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  • November 2021
  • Case
  • HBS Case Collection

Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place

By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:30
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Abstract

In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as Mary’s Place, was designed to address what had become a searing problem for Seattle and many other wealthy American cities: although urban areas like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco were thriving economically from a recent influx of major tech companies and their well-heeled, well-educated work forces, poorer populations in these cities were being simultaneously hit by the declining availability and surging cost of what was once affordable housing. Amazon’s partnership with Mary’s Place was a novel experiment in addressing this problem at its core, using some of the firm’s own resources to fund and create attractive living space for families struggling with homelessness. Yet, critics of the firm argued that its apparent charity was misplaced. Rather than trying to fix homelessness, many held, Amazon and other tech giants should stop acting in ways that were only making the problem worse. Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary’s Place is an opportunity for students to understand the problem of homelessness in American cities and to investigate business’s role in both causing and addressing it.

Keywords

Business Ethics; Homelessness; Business And Society; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Corporate Accountability; Urban Development; Society; Information Technology; Ethics; Technology Industry; Seattle; United States; North America

Citation

Healy, Paul M., Debora L. Spar, and Amy Klopfenstein. "Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place." Harvard Business School Case 122-017, November 2021.
  • Educators

About The Authors

Paul M. Healy

Accounting and Management
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Debora L. Spar

General Management
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  • 'A Marshall Plan for Africa': James Mwangi and Equity Group Holdings By: Caroline M. Elkins, Debora L. Spar, Zeke Gillman and Julia M. Comeau
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