Facebook Pledges $20 Million to Affordable Housing

Last week, Facebook announced they will spend $20 million to help alleviate the housing shortage in their neighbor cities of Menlo Park and East Palo Alto. About $18.5 million will go towards building new housing, mostly targeted at low/middle income families, while the rest will go towards job training programs and providing legal assistance to tenants facing eviction. This announcement comes as Facebook and other tech giants have been facing growing pressure to partner with local governments and community organizations to find solutions to the region's housing shortage - a problem which many feel has been exacerbated by unchecked tech growth.

Bird's eye view of Facebook's recent campus expansion.  Chilco Street is the only thing separating it from East Menlo Park's Belle Haven community (visible in the top left)

Facebook's rapid expansion into East Menlo Park, a historically low-income region, has been a point of contention as of late.  Early in 2015, they opened up a brand new 430,000 S/F Frank Gehry designed campus expansion within shouting distance of East Menlo Park's Belle Haven community.  Almost immediately after they cut the ribbon on that building, they submitted plans to the City of Menlo Park to redevelop an adjacent property into roughly 1 million square feet of additional office space.  That project - also Frank Gehry designed - was promptly approved, and construction has been underway for over a year now.  With all of this new office space to put to use, Facebook has estimated that they will bring 6,500 new employees to the area in the coming years.

A coalition of local community organizations had planned to sue Facebook over the stress 6,500 new employees could put on an already overburdened housing market.  However, after a series of meetings with Facebook representatives, they agreed not to.  Tameeka Bennett, executive director of Youth United for Community Action, one of the groups in the coalition, said she is convinced that Facebook is committed to partnering with the community to address the housing shortage.  And more so than any of their Silicon Valley peers, their actions have demonstrated as much.

Facebook's recent $20 million announcement isn't the first commitment they have made to combat the housing crisis.  Last year, in partnership with St. Anton Development, they broke ground on a 394-unit apartment complex at 3639 Haven Avenue.  Those units will be offered to non-Facebook employees, and 15 of them will be subsidized by Facebook for low-income families.  They extended their commitment to constructing publicly available housing earlier this year, when they unveiled a proposal to build 1,500 total units, 15% of which would be reserved for low to middle income families.  This hands on approach to tackling the housing shortage is completely breaking the mold of how Silicon Valley tech companies offer support to communities impacted by their growth.  While it is fairly common for companies to pay "impact fees" to help fund affordable housing, it is unprecedented for them to actually build the housing themselves.

To be fair, this isn't a completely altruistic effort on the part of Facebook.  Housing costs in the Bay Area have made it increasingly difficult for companies like Facebook to recruit the talent they want, so adding to the supply of housing serves their interests by driving those costs down and making it easier for them to recruit.

Perhaps others will follow Facebook's lead.  There are certainly plenty of eyes on Google in Mountain View, and Apple in Cupertino, hoping they will make similar efforts.  Stay tuned