YouTube CEO, Google.org give $1.35 million for homelessness | Creator: JOSH EDELSON | Credit: AFP/Getty Images
Mercury News • Nov. 21, 2019 • By Marisa Kendall
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Google.org on Thursday announced a $1.35 million donation to help the homeless and launch a new media campaign to spread awareness about the homelessness crisis sweeping Bay Area cities.
Google.org, the internet search giant’s philanthropic arm, will contribute $850,000 as part of the $1 billion Google committed to housing in June. Wojcicki and her husband, Dennis Troper, will contribute $500,000. The money will go to Hamilton Families, a nonprofit that has been serving homeless and at-risk families in San Francisco for almost three decades.
“Sometimes the scale of an issue can make us feel like it’s impossible to solve,” Wojcicki said during a media event at Hamilton Families Shelter in San Francisco. “And even though we know it’s important, we wind up doing nothing because it feels overwhelming for us. The work at Hamilton Families shows how we can make a difference in a tangible way, one family at a time.”
The grant will be used for a variety of services, from providing emergency shelter and meals, to offering transitional housing, to paying for rent assistance that helps families stay in their homes and avoid homelessness. In a unique twist, the funding also will help launch a documentary series and a podcast focusing on the stories of families that use Hamilton’s services.
Over the course of a year, the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) will produce a three-part YouTube documentary and BAYCAT, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that focuses on diverse storytelling, will produce a three-part podcast. The goal is to break misconceptions about homelessness by telling the real, relatable stories of families who are living without a home or are at risk of losing their home. A YouTube employee will spend at least an hour a week helping with the projects.
BAYCAT also will create short promotional videos for Hamilton Families as a way to help the organization — which has no marketing or advertising budget and one staff member to handle communications — garner support from the community.
Next year, Wojcicki plans to organize a day for YouTube employees to volunteer with Hamilton Families.
On Thursday, Hamilton Families Interim CEO Brian Stanley thanked Wojcicki and Google.org for their efforts.
“Make no mistake, we at Hamilton know that family homelessness is a solvable challenge in our community,” he said. “It will take partnerships like this one to help us redefine what is possible in helping families stabilize their lives and move them forward. And it will take leadership of people like Susan and organizations like Google to get there.”
Volunteers counted more than 8,000 homeless residents in San Francisco during the city’s January homeless count — up 17 percent from two years ago. Google is often blamed for exacerbating the problem by pumping the region full of high-paying jobs — critics say those workers drive up demand for housing, which leads to increased prices and the displacement of residents who can’t afford to pay a premium. Such conditions make it easier for families to end up homeless and more difficult for them to return to a home once they land on the streets, activists say.
Google is one of several local tech companies that have pledged large sums to fight the region’s housing crisis. The search giant’s $1 billion contribution, which encompasses money and large swaths of real estate the company hopes to use for housing, also includes $50 million for nonprofits fighting homelessness. Prior to Thursday’s announcement, Google dipped into that $50 million to give $1.5 million to the local Salvation Army, $150,000 to the Community Services Agency in Mountain View and $1 million to LifeMoves in San Jose.