All Hands on Deck: The Increasing Role of Tech Companies in the Bay Area Housing Solution
By: Fahad Qurashi
Tags: Tech, Tech Companies, Bay Area, Housing, Event Recap

At the end of April, Urban Lands Institute (ULI) Silicon Valley coordinated a panel representing tech workers, tech companies, and community development planners to discuss how tech companies are responding to the Bay Area housing crisis and examine the increasingly relevant role of tech companies in creating Bay Area housing solutions.

Perils of Prosperity and Seeking Common Good

Libby Seifel, Founder and President of Seifel Consulting, moderated the panel, consisting of representatives from Facebook, the City of Mountain View, and TechEquity Collaborative. Wayne Chen, Assistant Community Development Director for the City of Mountain View covered key goals for Mountain View’s housing strategy:

1) Promoting strategies to protect vulnerable populations and preserve the socioeconomic and cultural diversity of the community.

2) Improve the quantity, diversity, and affordability of housing, with an added focus on middle income and ownership housing.

In the 12 square miles of Mountain View, there are currently 89,000 jobs, but only 35,000 units of housing. Chen dubbed the demand in housing, lack of production, and balancing the needs of the public vs. private sectors the perils of prosperity.

While the role of tech contributes to the housing challenges prevalent in cities like Mountain View, Chen stressed that is just the tip of the iceberg. He posited that we should be asking questions about the market forces driving social impacts; what are the source of those forces? Who is benefitting from — and harmed by — those forces?

Menka Sethi, Director of Location Strategy at Facebook, discussed the various initiatives that Facebook and their related nonprofit the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are leading to address the “Three P’s of Housing”: Production, Protection, and Preservation. Sethi presented Facebook’s multi-pronged strategy for housing production and policy the region that includes economic opportunity and transportation, as all these core issues are interconnected.

Facebook’s main focuses are supporting on-campus housing for tech workers as well as supporting efforts for teachers. For the past two years, the tech giant has quietly provided 22 teachers with low-cost housing a stone’s throw from its Menlo Park headquarters. By subsidizing local teachers’ rents to make up the difference between what they can afford and market rate, Facebook is making a move to address the housing shortage in its backyard. Additionally, Sethi shared that their team is working with the communities of East Palo Alto and Menlo Park to develop other immediate and long-term housing solutions.

One such long-term strategy is the creation of The Partnership for the Bay’s Future, a coalition of businesses and individuals who have promised to commit $500 million to expand the availability of affordable housing in the Bay Area. This partnership has created an investment fund that will focus on protecting up to 175,000 households and producing thousands of new homes in the five main counties in and around San Francisco, as well as a policy fund to advocate for legislation that protects residents most vulnerable to displacement.

Throughout the conversation, a common theme emerged; both Chen and Sethi emphasized the need for the private sector and the public sector to collectively come to a place of seeking the “common good.”

Me (Fahad Qurashi) speaking on the panel. Left to right: Fahad Qurashi, Menka Sethi, Wayne Chen, and Libby Seifel.

This is where I was able to speak to our expertise, passion, and know-how at TechEquity as we bring together tech workers, tech companies, and communities most impacted by equity issues. As members of the tech community, we believe we are all in this together. We have a responsibility to make sure our industry creates value for the world we live in, starting with the place we call home.

After discussing the toxic narrative that creates an unhealthy and combative environment between tech and community, I was able to offer tangible examples of our core strategies of education, engagement, and advocacy, and why it is so important to engage tech workers. We build bridges from tech to the community, from our efforts on the Fair Chance to Housing Campaign in Alameda County to our advocacy for Prop 13 reform, which aims to fix corporate tax loopholes and reinvest in California’s schools and communities.

In many ways, the TechEquity strategy of creating pathways and opportunities for tech workers and companies to be allies to the community sets the table to find the “common good” in our housing solutions. In many ways, our work is aligned to the comprehensive housing approach of tech companies such as Facebook and local government agencies such as the Community Development for the City of Mountain View, with clear goals to retain community diversity and increase housing options at every level of affordability. This panel discussion was a step in moving from alignment to action collectively, and we should all be encouraged that we are creating space for honest dialogue and transparent conversations.

This program is part of ULI SF’s Housing the Bay initiative and will culminate in their second Housing the Bay Summit on May 10th at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. Join ULI in moving forward with proposals for action to ensure that everyone in the Bay Area can afford to live here.

For more information, please check out: https://sf.uli.org/event/save-date-housing-bay-2019/.