Amazon’s Seattle headquarters (Photo by Han Bui)
On Jan. 6, Amazon announced its Housing Equity Fund, a $2+ billion initiative to preserve and create more than 20,000 affordable housing units in the Puget Sound region in Washington state, the Arlington, Virginia region, and Nashville, Tennessee.
Amazon is providing below-market capital in the form of loans, lines of credit, and grants to preserve and create 20,000 homes affordable for moderate- to low-income families and supporting households making between 30% and 80% of the area’s median income. In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area, this translates to a household of four earning less than $95,250 a year.
The Fund will provide an additional $125 million in cash grants to businesses, nonprofits, and minority-led organizations to help build a more inclusive solution to the affordable housing crisis, which disproportionately affects communities of color.