Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos Create $2 Billion Fund to Fight Homelessness

Billionaires and other members of the esteemed 1% of the American wealthy are becoming quite pragmatic about using their fortunes to help justified causes. For Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie, that cause has been revealed as the country’s homelessness. The couple will call their project the “Bezos Day One Fund,” and they will commit $2 billion to the fund.

According to Bloomber, Bezos became the world’s wealthiest person this year, with an estimated net worth of $164 billion. The fund will will issue annual leadership awards to organizations “doing compassionate, needle-moving work to provide shelter and hunger support to address the immediate needs of young families” Bezos tweeted last week.

Earlier this month, Bezos and his wife donated $10 million to With Honor, a nonpartisan organization and super PAC looking to boost the number of veterans in politics. Though they have made political contributions to different entities in the the past, it has never been to this magnitude.

See Kaya Yurieff, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos Create $2 Billion Fund to Fight Homelessness, CNN, September 13, 2018.

Special thanks to Adam J. Hirsch (Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.