Amazon housing fund: details of the project
The American Internet corporation Amazon has created a $2 billion housing construction fund. It is planned that within 5 years it will invest in the construction of new facilities and reconstruction of old ones.
The fund will operate in the three regions where Amazon is the largest employer. It is focused on providing affordable housing to low-income families at below-market rates. In all, it plans to roll out work in three regions.
The fund’s activities include building and renovating 20 units, and it will go to people who earn between 30% and 80% of the median income in their area.
The fund has already invested $567 million to build 1,300 homes in Arlington, Virginia. The second investment was the state of Washington, here in Puget Sound will build about a thousand new homes. Next, the project will continue in Nashville, Tennessee.
According to representatives of Amazon, the corporation does not set a goal to make money on this fund. The investments channeled through it do not have a special tax regime to make it possible.
It should be noted that Amazon is not the first corporation to help solve the problem of affordable housing. For example, Alphabet Corporation, which owns Google, invested $1 billion to build affordable housing in San Francisco. In turn, Apple plans to invest $2.5 billion to build affordable housing in California, and Microsoft has directed $750 million to the real estate market in Seattle.
Last year, Facebook committed $1 billion to give low-income residents of Silicon Valley affordable housing.
Another news from Amazon was the announcement of the closure of the medical project Haven. Unfortunately, it lasted only 3 years, but initial plans in this direction were grandiose. To create Haven, the Internet giant joined forces with major players in the investment market, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan. The purpose of the projects was to solve a pressing problem for American companies – high medical expenses. Every year corporations spend a lot of money on treatment and prevention of diseases of their employees. In addition, with the help of Haven, the authors wanted to transform the healthcare system as a whole, to make it more efficient and flexible for different segments of the country’s population.
In the project’s short lifespan, they worked on mechanisms to reduce drug costs, simplify health care delivery methods, and formalize benefits for corporate employees. The goals were too complex and costly to implement, so the partners decided to close the project.
