Amazon providing $23M for affordable housing in Seattle

SEATTLE (AP) — Amazon says it’s providing $23 million to help minority-led organizations build or preserve more than 500 new affordable housing units in Seattle. It’s the latest spending by a tech company to ease a severe housing crunch the industry has helped create. The commitment announced Thursday comes from Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund, a $2 billion initiative launched in January 2021. The fund has so far invested more than $1.2 billion to create or preserve over 8,000 affordable homes across three regions where the company has offices: the Puget Sound in Washington state; Arlington, Virginia; and Nashville, Tennessee. The new investments are the fund’s first in Seattle proper.