

Google Invests $86 Million In Low-Income Housing - rafaelc
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/30/google-invests-86-million-in-low-income-housing/

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cschneid
I think there's a corporate equivalent of godwin's law. "The chance of a
company turning into a bank is proportional to how big it is".

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_pius
I prefer an analog of Zawinski's Law here:

"Every company attempts to expand until it can make loans."

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SandB0x
Maybe it's more like Greenspun's tenth rule: Any sufficiently large
organisation contains an ad-hoc, informally specified, [bug-ridden]
implementation of a bank.

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chunkbot
This includes all the large banks and financial services firms (Bank of
America, Citi, AIG, etc.), which to me all feel like ad-hoc, informally-
specified, bug-ridden implementations of half of a bank.

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ronnier
This reminds me of an article I came across on HN a couple of months ago:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-
murder-mystery/6872/)

"Why is crime rising in so many American cities? The answer implicates one of
the most celebrated antipoverty programs of recent decades."

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philwelch
Spoiler alert: When you tear down the projects and move everyone into the
suburbs, the gangs go with them.

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ahi
$86,000,000 / 480 units = $179,000/unit ?! Sounds like someone is getting
ripped off. My guess it's the government with the low income housing tax
credit.

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qeorge
You'd be surprised. Its been a while since I checked, but in 2003 it cost
~$140k to build a Habitat house in Winston-Salem, NC, not including the cost
of the land.

"Low-income" shouldn't mean shitty. Good construction is expensive, even on
relatively small buildings.

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noja
Does the typical American house have "good construction" though? Or does it
vary by state.

(In Europe construction seems to be extremely good quality, I'd like a
comparison.)

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ctkrohn
Does anyone know which part of Google organized the deal? The original press
release is unclear. Google has a decent-sized treasury department; after all,
they have billions of dollars of cash that needs a high-yielding home. Perhaps
they viewed this as just a plain old investment.

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ryanmickle
Maybe Google can actually pull off free wi-fi, unlike its attempts in San
Francisco.

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_pius
I think this may be a smart move. It works from a charitable perspective, but
it's also strategic for Google to keep an eye on the other side of the digital
divide as more and more low-income households become wired.

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patrickgzill
Will they wire it up with gigabit fiber to each unit?

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earl
For a corporation with money to invest, housing isn't such a bad thing.
There's a reason Metlife build stuytown.

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aresant
Smart way to combat some of the recent PR trouble they've stumbled into with
what clearly falls into the investment diversification category.

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myth_drannon
Charity write-off.

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donaldc
This is not the worst way to spend money, but really, if Google doesn't need
the money for its business, it should just pay it back to its shareholders in
the form of either stock buybacks or dividends.

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donaldc
I stand by this comment.

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acconrad
Wow, this screams "Philanthropic PR stunt to get people to forget they hated
us for killing net neutrality with Verizon."

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pavs
They killed net neutrality? When did the bill pass? I must have missed it.

