, as well as company credits for purchasing food and necessities on their site to "help their struggling employees make ends meet". Nobody will want to (read: be able to) quit and find another job.
Such givers.
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With an average salary of $102,000/year I don't know may Amazon employees "struggling to make ends meet". We're the people who are driving up housing prices because we can actually afford to buy one. The affordable housing is going to be for people who work at Walmart and Target, because we all know that they're never going to get paid a living wage..
Instead of building apartments or houses (Score:1)
My opinion (Score:1)