Reuters
- Apple said Wednesday it has poured $1 billion into affordable housing efforts in California.
- Amazon similarly said Tuesday it's giving $40 million worth of unused land for Virginia to build new homes.
- The donations signal that Big Tech is aware of housing crises in areas where it operates.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Big Tech knows there's a housing crisis – if the millions of dollars they're donating to affordable housing is any indication.
Apple said on Wednesday that it has poured $1 billion into housing development efforts in Northern California, including the San Francisco Bay Area, as part of a broader $2.5 billion initiative that it kicked off in late 2019.
And Amazon said on Tuesday that it's giving Virginia's Arlington County $40 million worth of unused land to build 550 new, affordable housing units. The e-commerce giant is currently constructing its second headquarters in the county.
Big Tech has long come under fire for moving into communities whose members are later priced out by companies' high-earning workers. And although subsequent housing crises are caused by a number of factors, the tech companies contribute to many of those issues.
The Bay Area specifically is notorious for its sky-high rent and unsustainable housing problems. San Francisco has some of the highest rent in the country, a reality that in part has to do with the city's zoning restrictions.
But the city's inclusion in Silicon Valley is also a factor as high-earning tech workers grabbed available housing, pricing lower-income locals out. Even some of those tech employees struggle with the region's high cost of living.
In Austin, Texas, Tesla Energy has teamed up with Brookfield Asset Management and the real-estate developer Dacra to develop a master-planned community. The move marks the first formal neighborhood Tesla is building from the ground up.