A San Francisco tech billionaire known for giving substantial donations to a Bay Area children’s hospital and local schools is now assisting Hawaii in its housing crisis.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, and his wife Lynne, a well-known philanthropist, recently announced a donation of 282 acres to the nonprofit Hawaii Island Community Development Corporation (HICDC).
The land donation to the Hilo-based nonprofit organization is to help low-income and moderate-income residents in Hawaii, who are facing some of the highest housing costs in the nation, according to a news release. The development begins with a 43-unit affordable housing project at Ouli on Hawaii Island.
“Hawaii has the most expensive housing prices in the United States because we have failed to sufficiently build homes for our residents. Our current housing shortage has led to a crisis of increasing homelessness and migration to the mainland which threatens our ‘ohanas and way of life across Hawaii,” the office of Gov. Josh Green said on its website.
The project is intended to support “self-help housing, turnkey single-family-for-sale housing and potentially low-rise multifamily housing,” the news release said — plus parks, community spaces and open spaces. The land donation is paired with an additional $7 million to assist with site planning and infrastructure development.
HICDC Executive Director Keith Kato said that 30% of the nearby Waimea community are renters and that 10% of those renters use over half of their income for rent.
“That’s scary and simply not sustainable,” he said in the news release.
The HICDC has already developed nearly 900 affordable housing units on Hawaii Island, according to the news release.
The self-help, affordable housing program assists homebuyers by financing through the government or “conventional lending services.” From there, households help build the home from the ground up.
Benioff has made several charitable donations over the past several years, including a previous $1 million gift to HICDC and an $18 million to support Bay Area schools in 2020.
“Keith Kato and the wonderful team at HICDC have been supporting families in Hawaii with affordable rentals for seniors and self-help housing for decades,” Lynne and Marc Benioff wrote in the release. “We are so thankful for the work they do on behalf of this community that we have been blessed to be part of for many years, and we are happy to be able to support it in this way.”
