Washington Business Spring 2019 | Washington Business | Page 16

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Of Note
Microsoft Announces $500 million Investment, New
Partnership to Tackle Housing Crisis
To help address the
Ensuring a Healthy Community:
Puget Sound region’s
The Need for Affordable Housing
housing affordability
crisis, Microsoft put
its weight and $500
million behind finding
solutions to address
the growing challenge
f a c i n g l ow- i n c o m e
families.
Microsoft President
Brad Smith announced
the pledge at a Jan. 17 news conference. It’s the largest in the com-
pany’s 44-year history, according to The Seattle Times. The paper’s
editorial board called the pledge “unprecedented, magnanimous and
impactful.”
In a blog post announcing the donation, Smith said: “It’s an amaz-
ing place to call home and it’s a community that has always helped
nurture Microsoft’s success. But the Puget Sound area’s growth has
also created new challenges. In recent years, our region hasn’t built
enough housing for the people who live here. Since 2011, jobs in the
region have grown 21 percent, while growth in housing construction
has lagged at 13 percent. This gap in available housing has caused
housing prices to surge 96 percent in the past eight years, making the
Greater Seattle area the sixth most expensive region in the United
States.”
The $500 million will be deployed as follows:
• $225 million in loans to builders at below-market interest rates;
• $250 million to support low-income housing in King County;
and,
• $25 million in grants to services that support low-income and
homeless residents.
“Our success has been fueled by the support of this region,” Smith
said. “We want our success to support the region in return.”
The Puget Sound region’s economy has diversified and expanded significantly,
bringing new jobs, people and prosperity. But area growth has also created new
challenges. In recent years, the region hasn’t built enough housing for the
people who live there.
Microsoft’s Approach Regional Collaboration
Microsoft is committing $500 million to
advance affordable housing solutions,
putting this money to work with loans and
grants to accelerate the construction of more
affordable housing across the region. The mayors of nine of the largest cities
outside Seattle – Auburn, Bellevue, Federal
Way, Issaquah, Kent, Kirkland, Redmond,
Renton and Sammamish – pledged to
take vital and concrete steps to address
the affordable housing crisis. Ideas under
consideration include:
• $225 million at lower than market rate
returns to inject capital to catalyze
the preservation and construction of
middle-income housing in the eastside
of King County
• $250 million at market rate returns to
support low-income housing across the
entire Puget Sound region
•
$25 million in philanthropic grants to
address homelessness in the greater
Seattle region
•
•
•
•
Changes in zoning to increase the
pipeline of housing in selected areas
Providing desirable public land near
transit locations
Addressing permitting processes
and fees
Creating tax incentives for developers
For more information, please visit news.microsoft.com/affordable-housing
16 association of washington business
Edmund Schweitzer III, Founder
of SEL, Inducted into National
Inventors Hall of Fame
E d m u n d O.
Schweitzer
III, founder
of Schweitzer
Engineering
Laboratories
(SEL), will be
inducted into
t h e Na t i o n a l
Inventors Hall
of Fame for his
innovations in
digital protective relay systems that “rev-
olutionized the performance of electric
power systems with computer-based pro-
tection and control equipment, making a
major impact in the electric power utility
industry.”
“When we come up with a new idea
and it really works better than anything
before and it’s maybe cheaper, easier to
use... when we’re really making a differ-
ence for people, that’s what I enjoy the
most,” Schweitzer said in a video intro-
duction to this year’s National Inventors
Hall of Fame inductees.
Schweitzer, who serves as president,
chairman of the board and chief technol-
ogy officer at the company, started SEL
in a garage in Pullman in 1982 after earn-
ing his doctorate at Washington State
University in 1977. The company is now
employee-owned and is still innovating
ways to make electric power safer, more
reliable and more economical.
SEL products can be found in 163
countries around the world, protecting
feeders, motors, transformers, capacitor
banks, transmission lines and other power
apparatus. Its customers include utility
companies, mines, factories, hospitals,
universities and data centers.
The induction will take place May 2
in Washington, D.C., in cooperation with
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Schweitzer will join such noted inven-
tors as Orville and Wilbur Wright, Eli
Whitney, Samuel Morse, Enrico Fermi
and Rudolf Diesel.