
Amazon is about to host a homeless shelter in its Seattle headquarters - prostoalex
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-headquarters-homeless-shelter-seattle-opening-2019-12
======
RandomGuyDTB
"It's not one entity that's going to solve this," [Hartman] said. "It's not on
corporations. It's not on congregations. It's not on government. It's not on
foundations. It's all of us working together."

While the system (created by governments and corporations) rewards providing
housing priced at however much people will pay we won't see much affordable
housing. Real estate laws do not reward and have not ever rewarded "working
together". If Seattle funneled the money going towards anti-homeless
structures to building municipal housing instead this "homeless crisis" would
be resolved quickly. It wouldn't fix everything and it'd be just as hard for
someone who's both unemployed and homeless to get back on their feet but it
would make it easier for them to stay on their feet.

~~~
BurningFrog
> _While the system (created by governments and corporations) rewards
> providing housing priced at however much people will pay_

But that's not the system!

The 2019 system is that building housing is illegal without very costly and
hard to get permits in most non Texas big cities.

If you could just put up housing on land you own and charge however much
people will pay for it, this housing crisis would quickly be gone!

You can help: [https://yimbyaction.org/give/](https://yimbyaction.org/give/)

~~~
everdev
> If you could just put up housing on land you own and charge however much
> people will pay for it, this housing crisis would quickly be gone!

It's not that simple. Rapidly increasing the housing supply has all kinds of
effects on communities:

* Decreasing the value of nearby homes (supply and demand)

* Increasing traffic and strain on community services like schools

* Environmental impact

* Rapidly changing the demographic and possibly culture of the area

Zoning laws and the permit process exist to help ensure safe buildings but
also to help protect the home value of existing residents.

This makes sense in communities with the infrastructure to support it though
and we definitely should be looking into ways to safely house everyone.

~~~
PlasticTank
> Decreasing the value of nearby homes

People often overlook this point way too quickly, they don't consider people
with mortgages, if you saved up for a house and purchased with a mortgage then
when the flood gates are opened and your house value drops, you now owe more
than your house is worth, not a good position to be in.

~~~
ryanmercer
Historically, homes weren't meant to be purchased for life for the vast
majority of people. In the past few decades people have got in the mindset
"I'm going to live here for at least 2 years, I'll buy a house" and then buy,
sell, buy, sell, buy sell "Hey, property values are up 30%, time to sell and
buy a bigger house!" or "Oooh such and such city/neighborhood sounds cool I'm
bored with this city/neighborhood, time to sell!" type behavior.

If people would go back to purchasing homes with the full intention of staying
there for _decades_ , this wouldn't be an issue for most people.

------
narrator
Though certainly not their aim, this has the unintentional side effect of
reducing the value of surrounding real estate. Thus, Amazon can further expand
their offices to surrounding real estate at a lower cost. The homeless people,
simply by being repulsive, are providing a wholly unintentional benefit to
Amazon's bottom line.

I could imagine that this is a trend that could catch on and become the 21st
century politically correct version of blockbusting [1].

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting)

------
yostrovs
If homelessness was a housing problem, housing the homeless would help. The
real problem is mental issues and addiction to drugs. When society realizes
that and addresses those issues somehow other than offering shelter,
homelessness would be mostly resolved.

~~~
zoul
Having a house helps a lot, we already have data on that:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First)

~~~
yostrovs
What data?

~~~
zoul
There’s a whole _Evidence and outcomes_ section in the Wikipedia article.

------
pnathan
A little context from a local (me).

Amazon is doing this in part because it gets a _ton_ of heat for its part in
the somewhat overheated Seattle land economy. Housing costs post-recession
have skyrocketed and it has reconfigured the local housing system. Too, Amazon
is not particularly known for corporate do-gooding (vs, say, Microsoft,
Boeing, or Alaska Air) - so this shift is welcome. And Mary's Place is
relatively well regarded locally.

Happy to answer any questions from a local techie's perspective.

------
atlasunshrugged
I think this is a great move, I'm currently visiting my folks in Nevada and my
mother works for the State often dealing with Mentally Ill people who also
often become homeless. She was driving me around town showing me what was new
after the few years I've been gone and she took me to the main shelter for
homeless people. I'm used to seeing homeless on the street after living in SF
but it was a good reminder of how many people have to live - and not just
junkies or the usual stereotypes but lots of people who run into hard times,
lose their homes and have to live in their car and then lose that and so many
other ways people end up on the streets in America. I think a homeless shelter
in the campus of Amazon's HQ will probably serve as a grounding experience
like mine for others too and hopefully spur a little additional compassion and
understanding

~~~
greendude29
I think this is a terrible move.

Shelters are NOT a solution to homelessness. This move will give Amazon false
bragging rights to say, hey look, our operational style, not paying taxes, and
lobbying for a society that punishes the poor more than the rich aren't really
that bad because we're helping the homeless.

