SHELTER

dedicated to Amazon’s cloud computing unit. The shelter shares the “Amazonia” aesthetic throughout: exposed pipes, citrus-colored walls popping against concrete floors, even signs inscribed in the tech giant’s signature office font.

Still, the shelter doesn’t erase the history of resentment over the wealth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and its workers, which peaked after the company and other corporations successfully pressured the Seattle City Council to rescind a tax on large companies that would have funded homelessness services in 2018.

Months later, Bezos, the world’s richest man whose stake in the company he founded is now worth more than $160 billion, announced his long-awaited private charitable fund would tackle homelessness — an irony noted by locals and philanthropy scholars alike.

To date, the Bezos Day One Fund has given $196 million in grants to organizations working on family homelessness issues across the country. He is also creating free preschools, though little else is known about the organization since Bezos first announced the $2 billion private philanthropy fund in 2018. An Amazon representative declined to comment on Bezos’ behalf.

Sara Rankin, a homeless rights advocate and lawyer who leads the Seattle-based Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, said Mary’s Place is a safe investment for Amazon because the nonprofit caters to the most sympathetic kind of homelessness. But Rankin said the shelter ultimately does not address the epicenter of the city’s homelessness crisis.

“It’s not bold and it’s not significant, at least with respect to the crisis,” she said. “It’s not as significant as it needs to be. It’s certainly not systemic.”

Amazon’s decision to take in Mary’s Place, which has multiple locations around the region, Rankin said, means the company is largely ignoring the chronically homeless who are often suffering from mental health or addiction issues, who are