In 2019, when Meta was still known as Facebook, the company pledged $1 billion to support affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area, responding to mounting criticism over the impact of tech industry growth on local housing costs. The influx of highly paid tech workers had driven up prices and displaced many long-time residents, putting pressure on companies like Meta and Google to help address the crisis. That same year, Google also announced its own $1 billion commitment to tackle the region’s housing shortage.
Meta’s plan was ambitious: over ten years, it would invest in building and funding affordable housing to create up to 20,000 new units for teachers, nurses, first responders, and other essential workers. The initiative included a $225 million land pledge and the allocation of $193 million from a proposed $775 million fund for new construction. Early efforts showed promise, with the company’s $150 million Community Housing Fund providing low-interest loans to developers and supporting 1,500 units for extremely low-income residents.
However, by late 2022, the program had lost momentum. According to internal sources and reporting from The Mercury News, Meta’s housing initiative slowed to a near halt, with the team overseeing the project shrinking to just one person before that final employee was laid off in 2023.
Recommended For You
While the program was never formally canceled, it became a shadow of its original vision. Although Meta maintains that it intends to fulfill its commitments by 2029, most of the work has been reassigned to outside consultants, and progress since 2022 has been minimal.
Financial documents and internal reports suggest that little has changed since the funding for new construction was halted. The company’s 2024 annual impact report was almost identical to the previous year’s, with only minor updates such as the completion of a branding campaign and an increase in webinars hosted with nonprofit and government partners, from nine in 2023 to 13 in 2024.
Despite these activities, no significant new housing projects have been initiated, and the $225 million worth of land donated for residential construction in Menlo Park remains undeveloped, with no construction timetable provided.
Meta’s spokesperson, Tracy Clayton, emphasized the company’s investments in affordable housing development, teacher housing, grant funding, policy support, land development and modular housing, telling GlobeSt.com that “there is still much work ahead.” She reported that 19 projects had been funded, resulting in 2,019 units of housing.
However, a review of the project list showed that much of the spending occurred before the billion-dollar pledge, including an initial $75 million fund established in 2016 to create affordable homes near Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters.
When pressed for details about concrete progress since 2022, the tech giant did not provide further information.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
