Amazon’s HQ2 Brings Celebrations, Concerns
By: Claire H.
Amazon announced Tuesday that it will open new headquarters offices in New York City and Northern Virginia, ending more than a year of speculation around the tech giant’s plans.
But while the announcement has been applauded by local and state officials, some residents have taken to social media to express apprehension about the plans, lamenting the impact they anticipate it will have on traffic, rent and cost of living. Activists also worry that the move could displace low income residents, increase homelessness and widen the income gap.
The new headquarters, termed HQ2, will be built in the Long Island City neighborhood of New York, and in Arlington, Virginia, which is next to Washington, D.C. The announcement comes after 238 cities and states vigorously competed for the company’s new office after Amazon announced its plan to open a new headquarters location in September of 2017. Amazon was originally planning to open only one new headquarters office but said Tuesday that opening two locations would allow the company to recruit more talent. The company also announced plans to build an operations center in Nashville, Tennessee.
The decision is a blow to smaller and non-coastal cities that tried to woo the tech company with tax breaks, Twitter accounts and, in one case, cactuses.
The company, which has been criticized in the past for working conditions and recently committed to a company-wide $15 minimum wage, said each headquarters will staff about 25,000 people, vastly outsizing its existing Seattle location, which has about 3,000 employees. The average wage at both headquarters will be over $150,000, the company said.
“This project will spur economic growth, diversify our economy, and help us grow and retain our much sought-after tech talent,” said Brian Ball, Virginia’s secretary of commerce and trade.
Both cities offered Amazon generous tax incentives. The company will get about $1.5 billion in tax incentives from New York state, contingent on the company creating 25,000 jobs there. In Arlington, the company will receive about a half-billion dollars in tax incentives, also contingent on the creation of 25,000 jobs.
The impacts are already being felt: After rumours circulated last week that Amazon would choose New York and Northern Virginia for HQ2, a condo on the market in Northern Virginia increased in price by $20,000, according to The Washington Post. Virginia-based real estate agents are also preparing for higher property prices, reported CNBC. In Long Island City, real estate sales have surged since the public got wind of the HQ2 location. Some real estate agents are selling units off by text message, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Affordable housing is already hard to find in the New York and D.C. areas. More than half of renters in the Washington, D.C. region, including Northern Virginia, are cost burdened, which means that they pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Almost a quarter are severely cost burdened and spend over half their paycheck on rent each month, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute. In Long Island City and surrounding neighborhoods in Queens, the average monthly rent hovers around $3,000, according to Forbes.
