“In recent years, our region hasn’t built enough housing for the people who live here,” Microsoft executives Amy Hood and Brad Smith said in a blog post. Since 2011, job growth in the region has been 21 percent while housing construction growth has trailed at 13 percent. “The gap between job growth and housing growth has been even greater in the suburban cities around Seattle than in Seattle itself,” the blog post said. Microsoft planned to make $225 million available at below-market rates to subsidize preservation and construction of middle-income housing, initially targeting six cities east of Seattle and Lake Washington. “With these and similar investments, it’s possible to lend money, accelerate progress, be repaid and then lend this money again,” Hood and Smith said.

Source: The Guardian January 17, 2019 09:56 UTC