Back in his philanthropy era, Mark Zuckerberg made a grand pledge to put $1 billion toward building new housing, to combat the affordability crisis in California that companies like his had contributed to. But that project has quietly been jettisoned, with only a portion of that money put toward housing.

Remember back in 2019, when Zuckerberg was still vaguely liberal and Facebook, having faced a punishing series of privacy scandals, with Cambridge Analytica being the most prominent, was trying to burnish its public image? That was also the year that dozens of states signed on to an antitrust lawsuit that has just this year gotten underway in federal court, and the company was doing everything it could to prove its "good corporate citizen" status.

In June 2019, Google had pledged to put $1 billion toward the housing problem in California. And four months later, Facebook followed suit, saying it was going to be issuing a package of grants aimed at constructing 20,000 new housing units for middle- and lower-income households, totaling $1 billion.

But, fast-forward a few years, and the company now known as Meta has other priorities. The company has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs, Zuckerberg has signaled multiple times that he's willing to change his political stripes to avoid Trump's wrath — including dropping many of Facebook's content moderation policies — even though it isn't saving the company from that aforementioned antitrust trial. And Zuckerberg's own foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, abruptly decided last month to pull funding for a non-profit elementary school that it had helped to found for low-income students in East Palo Alto, for reasons it has yet to justify.

Now, as Bay Area News Group reports, via internal sources at Meta, the project to put $1 billion toward housing is now dead, and no company employees are working on it anymore, with only a fraction of the intended funds having been put to use.

"The program, while never formally canceled, is a shadow of the operation it once was," the news group reports, via its sources. And after it "withered to a one-person operation focused on research and small grants" around 2022, that last person was laid off in 2023.

The housing initiative was intended to last for ten years, and Meta told Bay Area News Group that it still intends to fulfill its commitments by 2029. And, the company suggested that the work is now being done by outside consultants, rather than internal employees.

But as of now, $193 million has been doled out to fund new construction, out of a total $775 million pledged. $150 million of that went to fund low-cost loans for affordable housing projects. And the company donated $225 million worth of land it owned in Menlo Park to be used for residential construction, but that construction has not yet begun and the company has provided no construction timetable to the city. Company sources allegedly provided documentation that the program has been essentially dormant since 2022.

A purported $250 million funding commitment, for a fund aimed at financing mixed-income housing on surplus state land, has allegedly been pulled off the table.

"As an active partner in addressing the region’s housing shortage, Meta has made significant investments in affordable housing development, teacher housing, grant funding, housing policy support, land development and modular housing," the company said in a statement to Bay Area News Group, via spokesperson Tracy Clayton. "There is still much work ahead, but we are proud to join individuals and organizations who started working on these issues long before Meta existed."

Still, with California housing affordability being one of the absolute least concerns of the current administration in Washington, Meta likely wants to put its money elsewhere. I hear there's a "white genocide" they could be addressing in South Africa? Also, ICE would like some help rounding up immigrants who are not white.

Previously: Facebook Pledges $1 Billion For CA Housing As 45 States Join Antitrust Probe

Top image: Meta and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Ricky Carioti - Pool/Getty Images)