Facebook is following other tech giants like Microsoft and Google, pledging to spend $1 billion to help address the affordable housing crisis in California.

Facebook's investment will go toward creating up to 20,000 new housing units over the next decade, to help essential workers such as teachers, nurses and first responders live closer to the communities that rely on them. Facebook has also partnered with California Governor Gavin Newsom and the State of California to help accelerate progress on this issue.

In San Francisco, a family of four making over $100,000 per year is considered low-income. The issue of affordable housing affects people across middle-class and low-income families alike. In 2016, Facebook partnered with community groups and local governments to establish the $75 million Catalyst Housing Fund to address housing issues near the company's Menlo Park headquarters, and earlier this year, Facebook helped found the $500 million Partnership for the Bay’s Future that aims to protect, produce and preserve 175,000 homes for all in the Bay Area.

Facebook will invest $250 million to a partnership with the State of California for mixed-income housing on excess state-owned land in communities where housing is scarce.

The company will use $150 million for production of affordable housing, including housing for the homeless, in the San Francisco Bay Area.