An article titled Microsoft Offers $500 Million in Help as Housing Grows Scarce Around Seattle written by Page Al was printed today, January 17th, in the New York Times paper. Involved is the company Microsoft, and the people of Seattle, mainly in the suburbs area. My client is Microsoft.

Currently, Seattle is facing a crisis in affordable housing. This crisis has been due to the massive growth of tech hubs in Seattle, including Amazon and Microsoft. Microsoft has expressed its concern with this crisis, and feels that the company is responsible to help the people who have been impacted by this crisis. The company made a pledge to put $500 million towards aiding with this problem. $225 million of this money is going to be lended to preserve middle-income housing in 6 cities. Also, Microsoft is pledging to put another $250 million towards low-income housing in the same area.

This story is positive news coverage for Microsoft. Since the company received backlash for being a part of the crisis that started, this was a perfect opportunity for them to make peace with the people of middle and low income homes, or to at least try and help. It is always nice to see big companies giving back to the community, especially a company as big and successful as Microsoft. The article discusses Microsoft as a Redmond, Washington based tech company. The company had recently reported its net income as $8.8 billion in its most recent quarter.

The audience most impacted would be the people with middle and low incomes in the Redmond area, because these are the people that will be benefiting from the money that Microsoft is offering. I think overall the public has a good perception of Microsoft. It was a staple company in the tech world that made a lot of peoples lives easier in many ways. In the case of people affected by this tech crisis, their opinion on Microsoft might be a bit different. Hopefully this act of kindness would help to change some of those peoples’ opinions on the company.

I think the next step for anyone working the PR for this would be to follow the process of the money being granted and to watch if people are truly affected positively, and in what ways. A good way to piggy back this story would be by continuously checking up on the process, following individual families in the area and getting insight from them personally on if any changes have been made.

It seems as though this story was generated by PR, due to the fact that it all has to do with Microsoft’s generous act. It is likely that the goal was to put out a good image for Microsoft, and for the company to try and gain the trust and support from many people that they may not have had it from before. It seems like this was achieved. I know for me, reading this initially made me think that the company was doing a great deed for the Seattle area.