What happens when thousands of good jobs suddenly appear in your neighborhood, but you don’t have the skills to get hired? It’s as if a UFO full of money landed in your backyard, but the cash is locked in another dimension. Now imagine the backyard is Menlo Park, California and the UFO is Facebook’s headquarters.
Today, Facebook set aside $20 million for affordable housing and economic opportunity in Menlo Park, where the median home price is approaching $2 million. For every 25 new jobs in the area, only one home gets built, according to data from San Mateo County. The tech boom is shadowed by a housing crisis, and a rent spike that makes life tough for the locals.
Plus, California’s proposition 13 keeps taxes so low on existing properties that it makes sense for Menlo Park’s homeowners to keep homes forever, even after moving out. This exacerbates the low housing supply, and drives up home values even further.
Facebook is stepping in to help out. And while most of the $20 million will go to housing-related projects, some of it will go to job-training programs. The idea is to build affordable homes so people with different incomes can live in the same community, and at the same time give local working-class folks the training they need so they can eventually hit the ground running as new-hires at Facebook or other Silicon Valley tech companies. This is exciting stuff, and it means that some locals will have a better shot at enjoying the bounty in their own backyard.
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