Airbnb to invest $25m in affordable housing projects

US: Airbnb is pledging $25m to invest in projects aiming to support, build and preserve affordable rental housing in California, by launching a new pilot programme.

Focusing on the Bay Area and Los Angeles County, the Community Impact Investing programme, will work in partnership with RBC Global Asset Management. It will join forces with local lenders to inject the investment in a fixed-income strategy that will benefit the aforementioned communities in California.

The investments must fulfil at least one of the following requirements: supporting access to affordable homeownership for low-to-moderate income households, preserving or increasing access to affordable rental housing and workforce housing opportunities, financing meaningful infrastructure initiatives in designated areas, supporting small businesses that serve the community, creating jobs or delivering more goods and services to residents.

As well as Airbnb, other tech firms such as Google and Microsoft have pledged significant funds to solve the housing problems across the country.

The former announced it would be investing $1 billion to build housing in Bay Area, and the latter injected $500 million in funding to create and preserve affordable housing in Seattle area in January.

For more information, visit the Airbnb website here.