Amazon offers company building as free shelter for Seattle's homeless
File this one under good corporate karma.
Amazon is repurposing a building purchased for its downtown Seattle campus as temporary housing for the city's burgeoning homeless population, Amazon real estate director John Schoettler said in a statement Thursday.
Over the last few months we have worked with Mayor Ed Murray’s office and Mary’s Place – a local Seattle nonprofit that provides housing and career services to homeless families, and one we’ve supported for a number of years – to determine if a building we recently bought could be utilized by Mary's Place as an emergency family shelter until the spring of 2017. Construction on the facility isn’t scheduled until then, and we saw a unique opportunity to help hundreds of homeless women, children and families.
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The nearly 35,000 square-foot building will house about 200 residents and was formerly a Travelodge hotel and college dormitory, the Seattle Times reported.
Rooms in the shelter will be reserved for families with children, as well as their pets. Residents will only be allowed to stay in the shelter at night, but can store possessions in their rooms while at Mary's Place's day shelters, the nonprofit said on its Facebook page.
Families are expected to begin moving in next week, the Times reported.
More than 4,500 people sleep on the streets in and around Seattle each night, a homelessness activism group found in January.
Critics have been quick to point out that Seattle's homelessness crisis can be attributed at least in part to the city's economic boom and subsequent housing shortage, largely due to tech companies including Amazon itself.
Still, Amazon's involvement in the community it calls home has been lauded by some.
“This problem cannot be solved by government by itself. It cannot be solved by nonprofits like Mary’s Place by themselves," Murray told the Seattle Times.
“The fact that Amazon has chosen to be a partner in probably the most difficult crisis the city is facing right now says a lot about their willingness to help us build community and be incredibly caring business partners.”
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Topics Amazon Social Good
Olivia Niland is an Editorial News Intern at Mashable in Los Angeles and a senior digital journalism major at the University of Southern California. She has previously interned with NBC Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter, and USA Today College, and when she isn't working can usually be found concert-going, golfing and exploring.
