Google Will Spend $1 Billion To Build 20,000 Homes, As Sundar Pichai Stresses On Affordability

Thanks to tech companies setting up shop in Silicon Valley, the area has become highly gentrified.

It's become impossible for non tech-employed natives to afford living there, and these companies also tend to seek out loopholes in tax laws.

Images courtesy: Reuters

Now, Google seems to be attempting to change things in the San Francisco Bay Area, by providing funds to improve living conditions in the region. The company has said it's investing $1 billion toward efforts to build at least 15,000 new homes in the Bay Area.

"Across the region, one issue stands out as particularly urgent and complex: housing," CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post. "As Google grows throughout the Bay Area - whether it's in our home town of Mountain View, in San Francisco, or in our future developments in San Jose and Sunnyvale - we've invested in developing housing that meets the needs of these communities. But there's more to do."

According to Pichai, more than 45,000 Google employees live in the SF Bay Area.

Google started in the SF Bay Area, and we know our responsibility to help starts at home: we¡¯re making a $1B investment to enable the development of 20K new homes in the region at all income levels, including affordable housing options in the next 10 years https://t.co/vVEYOFIUm5

¡ª Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) June 18, 2019

The announcement follows close behind backlash Google and other tech giants have been facing recently. Local communities have been putting pressure on them saying their corporate expansion has been crowding the already tight housing market. Many long-time residents have even been forced out by skyrocketing rents and cost of living, and are pushed onto the streets with nowhere else to go.

The $1 billion will apparently be broken up into a few different types of funding. The company has said it will, over the next decade, rezone $750 million worth of its property. This is currently reserved for commercial and office space, meaning homes can't be built there.

Meanwhile, they'll be giving another $50 million to non-profit groups working to solve homelessness and displacement in the region, while another $250 million will go towards an investment fund for developers that build affordable housing in the area.

It's also important to remember this move isn't out of the goodness of Google's digital heart. The company has been planning a major expansion in the city that would have further compounded the housing crisis. As such, protesters have also been planning to demonstrate outside Google headquarters during a shareholders meeting later today.