On Tuesday, Airbnb announced its donation of $5 million to help San Francisco’s homeless population, making it the largest donation from the company to its hometown.
According to a report by the city and county of San Francisco, the city had almost 7,000 homeless residents including the general street and shelter count in 2017. This is an increase of over 4 percent since the 2015 count.
“Over the next three years, Airbnb will commit $5 million to address the homelessness crisis in San Francisco,” Airbnb said in a blog post published Tuesday. “This is our hometown and this is our shared responsibility.”
The announcement comes after San Francisco residents voted to implement a “homelessness tax” on big businesses housed in the city. Proposition C taxes gross receipts for businesses with over $50 million in gross annual receipts and payroll expenses for certain businesses with over $1 billion in gross annual receipts.
Proposition C was not well received by tech companies in the city including Salesforce and Twitter, both which fought to block the legislation.
Airbnb has not specified how the multi-million dollar donation will be distributed but vowed to share more about how the funds will be used in the upcoming months.
