Amazon Commits $20M To Affordable Housing In Arlington In Exchange For More Space

[mahatmakanejeeves]

WAMU | NOV 26

Amazon Commits $20M To Affordable Housing In Arlington In Exchange For More Space
Daniella Cheslow

Arlington County has reached a tentative agreement to allow Amazon to add some 585,000 square feet to its first two office buildings in exchange for a commitment of $20 million to the county’s affordable housing investment fund, according to Matt Mattauszek, principal planner for Crystal City in Arlington County.

He said the online tech giant was obligated to pay some $7.5 million to gain its additional density, but its total commitment to affordable housing is historic.

“It is the largest cash contribution that any individual site plan project has ever contributed in Arlington County,” he said.

Mattauszek estimated the cash infusion to the county’s housing fund would pay for about 235 affordable housing units.

Arlington is short thousands of those units, and this is a helpful step, said Michelle Winters at the Alliance for Housing Solutions.
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Daniella Cheslow is a power and influence reporter at WAMU, where she focuses on politics in Virginia and the D.C. region.

[msongs]

1. gee they could pay their workers a living wage and benefit all their employees nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. These aren't Amazon's warehouse workers. These are the people who will otherwise be

forced from their homes due to rising housing costs in northern Virginia. I am not looking forward to this.

[Recursion]

4. It's 50K jobs over 10 years. It's barely noise

Honestly that's the only reason I wish they'd gone somewhere else: there are places where 50K jobs over 10 years would be transformative; Arlington may not even notice.

Virginia Tech is putting a campus up next to Potomac Yards. That will probably have a bigger impact.

[Recursion]

5. The average salary at the HQ2 will be about $120K

They are hiring programmers and salespeople, not warehouse workers.

Though they pay their warehouse workers $15/hr, which we used to call a living wage until Amazon started paying it.

[Merlot]

3. Amazon gets it's taxes cut, then gets to "donate" money in order

to get it's office space increased. $20 million is not even a drip in the bucket to amazon.

It's so corrupt.