Amazon is taking its next step after the collapse of We Are In, a private-sector group focused on homelessness that Amazon had backed along with other big names like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ballmer Group and Microsoft.
The company is announcing $9 million in donations to homelessness service providers in King County, the second-largest amount it has provided in a single year after its investment into the Mary’s Place Family Center, a 200-person family shelter downtown, which opened in 2020.
“It signals the urgency we feel around addressing homelessness,” said Alice Shobe, global director of Amazon Community Impact. “This is another step after We Are In.”
Amazon had contributed $500,000 to We Are In, an organization created in 2020 to be the private-sector counterpart to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. We Are In funneled millions from philanthropies and corporations toward the authority’s signature project, Partnership for Zero.
They were attracted to the idea that Partnership for Zero could create a blueprint for ending street-level homelessness by focusing on downtown Seattle first. Staff who had been homeless themselves would work one-on-one to help navigate people off the street directly into permanent housing using federal rent vouchers.
But the project was slow to show results. After former Regional Homelessness Authority CEO Marc Dones, the project’s chief architect, resigned in May 2023, the authority shut down the project in September.
Shobe said that was a good decision.
“It’s important to try new and creative solutions. And it’s important to call it quickly when it’s not working,” Shobe said. “I think we came together as a region and realized that the investment wasn’t producing the results that we had hoped collectively, and we didn’t belabor the point.”
Shobe said risky bets like Partnership for Zero and We Are In will remain a part of Amazon’s portfolio of investments to address homelessness and housing.
“The private sector has an opportunity to move quickly, more quickly than government, and to take some risks trying new things,” Shobe said.
Other We Are In former funders said they are assessing where to put their money next. Ballmer Group said it may consider funding the Regional Homelessness Authority’s budget directly.
Adam Sedo, a spokesperson for Amazon, said the company didn’t do that in this case because the authority is in the midst of a leadership transition and it has long-term relationships with the organizations it funds.
The bulk of Amazon’s portfolio includes $635 million that Amazon has committed for affordable housing in the Puget Sound region since 2021.
Amazon’s $9 million donation includes $6 million to Mary’s Place, the region’s largest family shelter provider, most of which will go toward building a 200-bed family shelter and 90 units of affordable housing in Burien. The remaining $3 million will go toward operating expenses for five homeless housing or service providers, who had reached out to Amazon noting that their operating costs from insurance to staffing have increased.
“We just wanted to make sure that we weren’t losing any of our existing capacity in the region,” Shobe said.
