USA TODAY International Edition
Facebook donates $ 20M for housing
Aim to build affordable Silicon Valley homes
Facebook is putSAN FRANCISCO ting up $ 20 million toward a community investment program designed to address the severe housing crunch in its own backyard, where the tech boom stoked by the latest generation of Internet superstars is making it difficult for many working class families to live.
It is partnering with Envision Transform Build- East Palo Alto ( ETB), a coalition of Silicon Valley community groups, and the neighboring cities of East Palo Alto and Menlo Park to create affordable housing and provide economic opportunities in the form of job training and expand legal relief to tenants.
The social- networking giant is making an initial investment of $ 20 million, and said it hopes to add private and public sector organizations to the partnership.
The community plan attempts to address the decades- old problem of insufficient housing, particularly affordable apartments and houses, that’s worsened as the latest surge in tech jobs — most average more than $ 100,000 a year, based on data from the federal government’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages — has driven up average home prices and rents. “There is a housing crisis in Silicon Valley. There is a traffic crisis in Silicon Valley,” says Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications, marketing and public policy at Facebook. “We want to keep tech jobs in Silicon Valley.” If successful, Facebook’s effort could extend to a broader effort by tech companies, says Annel Aguayo, development director at Rebuilding Together Peninsula, one of Facebook’s partners in the project. “They care about being a good neighbor, which we don’t usually see,” she says. “Most companies expand into areas, and then it’s business as usual.” Non- profit Google. org has donated more than $ 6 million the past two years to anti- homeless- ness causes, including Destination: Home, a program of The Health Trust, a public- private partnership to end homelessness in Santa Clara County.
The problem: Plentiful highpriced jobs and very little new construction in an area constrained by water, mountains and towns that often resist efforts to put in more affordable housing units.
While half a million new jobs have been filled since 2010, only 55,588 units of housing have been built in the state, according to the California Department of Finance and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional planning organization.
Silicon Valley workers, on average, earn $ 121,000 a year, compared with $ 118,000 last year and $ 108,000 in 2011, according to data compiled by market research PayScale for USA TODAY.
The median price of a singlefamily home in San Jose- Sunnyvale- Santa Clara, the heart of Silicon Valley, has jumped from $ 780,000 in 2013 to $ 950,400 last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.
East Palo Alto Mayor Donna Rutherford expects to see more housing in the economically-