Amazon Headquarters Finalists: Some Say Winning Would Come At Too High A Price

Landing Amazon’s $5 billion new headquarters and its 50,000 tax-paying workers would be quite the coup. And possibly quite the headache. Officials and civic organizers in some of the 20 cities now vying to win Amazon’s choice for its second headquarters are sounding alarms that accommodating this tech talent invasion could put a big strain on local residents already grappling with crawling commutes and high housing prices. In Nashville, citizens concerned about how a new Amazon headquarters might exacerbate already significant housing issues were blunt about how well-paid tech workers could drive up both the prices for rental units and homes alike. “We have a housing crisis now and all this would do is throw gasoline on the fire,” says John Summers, a former city council member who now leads the Coalition for Nashville Neighborhoods. “We cannot build affordable housing to replace what’s being lost by the rapid gentrification in all of our inner-city neighborhoods.” Read more at CNBC.