Facebook power couple donates millions to aid Bay Area housing troubles

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is donating $3.6 million to housing solution centers in Palo Alto and Berkeley

Facebook power couple donates millions to aid Bay Area housing troubles
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, headed by Dr. Priscilla Chan and her husband, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will donate $3.6 million to help ease the worsening housing crisis of the Bay Area, according to the Mercury News.

The Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto (CLSEPA) will receive $3.1 million, while the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley will be given $500,000.

“Ensuring that people of all income levels can live and work in our communities is important to advancing human potential and promoting equal opportunity, the mission that guides our work,” said David Plouffe of the initiative’s policy and advocacy effort in a statement. “In the Bay Area, few challenges are greater than the need for affordable housing. It’s an issue affecting many of the local schools we work with, where too many students and their families are struggling to stay in their homes and neighborhoods, and recruiting and retaining top teachers is a challenge.”

The grants will be given over the course of three years. CLSEPA expects an additional 2,500 residents will be helped by the aid, which will also enable them to hire five more lawyers to work on housing, immigration and economic advancement.

“Housing is on the tip of everyone’s tongue in the Bay Area,” Daniel Saver, senior staff attorney at CLSEPA, told the Mercury News. “It’s not just a housing crisis that we have; we have a displacement disaster on our hands. We’re bleeding people out of our communities every single day.”


Related stories:
Breaking even in expensive markets taking even longer than before
Sacramento explores ways to solve homelessness with MicroPAD