Author: Karen Weise / Source: New York Times
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
SEATTLE — The Seattle area, home to both Microsoft and Amazon, is a potent symbol of the affordable housing crisis that has followed the explosive growth of tech hubs. Now Microsoft, arguing that the industry has an interest and responsibility to help people left behind in communities transformed by the boom, is putting up $500 million to help address the problem.
Microsoft’s money represents the most ambitious effort by a tech company to directly address the inequality that has spread in areas where the industry is concentrated, particularly on the West Coast. It will fund construction for homes affordable not only to the company’s own non-tech workers, but also for teachers, firefighters and other middle- and low-income residents.
Microsoft’s move comes less than a year after Amazon successfully pushed to block a new tax in Seattle that would have made large businesses pay a per-employee tax to fund homeless services and the construction of affordable housing. The company said the tax created a disincentive to create jobs. Microsoft, which is based in nearby Redmond, Wash., and has few employees who work in the city, did not take a position on the tax.
The debate about the rapid growth of the tech industry and the inequality that often follows has spilled across the country, particularly as Amazon, with billions of taxpayer subsidies, announced plans to build major campuses in Long Island City, Queens, and Arlington, Va., that would employ a total of at least 50,000 people. In New York, elected officials and residents have raised concerns that Amazon has not made commitments to support affordable housing.
Microsoft has been at the vanguard of warning about the potential negative effects of technology, like privacy or the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence. Executives hope the housing efforts will spur other companies to follow its lead.
“We believe everybody has a role to play, and everybody needs to play their role,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer.
The company’s strong finances, a sign of its resurgence under Satya Nadella as chief executive, have given it resources to deploy, Mr. Smith said. In October, the company reported net income of $8.8 billion in its most recent quarter, up 34 percent, and it had almost $136 billion in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet. The company’s stock has risen steadily under Mr. Nadella, and Microsoft is now valued at over $800 billion.
A number of other tech businesses have tried to address the homeless crisis. Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, has supported homeless service providers through his personal foundation, and the Salesforce chief executive, Marc Benioff, helped fund a proposition in San Francisco to tax businesses to pay for homeless services. Voters approved the tax in November, rejecting opposition from some tech leaders, including Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey.
Others plan to build housing for their…
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