Even if Amazon is able to put every homeless person in the United States in a
shelter (they certainly can afford it), that would not be a good thing.

That is validating a bifurcated system where we become content with the living
conditions of the poor while excusing those who create the system that creates
those conditions in the first place (Amazon in this case)

~~~
ryanlol
>not paying taxes

How much taxes should Amazon be paying in your opinion?

~~~
monoideism
Vastly, vastly more than zero, which is what they have paid the past few
years.

~~~
sneak
Amazon pays absolutely mind-bogglingly immense amounts of payroll taxes. To
claim that Amazon pays no tax is more than a little bit incorrect.

The people they employ pay income taxes, as well, which come out of Amazon’s
revenue ultimately.

There are many reasons to hate them. Their complying with the tax laws as they
are currently written is not one of them.

~~~
greendude29
> Amazon pays absolutely mind-bogglingly immense amounts of payroll taxes

Payroll taxes and income tax have a different intent, and the money from them
goes to different ends. Paying payroll taxes does not relinquish your duty
towards paying your income taxes and has no relation to the above.

> The people they employ pay income taxes, as well, which come out of Amazon’s
> revenue ultimately.

It is mindboggling to hear that. "Amazon's revenue" is not generated via
magic, but people's work. When someone works for Amazon and gets paid for it,
Amazon is not doing them a favor and giving them a portion of their revenue,
it is the money that solely belongs to the person who earned it.

That person is paying the taxes from their revenue, not Amazon. The person in
this case is taking a cut from their dues for the work they to support society
and the infrastructure that industry (like Amazon) runs on.

Amazon is absolutely skirting its responsibilities by not paying income taxes,
and this should be considered deeply unethical by all.

~~~
sneak
I think you are confusing morals (subjective) and ethics (objective).

Complying with the tax law, as written, is not itself an unethical act.

People disagree on whether or not paying the minimum amount of tax required by
law is moral or not.

I believe that most people generally agree that the tax law’s current angle of
not taxing companies without profits is a reasonable decision.

------
msie
Good luck! Sadly, housing the homeless is not so simple. Some prefer their
tents to the restrictions and type of accommodations offered. I saw this
happen in Vancouver.

------
0x262d
The important context is that inequality driven by Amazon's low wages for non-
programmers and their tax dodging has driven Seattle's homelessness crisis and
they've tried hard to crush every political movement that tries to stop this
(see link), so now they are trying to salvage public perception of their
effects on this so they can more effectively spend money on politics to dodge
more taxes and keep wages low. It is a move that has much more impact on PR
than the specter of homelessness.

[https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/amazon-kshama-sawant-
seattle-...](https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/amazon-kshama-sawant-seattle-city-
council)

~~~
trhway
>inequality driven by Amazon's low wages for non-programmers

i think it is absolutely disingenuous to blame it on corporations playing by
the rules clearly and explicitly established by the society. It is the society
who bears responsibility for the ugly situation that the minimum wage is many
times below living wage. The minimum wage must be at least $30-$50, especially
in the high cost areas. I don't understand why the people at the local
Starbucks who work much harder than me are making on the scale of ten-folds
less. The society explicitly and intentionally maintains that situation by
maintaining the very low minimum wage. The only reason i can find is that the
society seems to want the social darwinism of the 'rat race' and achieves that
by maintaining the large gradient between supposed "losers" and "winners"
(which i think is almost medievally cruel) which powers the miracle of
American economy. Looks like the society is pretty sure that nobody is going
to work hard, or at all, if there were a generous safety net, a minimum wage
allowing for normal life, etc ...

~~~
javagram
> I don't understand why the people at the local Starbucks who work much
> harder than me are making on the scale of ten-folds less. The society
> explicitly and intentionally maintains that situation by maintaining the
> very low minimum wage.

Supply and demand. If starbucks baristas were paid $50/hour think about how
expensive coffees would be. People would either start making their own coffee
at home or buying expensive machines that are still cheaper than $50/hour to
operate.

------
zoul
Nice. How about paying reasonable taxes instead?

~~~
esarbe
Nice idea!

------
mcdermott
I live in Seattle, the homeless problem has absolutely nothing to do with
"affordable housing", that's a lie that they keep repeating. All the homeless
I see are heroine/drug addicts or insane or both. If apartments were just
$500/month they'd still be living outside and committing property crimes/theft
and panhandling for drug money. If the city can't even be honest about the
problem, they'll never solve a thing.

------
vkaku
The first positive thing I've read about this company in years. Tell me
there's no hidden agenda, and I can tell you this company is doing something
right.

