Apple commits cash to help California's housing problem. Will more tech companies follow suit?

Question

Apple recently announced a $2.5 billion commitment toward easing the California housing availability and affordability crisis.

Do you think this move will spark more big tech firms like Amazon, FB and Google with sprawling HQs and campuses to follow suit?

Abadesi · Accepted Answer

Surely if communities keep pressuring tech firms they could lobby successfully to get investment from them? They can make a strong case for how companies avoid paying bigger tax bills and this is one high impact way to address a negative externality.

Christy Bella Gluch · Answer

I think it is laudable, bc, across the country, there is a major epidemic of homelessness, and it is only going to continue getting worse. "Affordable housing" is simply nonexistent. The waiting lists to receive any kind of government housing assistance, vouchers, or down payment assistance, or to get into public housing programs...even shelters...are astronomical. There are months to years long waiting lists to get into a SHELTER. Families on the verge of homelessness, who deserve, and should be MORE than qualified for help, are routinely screened out of receiving any sort of assistance in their initial plea-for-help phone call bc there simply is so little, if anything at all, available. What very little is available is made available to very very specific situations or people (such as housing assistance programs only for people suffering from major depressive disorder or bipolar depression), resulting in hundreds of families being turned away for answering one of their screening questions "incorrectly". For example, any family with a vehicle (even if it doesn't actually drive) won't be considered actually homeless, and WILL be screened out before even getting a foot in any door. Let me reiterate - If a family of 3, made up of mother, father, & young child - are LIVING IN THEIR CAR, they are NOT to be considered homeless and are screened out in place of a family actually living on the street. People are scared to tell a government agency that they are living on the street with a child or children, bc they fear, as they should, that they will lose their children the second CPS gets a whiff of their situation. CPS is ruthless, and unfairly targets the poor and minorities - if you are both poor and a minority, pray they never utter you or your child's name.

So....when I read things like Apple donating billions, or Bill Gates donating billions, to fight homelessness in this country, I'm sort of left wondering what the hell that money ACTUALLY got spent on. I'd kinda like to honestly see exactly where and on what it was allocated. It is sorta faceless. I want to attach actual FAMILIES to this money. I want to see the hundreds of homeless families that are now living in homes, with happy children playing in the yard. If I were a billionaire, I wouldn't just donate a ton of money to some charity, hoping all of my money was spent the way I'd intended it to. Instead, I would have families suffering from poverty, who are homeless, or on the verge of homelessness, or who simply need some damn help, send me their story. I would sit there and I would read every single story. The stories are tragic. People hear homeless and immediately assume "drug addict" "loser" "scum". They couldn't be more wrong. Sure, drug addiction is a small part of the story. Sometimes. But often times, all it takes is one parent being laid off or fired, or losing the ability to work due to an injury, to spiral a well-to-do family into such an overwhelming hole of poverty, marked by a seemingly never-ending cycle of poverty, fines, deeper poverty, more fines...until they eventually lose everything they ever had, including hope. I would read their stories, and I would start allocating my own money to these families. I want to buy the Smith's in this story a house. I want to buy this family a car and pay for their rent for a year. Rather than allow these people to get screened out and turned away, knowingly sending them to a doomed fate. Maybe I'm thinking naively idealistically...or maybe there are so many legal logistics that would prevent anything of this sort from actually coming to fruition. I don't know.

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Apple commits cash to help California's housing problem. Will more tech companies follow suit?

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