Amazon puts capital toward affordable housing development at Metro stations
Bethesda Metro by angela n. licensed under Creative Commons.
Amazon and Metro announced Wednesday that Amazon will put $125 million in below-market financing toward affordable housing development at Metro stations. The goal is to build 1,000 affordable, transit-accessible units over the next five years, according to a press release.
“Housing and transit are the first- and second-largest expenses for most households in America, and Amazon’s funding will expedite affordable housing near transit reducing costs for both, while supporting families with long-term financial stability,” said Amazon Head of Community Development, Catherine Buell, in a press release. (Disclosure: Buell is on GGWash’s Board of Directors, but had no input into this article.)
Financing for transit-oriented development will be available to developers who have joint agreements with Metro. Joint development sites currently exist at:
- Grosvenor-Strathmore
- New Carrollton
- College Park
- Takoma
- West Hyattsville
- West Falls Church
- White Flint
- Bethesda
The Post reported this morning that some developers at these sites say Amazon’s funding will help projects that include below-market housing get off the ground years sooner than they could have otherwise.
Despite low ridership during the pandemic, Bisnow reported in April that Metro said work at these sites hadn’t slowed, and the agency aims to lock in 20 such joint agreements with developers over the next decade.
This round of financing is part of Amazon’s $2 billion Housing Equity Fund, which the company launched in January. Other projects under that umbrella include Crystal House, an 825-unit apartment building that Amazon helped the nonprofit Washington Housing Conservancy purchase to preserve affordable housing.
Amazon’s fund is an effort to stem the region’s housing shortage and associated affordability crisis: The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments estimated in 2019 that the region will need 320,000 new housing units by 2030, and unmet demand has sent prices sky-high. Amazon’s new headquarters in Arlington has intensified the problem as the promise of thousands of jobs in the area has spiked demand for housing.
The Housing Equity Fund is targeted toward households making between 30% and 80% of the area median income, which in the Washington region is currently less than $79,600 for a family of four.