Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Apple today announced a pledge of $2.5 billion to combat the housing crisis in its home state of California. It’s the largest commitment of any of the Big Five in the tech industry, all of which have pledged various amounts of money toward helping build more affordable housing in and around the cities they operate near. The only major US tech company who has yet to pledge a significant amount of money toward the issue is Amazon, although Amazon did donate $8 million over the summer to nonprofits that provide housing for the homeless.
Apple, which is based in Cupertino outside of San Jose and is less than an hour’s drive from San Francisco, has more than 130,000 employees, many of which command high salaries and have, both directly and…