Amazon is putting a homeless shelter inside its new Seattle office building

pulse

May 10, 2017 6:56 PM

Amazon will soon break ground on a new office building near its Seattle headquarters. About half of the six-story space will turn into a homeless shelter.

A rendering of the Amazon's new Seattle office building (right) that the company will share with a homeless shelter facility.

In 2016, Amazon bought an old motel in downtown Seattle, Washington, and turned it into a temporary shelter for the homeless.

The lease only extends through October 2017, when the building will be demolished to make way for two new Amazon office towers. But now, Amazon will give the shelter a permanent home.

On May 10, the company announced it will devote half of one of the six-story office buildings to the shelter, called Mary's Place. Construction on the two towers will start this fall, and they're set to open by 2020.

The project — which will cost tens of millions of dollars — is one of Amazon's biggest

Seattle is suffering from a homelessness crisis, which led the city's mayor to declare a state of emergency in 2015. More than 10,000 people are homeless in Seattle's King County area, with over 4,000 living on the streets, the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness estimated in a 2016 report.

Moving Mary's Place into its new office building could help Amazon's reputation, especially in Seattle. In recent years, anti-gentrification activists have criticized the company for driving up real estate costs and making downtown less diverse. When Amazon's new 10 million-square-foot campus opens by 2020, it will take up 15% of Seattle's inventory.

pulse