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Facebook Commits Millions to Help Silicon Valley's Have-Nots (fortune.com)
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.
Would this be someone who lives in a $200,000 shack with an old CRT television and a Windows laptop?
I guess I assumed they had gentrified the fuck out of the place to get rid of the "normals", you know, like in NYC.
Nice try Facebook.
When you consider that $18.5M buys maybe 5 single-family home sized lots in the area then it's hard to take the plan seriously.
"$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.
They think you're a troll, clearly. Just in case you're simply uninformed though; their (and even your) charitable donations are tax-deductible.
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 donated $2 bn I'd say it was genuine. This is just horseshit, it's like me getting patted on the back for donating $2 to my local charity. Though that $2 I donate probably has a higher marginal value to me than $20 million does to Mark.
Nope. Tax-deductible donations are only useful when you itemize your deductions; most people don't itemize their deductions, because they haven't made enough donations that qualify.
Secondly, such deductions are limited.
Thirdly, the government is STILL taking my resources purportedly to work on this very same aspect of society, and they are never getting anywhere. They are squandering my resources on what? They should just throw in the towel, and let actually competent, productive, profitable organizations like Facebook squander their own money on these things.
Like I said - "I usually hate on Facebook but this is good."
Don't step on the baby.
Which isn't worth it - if your motivation is a tax write off.
And as far as Facebook here, this is just a PR stunt (18 million is chump change to them) to distract people from all the bad press they've been getting for the fake news they've been hosting and profiting from.
Like $20 million means anything to Facebook, or would achieve anything?
Is like less than a nickel from you or I. It's not even a rounding error for them.
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 $12,600)
https://www.irs.com/articles/2016-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions
And IRS form 1040 A where you place your itemized deductions
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040sa.pdf
Form 1040 A gives you the option of deducting your home mortgage interest and such (lines 10-14) plus your gifits to charity (lines 16-19) in addition to several local taxes (state income taxes, property taxes... lines 6-8).
Housing is cheap once you get east over the coastal ranges.
Or, Facebook could just pay taxes like the rest of us do, and contribute as proscribed by established societal norms.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
SV is expensive and Facebook needs somewhere for all of its visa workers to live.
Facebook Commits Millions In An Attempt To Fool Everyone They're Not Evil Bastards
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Build more houses. Not enough room? Relocate.
It's not hard.
It's good to see someone reaching out to the Doctors, lawyers, and entry level engineers in Silicone Valley. THey should help them find third jobs as a sustainable solution so they can still pay rent in this ridiculously overpriced sector.
turned out half of them were facebook
employees
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.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.