The Role of Business in Causing and Solving a Housing Crisis

Amazon in Seattle:

In 2020, Amazon partnered with a nonprofit referred to as Mary’s Place and used some of its own resources to construct a shelter for girls and families experiencing homelessness on its campus in Seattle. Yet critics argued that Amazon’s obvious charity was out of place and that the organisation turned into surely making the hassle worse. Paul Healy and Debora Spar explore the function business performs in addressing unhoused groups within the case “Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary’s Place.€�

Brian Kenny:

When the Klondike Gold Rush swept the state in 1896, the tiny lumber town of Seattle became a bustling town nearly overnight. On the heels of the Gold Rush came a shipbuilding increase, accompanied by way of a post-struggle bust and the first-rate melancholy. Then Boeing to the rescue, as Seattle have become the epicenter of aircraft manufacturing for the United States forces in World War II. Decades later, Boeing handed the baton to Microsoft, and Seattle observed itself at center level for the burgeoning tech growth. In the ensuing years, Seattle might end up the launch pad for other global brands like Starbucks and Nordstrom's. But the biggest by way of a long way is Amazon. Since launching in 1994, Amazon has invested four and a half billion greenbacks inside the town where it presently employs 55,000 humans.

Most towns would like to have an Amazon of their midst, but as the Gold Rush taught us all those years ago, not all the glitters is gold. Today on Cold Call, we welcome professors Paul Healy and Debora Spar to talk about their case, “Hitting Home, Amazon and Mary's Place.€� I'm your host, Brian Kenny, and that is Cold Call on the HBR podcast community. Paul Healy's research covers a variety of topics inclusive of white-collar crime, governance, business ethics, and financial analysis. Debora Spar research problems of gender and generation and the interaction between technological exchange and broader social structures. Welcome each. It's high-quality to have both of you right here.

Paul Healy:

So my interest inside the case become exposing our students to the question of homelessness within the country and around this query of fairness which you raised. My feel is that maximum of our college students haven't spent a number of time considering it. And so I thought that a case like this can be a superb manner for them to begin to consider what their responsibilities are, how do companies they paintings for, what are their obligations and actually how do we as a society address this hassle, this homelessness that seems to be so intractable inside the United States.

So what would I ask? I think I may start clearly via asking college students, does every body realize someone who has been homeless in some unspecified time in the future of their lifestyles? And then I suppose I might really need to start through digging into this question, why is homelessness such an intractable problem within the United States? And get the students to start thinking about that question, what reasons it? Why is it we don't appear so that you can get our hands round fixing it?

Debora Spar:

Well, it's so thrilling now because we wrote it more than one years in the past and right across the same time, Paul and I have been also working together on what has grow to be a brand new required route within the first 12 months curriculum on the social cause of the company. What that direction is surely about is probing the boundaries among the firm and the state. So what's the proper role of the company in society and what sort of property do firms carry to assault societal issues, and what is an appropriate position of the kingdom? And I assume this case even more so than I might've imagined at the start, it hits that nail proper on the head because I think my starting query would be something, and I would possibly body it extra cynically than Paul due to the fact he is a much less cynical man or woman than I am. I would in all likelihood ask something like, "Why in heaven's name is Amazon running on homelessness?" Which historically has been an problem that groups worried approximately and church buildings involved approximately and governments worried approximately. But you do not think about a delivery enterprise being worried in homelessness. So I assume it actually blows open this difficulty of: what need to companies be doing and the way should we as residents and consumers, how must we think about a business enterprise like Amazon while it receives worried in a problem like homelessness?