Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft Philanthropies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Steve and Connie Ballmer, and others have committed more than $10 million to combat homelessness in downtown Seattle and the city’s International District, the Associated Press reports.

The bulk of the funding will be used to enable the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to hire a team of formerly homeless “peer navigators” who will meet with and develop plans for each of the estimated 1,000 homeless people currently living downtown. The initiative will also provide flexible funding to get people what they need to get housed.

Marc Dones, CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, told the Seattle Times that the effort aims to reduce the number of homeless living on the streets of downtown Seattle to fewer than 30. “My job is to listen to people with lived experience, who were clear from day one that they wanted peer navigators,” he said. “And so that’s what we’re going to get.”

“Time is a-wasting,” said former Washington governor Christine Gregoire, who reached out to many of these organizations to ask them to donate. “We are in a crisis, in my mind and in Marc [Dones’] mind, so therefore we had to get money.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Phil Augustavo)