(Bloomberg) -- Stanford University is offering to spend $4.7 billion to relieve pressures on housing and transit that are plaguing residents of California’s Bay Area.

The offer would be part of an agreement with Santa Clara County to support the school’s application for a long-term land use permit, according to a statement Monday from Stanford. It would invest $3.4 billion in housing development and more than $1.1 billion in transportation upgrades and “other community benefits,” according to the statement.

Stanford, which is planning a significant expansion, has been embroiled in a dispute with local officials over whether it is offering sufficient affordable housing. The plan calls for 2,172 workforce housing units, including 575 “front-loaded below market rate housing units.”

Stanford today submitted the proposal to Santa Clara County, where the university is located. A spokeswoman for the county didn’t immediately have a comment on Stanford’s offer.

The success of Silicon Valley technology companies -- many of them started by Stanford grads -- has contributed to massive housing cost increases in the San Francisco Bay Area. The firms employ tens of thousands of high-earners who have bought or rented homes, leaving fewer options for poor and middle-income residents. Meanwhile, the supply of new houses and apartments has not kept up with demand.

That’s driven median existing-home prices to $1.2 million in Silicon Valley, the highest of any market in the country, according to the National Association of Realtors. The San Francisco and Oakland metro area is second with a $930,000 median price.

Increasingly, tech companies and their executives have been taking steps to directly address a crisis they’re often blamed for creating. Last week, Google pledged $1 billion to support the construction of 20,000 new homes in the area. The philanthropy started by Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan is also backing an effort to address the housing shortage in the region.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lily Katz in New York at lkatz31@bloomberg.net;Noah Buhayar in Seattle at nbuhayar@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Debarati Roy at droy5@bloomberg.net, Vincent Bielski

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