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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.
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.
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.
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