Seattle Housing Crisis: Microsoft Pledges Additional $250 Million After $500 Million In 2019

Tech giant Microsoft said Wednesday that the company will pledge an additional $250 million to combat Seattle’s housing crisis. This follows a $500 million commitment from Microsoft in January 2019.

“Today we are announcing a $250 million increase to our affordable housing initiative in the form of a line of credit to the Washington State Finance Commission, bringing Microsoft’s total commitment to $750 million,” Jane Broom, the company’s senior director of philanthropies said in a blog post. “We are also announcing $55 million in investments and grants towards our original $500 million commitment.”

Broom said that the additional $250 million would help the Washington State Finance Commission pay for 3,000 additional units of affordable housing.

Microsoft, along with Amazon, are two major tech companies that are based in the greater Seattle area. While their presence has added jobs to the Seattle economy, it has also partly caused housing prices in the city to skyrocket. Amazon announced it would donate $5 million to Plymouth Housing in July, an organization that seeks to help Seattle residents find affordable places to live.

San Francisco is another city seeing soaring prices partially due to the rise of big tech. In November, Apple said it would spend $2.5 billion to combat California’s housing crisis.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont slammed the housing pledge by Apple.

“Apple’s announcement that it is entering the real estate lending business is an effort to distract from the fact that it has helped create California’s housing crisis – all while raking in $800 million of taxpayer subsidies, and keeping a quarter trillion dollars of profit offshore, in order to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes,” he said.

Apple’s money can only go so far without the support of local governments. Ken Rosen, chairman of the Berkeley Fisher Center for Real Estate and Economics, said that local communities in California should allow more houses to be built in order to tackle the crisis.

"Local communities have to be much more positive about approving housing construction. The biggest problem over the past 30 years as been the shortage of housing, especially rental housing," Rosen told Axios in November.