------
strickman
Not a good move. If you reward a particular behavior, you will get more of it.

~~~
TheDong
Did you know that we feed prisoners food? Surely that's rewarding the
behaviour of being in prison and thus more people will prefer being in prison
rather than out of it because they get fed.

The proposal is not to give people better houses or more money than they would
have if they were not homeless. It's to raise the floor a little bit such that
they're able to live a little longer and better their search for gainful
employment. Their lives would still be better and more rewarding if they were
able to support themselves and live in a larger home with more money for
incidental expenses.

This is not a "reward" relative to the "reward" of living a self-sustained
life, but rather it's a bit of humanity to make their troubles less so.

I could only see your objection being reasonable if we gave those who were not
gainfully employed more money and better housing than you could gain by being
gainfully employed, at which point sure, why get a job. We clearly don't do
that, or else you'd hear of people quitting their minimum wage jobs to become
homeless and reap the rewards.

For what it's worth, there are several studies and anecdotes which show that
providing homeless with housing and money does result in a larger percentage
of them finding jobs and escaping the viscous cycle of homelessness (who would
have guessed, getting a job and a home is easier when you have a home). The
most referenced of these studies is this one I believe
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2772270](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2772270)

Now, of course, you could say that those studies may not capture everything
perfectly, but at the very least I'd like to convince you that it's not as
cut-and-dry as you seem to think .

~~~
ryanmercer
>Did you know that we feed prisoners food? Surely that's rewarding the
behaviour of being in prison and thus more people will prefer being in prison
rather than out of it because they get fed.

So, I _think_ you said this in sarcasm but there are people that actually try
to get into prison.

Here are some articles:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/jail-getting-arrested-
delibe...](https://www.businessinsider.com/jail-getting-arrested-
deliberately-2018-3)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42057173](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42057173)

[https://www.thespec.com/news-story/4425874-choosing-
prison-w...](https://www.thespec.com/news-story/4425874-choosing-prison-why-
life-behind-bars-seems-better-than-freedom/)

Also, IIRC, on TED Radio Hour in the past month or so one of the speakers was
in prison and said something along these lines (I may be mistaken but I'm
pretty confident he did).

------
GoodJokes
Or they could you know not blackmail the city into not raising its taxes. This
is hugely cynical PR move on its part. Everyone know any one of the top 5
could solve homelessness in their cities if they actually cared about it.
Arguing differently is just being needlessly Naive. Yes, we are all literally
working nihilistic inhumane entities.

------
mathieuh
This is one of the worst failures of capitalism. In order to improve their
social credit, corporations first cause the conditions that lead to homeless
(speculative capitalism) then give with one hand a fraction of what they reap
with the other.

~~~
krapp
If corporations and shareholders are making a profit at it, then by definition
it is a success of capitalism, not a failure.

------
int_19h
Amazon got a _tax refund_ of $129 million this past year from the feds alone.

How many shelters could be operated for a year with that kind of budget?

~~~
c3534l
You're confusing "tax refund" with "tax rebate."

Also, Amazon had carryforward losses, so they paid too much in taxes in prior
years and therefor didn't have to pay taxes this year. Not exactly nefarious,
carryforward losses are an intentional part of the tax code that prevents
companies from paying more in supposed earnings they have on paper that can
never be realized as profit because taxes are based on estimates. Every
business, not just Amazon, get carryforward losses when they overpay in taxes.

Edit: I suppose it's equivalent to say it prevents them from overpaying in
taxes in the future. That might be easier to understand if you consider that
in any given year, a company pays zero in taxes if they don't make money,
regardless of how much money they lose. That timing difference means that the
tax burden changes from year to year as investments in a company are realized
through buying and selling goods. It's a smoothing out of taxes. Instead of
forcing Amazon to structure it's business to always make the same profit each
year, they get to smooth it out over a maximum of a 10 year rolling window.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_operating_loss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_operating_loss)

~~~
int_19h
Yes, you're right, and I got the word wrong - it is a tax rebate.

The point remains that Amazon paid $0 in taxes past year, and actually
received money from the federal government instead.

And no, it's not just because of carryforward losses. It was also because of
the various tax credits, and changes to tax laws in 2017.

------
jorblumesea
> 'it's not on corporations' to solve the homelessness problem

Sure, but corporations (and those who lead them) also lobby local, state and
federal governments for policies that benefit them. They pay for campaigns of
those who would help them out, and sway local and national politics. Sometimes
to no harm, sometimes to immense societal detriment. This last election in
Seattle, Amazon funneled $1.5 million to a political action committee that
backed candidates seen as business friendly. This ended up backfiring, but
it's plainly obvious that entrenched business interests are there and do
manipulate their environment.

Is it that crazy to posit that local property companies are attempting to
manipulate their regulatory environment in their favor?

Seems just as irresponsible to label them as blameless as it is to declare
that they are entirely the problem.

