Amazon is donating $9 million to six organizations in the Seattle area that are working to address the needs of people experiencing homelessness, the company announced Thursday.
The organizations include:
- Mary’s Place: Amazon is giving $6 million to the nonprofit to support its ongoing operations and to provide funding toward a new development of co-located affordable housing and family shelter and services in Burien, Wash. The Burien project will replace an existing shelter and provide more than 200 beds of emergency family shelter, housing, outreach, and prevention services for families, and 90 units of permanently affordable housing to be developed by Mercy Housing Northwest.
- Plymouth Housing: Amazon is giving $2 million to the nonprofit to support a recent spike in demand for the organization’s services, which include working to eliminate homelessness and addressing its causes by preserving, developing, and operating safe, quality, supportive housing.
- The YMCA: Amazon is donating $250,000 to support youth homelessness programs through the nonprofit’s Y Social Impact Center, which offers same day drop-in shelters and transitional housing.
- The YWCA: Amazon is giving $250,000 to support ongoing interventions, including emergency shelter and temporary housing, permanent housing, and housing support services.
- YouthCare: Amazon is giving $250,000 to support work work to end youth homelessness, including ongoing housing programs, community living, shelter, and independent living.
- Friends of Youth: Amazon is donating $250,000 to help bolster ongoing services in and around the organization’s 7,000-square-foot space in Kirkland, Wash., which will replace the current young adult emergency shelter known as “The Landing” in Redmond, Wash.
The $9 million in donations is the largest cash donation in this space so far by Amazon. Supporting such organizations and services is part of the tech giant’s two-pronged approach to addressing the homelessness crisis in the Seattle region and elsewhere where the company has a significant footprint.
Amazon has also invested $600 million to build 6,000 affordable homes in the Seattle region as part of its Housing Equity Fund. With the addition of funding and housing units across its hubs in Northern Virginia and Nashville, Tenn., the total is approaching Amazon’s $2 billion goal — two years ahead of schedule, according to a report this week in the Puget Sound Business Journal.
Previously: Inside Amazon’s new 8-floor family homeless shelter attached to its Seattle HQ