JPMorgan Chase will commit $22 million to create and preserve affordable housing in San Francisco and Oakland, the financial services firm announced Tuesday.
The company joins a number of others in Silicon Valley, including Google and Facebook, that have said in recent months they will funnel millions of dollars toward addressing a regional housing crisis that has sent some long-time residents packing and prompted concerns about gentrification and displacement from tenant advocacy groups.
“Neighborhoods thrive when people have access to affordable housing,” Allen Fernandez Smith, head of west region philanthropy for JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement. “Our investment will help address the serious and ongoing challenges of displacement and affordability by applying proven approaches that are working in the Bay Area and we have helped develop in other cities. There is a long way to go to tackle these issues, but we’re confident that with the right partners and solutions more people can benefit from the region’s growth.”
The $22 million is part of a broader $75 million, five-year commitment to the Bay Area that also includes job skills training and assistance for minority and women entrepreneurs as well as housing help.
JPMorgan Chase expects the $22 million to support the preservation and creation of more than 2,250 units. Some $15 million will go to the Housing for Health Fund in the form of a low-cost, long-term loan. The $45 million fund — backed by $30 million in equity from Kaiser Permanente — is expected to provide equity to developers to acquire housing faster and keep it affordable. Most of the company’s investment in the fund will go to Oakland.
“Expanding the fund to $45 million will allow us to preserve hundreds more units across the Bay Area and protect residents from risks of displacement and the negative health impacts of housing instability and homelessness,” Bechara Choucair, chief community health officer at Kaiser, said in a statement.
The San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund will receive a similar $6 million loan to fund the preservation of affordable housing sites in the city. Beginning this month, some of the money will go toward rehabilitating a property on Jackson Street acquired last year by the Chinatown Community Development Corporation. Currently home to 19 single-room occupancy units occupied by very low-income senior tenants, the money will fund 11 new units of permanently affordable housing on the ground floor in a space formerly occupied by a church.
“Their commitment will allow us to fund the acquisition of affordable homes across the city — preventing displacement of long-term residents — and to build new affordable units in innovative and cost-effective ways,” the fund’s CEO, Rebecca Foster, said in a statement.
The East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) will receive a $1 million grant to put toward anti-displacement efforts and development in Oakland, with a focus on trying out modular construction as a strategy to speed up projects and keep costs reasonable.
The announcement comes as the number of homeless people living in San Francisco, Oakland and other parts of the Bay Area skyrockets and as thousands of residents flee the region for places like Sacramento and, farther afield, Texas, where the cost of living is significantly lower.
The company opted mostly for loans so the money can be reinvested in future philanthropic efforts.
The funding commitment drew praise from local mayors like San Francisco’s London Breed and Oakland’s Libby Schaaf, who have named the lack of affordable housing options and rising homelessness as key concerns.
“This investment is a great example of what’s possible when business and local organizations work side by side to take on one of the biggest challenges facing the city of Oakland,” Schaaf said in a statement. “We’re encouraged by the work JPMorgan Chase and others are doing here to combat displacement, and support our ongoing affordability efforts.”
