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The Silicon Valley tech industry is ponying up another $10 million to fix the region’s housing shortage, this time with a contribution from Sunnyvale-based NetApp.
The cloud data services company on Friday announced a $10 million investment in building and preserving low-cost housing in the Bay Area as part of the Housing Trust Silicon Valley’s TECH Fund. The move makes NetApp the latest in a string of local tech companies to address the housing crisis, as skyrocketing home and rent costs make it increasingly difficult for low- and middle-income workers to live here.
“This is the single biggest community investment we’ve made, and we’re really proud to be making it today,” NetApp General Counsel Matt Fawcett told an audience of about 600 people Friday at the Housing Trust Silicon Valley’s annual investor briefing in Santa Clara. “We are very grateful for the companies that came before us — like Cisco, LinkedIn, Pure (Storage) — and set an example for all of us. And we’re hopeful that other companies — 20, 50 companies — will join us moving forward in contributing to the TECH Fund.”
With the NetApp contribution, the TECH Fund, launched in 2017 as an affordable housing fund backed by local companies, will have raised $62 million.
Underscoring the importance of the fund, UC Berkeley student Sumayia Hakim took the stage Friday to share how finding affordable housing in San Jose changed her family’s life. Her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh when Hakim was 1 year old and had a hard time finding stable housing. They moved six times in three years while Hakim was a child, before finally landing an affordable apartment in Elena Gardens in 2007. The apartment building had a computer lab and after-school tutoring, which helped Hakim excel in school.
“Today I stand here as an intern for the American Society of Civil Engineers,” Hakim said. “I stand here as a stressed college student who watches too much Netflix. But most importantly, I also stand here as the quiet 6-year-old who moved into Elena Gardens not expecting to stay.”
Hakim was honored as a recipient of a $3,000 Guardino Affordable Housing Scholarship, which provides grants to young people raised in affordable housing and attending college.
“The Housing Trust helps real people,” said Carl Guardino, co-founder of the Housing Trust and president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, “but we sometimes lose the face with the numbers.”
Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, also took the stage Friday to speak about efforts in Sacramento to address the region’s housing shortage. Those efforts include Chiu’s anti-rent-gouging bill, which would place a cap on annual rent increases.
It’s imperative that local leaders do something to stem the tide of Bay Area workers fleeing the region in search of cheaper housing, Chiu said.
“Like the proverbial frog being boiled slowly in the pot,” he said, “our lack of will to treat this crisis like a crisis and work together to jump out of the pot could end the vitality of the region as we know it.”
The Housing Trust set out to raise $50 million for affordable housing when it launched the TECH Fund. It finally passed that benchmark in November — nearly two years later. Tech companies increasingly are feeling pressure to help ease the crisis, as many local residents blame cash-flush tech workers for driving up housing prices.
Cisco kicked off the TECH Fund with an initial $10 million investment, followed by contributions from the Sobrato Family Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, LinkedIn, the Grove Foundation and Pure Storage. In January, Microsoft pledged $500 million for housing in the Seattle area, a move the company said was inspired in part by the TECH Fund.
So far TECH Fund money is being used to help create or preserve more than 2,000 homes throughout the five-county Bay Area. The funds help nonprofit affordable housing developers compete with market-rate buyers to acquire expensive properties.
In December, the fund put up $4.3 million to help nonprofit Resources for Community Development buy the Fremont Islander motel in Fremont, which will be turned into 128 low-cost apartments. The fund also contributed to a $15.85 million loan to First Community Housing for more than 300 affordable homes near San Jose’s Diridon Station.
Workers broke ground last month on Leigh Avenue Senior Apartments in San Jose — the first TECH Fund-backed project to start construction.
“We think this is all a good start,” Kevin Zwick, CEO of Housing Trust Silicon Valley, said in an interview before Friday’s event. “We need more resources. We need more companies to get involved.”
