Stripe gives $1 million to group tackling housing shortage
San Francisco-based company hopes money to political organization will help push policies that will encourage new-home construction
SANFRANCISCO » Stripe on Thursday became the latest tech company to funnel money toward the Bay Area’s housing crunch, donating $1 million to pro- development political group California YIMBY.
The San Francisco-based online payments company, valued at $9 billion, said themoney will help YIMBY push policies with the ultimate goal of increasing California’s building rate from 80,000 homes a year to 500,000.
“The dearth of available and affordable housing is a significant barrier to the Bay Area’s economic progress,” Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said in a news release. “We’re making this contribution to California YIMBY because we think broad policy change will make the most meaningful, widespread, and long-term difference in the state’s housing crisis, by allowing developers to build more housing, specifically lower- cost, higher- density housing.”
As a lack of available housing forces prices up across the Bay Area, tech companies that pump money and jobs into the region — fanning the flames of the shortage — face increasing pressure to alleviate the crisis. Those same companies also are motivated by their bottomlines; housing costs have hit such astronomical heights that even high-paid tech workers often can’t afford to live near their offices, creating nightmare commutes, re- ducing quality of life and making it hard for local companies to recruit and retain employees.
Local companies increasingly are jumping into the housing fray. Cisco in March pledged $50 million to fight homelessness in Silicon Valley and LinkedIn gave $10 million to the same cause in December. Meanwhile, Google is working with Mountain View officials to add nearly 10,000 new homes and apartments in North Bayshore, and Facebook, which has pumped $18.5 million into a fund dedicated to affordable housing, also is planning to include new homes in its expanded Menlo Park campus.
Other tech leaders are weighing in on housing policy. In January more than 100 California tech leaders, including the CEOs of Salesforce, Lyft, Yelp and Mozilla, signed a letter supporting SB 827, the failed bill that would have forced cities to allow denser housing developments near transit hubs.
Now Stripe is upping the ante by $1 million with its contribution, the first the company hasmade to a political organization.
The sum is the largest single donation California YIMBY has received, and it will increase the organization’s total coffers by about 50 percent, said California YIMBY executive director Brian Hanlon. Before Thursday, the organization had raised nearly $2 million from donors, including Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman.
“It is a big deal,” Hanlon said. “We’re thrilled. It’s exciting that Stripe is really acting like a corporate leader here. They’ve recognized that the problemis both in the Bay Area, where they’re based, but it’s a problem throughout the state that requires a statewide solution.”
And that’s what California YIMBY aims to provide. The millennial-run organization burst onto the political scene just six months ago with a simple but powerful solution to the housing shortage: build more homes. The group’s acronym, “Yes in my backyard,” is a counter to the “Not in my backyard,” or NIMBY, sentiment that can lead residents to oppose new development in their neighborhoods.
YIMBY is driven by educated, young professionals upset because they can’t afford a home in the state’s runaway housing markets, prompting some affordable housing advocates to question whether the group does enough to help the poorest members of society. But YIMBY leaders said they advocate for all types of housing, both market rate and subsidized low-income.
California YIMBY had a setback last month when a controversial bill it sponsored died in its first committee hearing. SB 827, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D- San Francisco, could have added millions of apartments and condos throughout the state, but was met with opposition over fears that it would strip local officials of their power to control how their cities develop.
Now the organization is on the lookout for a new cause to support, Hanlon said from Los Angeles on Thursday, where he was meeting with a community organizer to discuss where the YIMBY energy should focus next.
California YIMBY has five employees and is hoping to hire 11 more, scaling up into a statewide force to be reckoned with. The organization and its 40,000 pro- development “members” delivered more than 1,000 phone calls, 1,400 letters and nearly 9,000 petition signatures to legislators in support of SB 827.
“We expect that we’ll be able to massively increase those numbers moving forward,” Hanlon said.
Alex Shoor, co-founder of Catalyze SV, another grass-roots, pro- development organization, applauded Stripe for its donation. Shoor, who said Catalyze SV members work with California YIMBY members on projects, said other Silicon Valley tech companies should be following suit. It’s not just a matter of al- truism, he said; fixing the housing shortage is necessary for the industry’s survival.
“We are in real trouble,” he said. “The future is not guaranteed for Silicon Valley. Itmust invest in the biggest catastrophe it’s facing.”