With a shortage of units available in California’s Silicon Valley and a proposed expansion of its headquarters likely to increase housing demand in the area, Facebook is taking matters into its own hands. According to the Wall Street Journal, the social media giant intends to build 1,500 housing units near its base that will be available for the public to rent.
The new housing complex will be situated on land in Menlo Park, California that Facebook already owns and coincides with the company’s aggressive expansion plans that will see more than six thousand employees hired in the near future. However, Fortune reported that this influx of new employees will also lead to the region’s already high real estate prices to soar even further. Demand in Silicon Valley, home to some of the world’s most notable technology companies, far outstrips supply
“There is a lack of housing in the area,” John Tenanes, Facebook’s head of real estate told the WSJ. “The intent here is to make an impact … it’s to try something new and something bold and to try to make a difference.”
Plans for the project have yet to be finalized with Facebook expected to outsource the construction out to a third party. In addition to the housing being made available to rent to the general public, the company will also set aside 15 percent of the units for low- or middle-income families. Even with this gesture, many locals are not in favor of Facebook’s expansion plans.
“We’re on the verge of transforming this area into a superrich, exclusive series of company towns,” said Steve Schmidt, Menlo Park’s former mayor explained to the newspaper. “We want a more orderly and balanced kind of growth. What we’d like to see is that the housing be built first.”
Research from the California Employment Development Department shows that San Francisco, San Mateo County and Santa Clara County, where Silicon Valley is located, added nearly 400,000 new jobs during the past five years. In the same time frame, only 58,000 new housing units were built which has exacerbated the region’s real estate shortage.
