Facebook Commits Millions to Help Silicon Valley's Have-Nots (fortune.com) 58
Facebook wants to be a better corporate citizen, which is perhaps why on Friday it announced a partnership with local community organizations near its headquarters in which it will initially commit $20 million towards making affordable housing, job training, and legal services available to more people in the area. From a report on Fortune: A few groups have signed up to participate, including Youth United for Community Action, Faith in Action Bay Area, Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, Comite de Vecinos del Lado Oeste -- East Palo Alto, along with the local governments of East Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Here's how that first round of funding will be spread out: This new coalition will allocate $18.5 million into a fund called the Catalyst Housing Fund. The goal is to find ways to accelerate and grow the production of affordable housing in the community. Additionally, $250,000 will be given to Rebuilding Together Peninsula which seeks to assist low-income residents with the upkeep of their homes. $625,000 has been assigned to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in schools, something Silicon Valley has been actively encouraging for years.
Silicon Valley have-nots? (Score:2)
Would this be someone who lives in a $200,000 shack with an old CRT television and a Windows laptop?
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No, they live in a car down by the river...
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
Re:Silicon Valley have-nots? (Score:5, Funny)
Would this be someone who lives in a $200,000 shack
You are missing a zero. Facebook is in Menlo Park, where a 3 bedroom home is over $2M, and even studio apartments go for over $1M. I am happy to see Facebook helping these people. After their mortgage payment, some of these people have so little money left that they have to settle for a 5-series BMW instead of the 7-series that they truly deserve.
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I didn't know there were any. (Score:2)
I guess I assumed they had gentrified the fuck out of the place to get rid of the "normals", you know, like in NYC.
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They did, but now they've discovered that life is rather like this comic [angryflower.com], so they want a select few to come back to flip their burgers and wash their cars for minimum wage.
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But does it miss the point of Silicon Valley driving the minimum wage workers farther and farther away until they quit commuting?
20 million can buy 3 houses in San Fran (Score:1)
Nice try Facebook.
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but is enough to buy one way tickets out of SF for the unwashed masses
Re: 20 million can buy 3 houses in San Fran (Score:2)
Are you saying we should give all of the homeless people there a free bus ticket to Portland?
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Libs and fags are digging their own grave.
You really should do the world a favor and choke on something.
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They think you're a troll, clearly. Just in case you're simply uninformed though; their (and even your) charitable donations are tax-deductible.
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Not true. If you own a home with a mortgage then 99% of the time you can also deduct your charitable giving. True, things might be limited (AMT and the such) but for most people who do itemize your charitable contributions should be 100% deductible.
Me, I'm glad that the AC above is willing to forgo these deductions and to dissuade others so they will pay more than their "fair" share of taxes, leaving less of a residual burden on me.
Look at IRS information on the Standard Deduction (Single $6,300, married $1
$18.5M to fund affordable housing initiatives (Score:2)
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2011/09/19/zoning-laws-are-strangling-silicon-valley/ [forbes.com]
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I did some searching and found that San Jose restricts building height, which limits density.
If you read the article all the way to the end, the author updated his article that the building height in San Jose is restricted by the local airport, bedrock incapable of supporting taller buildings and an active earthquake zone.
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I read to the end and his post-script about those factors seemed more speculation than anything.
The 22-story height limit is set by the FAA due to air traffic patterns around the airport. Bedrock might be speculation. The earthquake zone is not speculation. The epicenter for the Loma Pieta earthquake in 1989 is 20 miles away. The epicenter for the Alum Rock earthquake a few years ago is five miles away. The San Andreas fault line — the Big One to send California real estate into the ocean that I've been waiting for 30+ years — is around here somewhere.
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It must be impossible to devise more sophisticated engineering for taller buildings...
Especially if they're too heavy.
http://sf.curbed.com/2016/8/9/12416702/millennium-tower-tilting-sinking-sf-building [curbed.com]
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Regarding earthquakes there are tall buildings in lots of earthquake zones around the world.
Most of those locations don't have an FAA-imposed height restriction. No one is advocating the removal of the San Jose International Airport. Remove the airport, tall buildings will sprout up. I suspect the residents of the old neighborhoods that got removed for the runaway expansion in the 1960's and the noise control zone in the 1990's will want their property back.
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Imagine what a small number of high rises could mean to the housing market.
Many of which are already coming to the market in downtown San Jose. However, all of it is luxury apartments and condos. Even my 50-year-old apartment complex outside of downtown is marketed as luxury apartments with new exterior paint and landscaping. The rent went up even though a brand new luxury apartment complex opened up down the street.
http://news.theregistrysf.com/residential-projects-taking-downtown-san-jose-vertical/ [theregistrysf.com]
Silly Con Valley (Score:2)
"$625,000 has been assigned to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in schools"
Yeah...because more STEM funding will help the guy living under the bridge near you!
Just more play to force everyone to take CS classes and devalue the skillset.
$20 million? For shame. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's almost nothing.
In the Bay Area where houses go for millions, rent for a single bedroom apartment is over $1600/month. A two bedroom at nearly $2700/month. This will make a few people "lucky" while doing nothing to improve the situation at hand. It'll do nothing to the cost of goods or transportation costs associated with these people.
Most likely a few housing developers and non-profits will absorb the bulk of it. Making for some bullshitty PR that Mark blasts from his own personal soap box.
If he dona
I usually hate on Facebook but this is good. (Score:2)
Like I said - "I usually hate on Facebook but this is good."
Throwing peanuts to the proles? (Score:1)
Like $20 million means anything to Facebook, or would achieve anything?
$20 million for a corp with a $322 bil market cap (Score:1)
Is like less than a nickel from you or I. It's not even a rounding error for them.
They need high-speed rail to the central valley. (Score:2)
Housing is cheap once you get east over the coastal ranges.
Or Facebook could just pay taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, Facebook could just pay taxes like the rest of us do, and contribute as proscribed by established societal norms.
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Head shopping (Score:2)
20 million is pocket change for FB (Score:5, Insightful)
In a strange way this illustrates perfectly what's wrong with the US. If FB would pay taxes and those taxes would go into proper schools, proper healthcare and feasible housing projects this token gesture of over-f*cking-welming 20 million USD wouldn't be necessary.
My 2 Eurocents.
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Housing too expensive? (Score:2)
Build more houses. Not enough room? Relocate.
It's not hard.
Such as citizens out of work due to H1b abuse? (Score:2)
Facebook's support of guest workers helped create the problem.
Perhaps if they were a bit more pro-citizen, they'd not have a problem in Silicon Valley.