[HN Gopher] Some employers have decided to build their own housi...
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Some employers have decided to build their own housing for workers
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 120 points
Date : 2023-05-02 09:45 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| xchip wrote:
| That was pretty common in Spain 50 years ago. One of the reasons
| was to show off the capitalism was better than communism.
| blitzar wrote:
| Honestly, give me the company town, the job for life, the fat
| pension, the regular promotions, the company schools, the company
| scholarships to send your kids to university and I will live next
| door to whoever you want.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Don't forget the company-provided housing.
| pc86 wrote:
| That's what "company town" is, which is not at all what the
| article is talking about.
| TrueGeek wrote:
| This ^ but it's an employee owned company. And since the
| company is doing so many things, like running schools and towns
| and pensions and scholarships, we should have some of the
| employees represent all of the others to make sure all the
| voices are heard. We could vote on those representatives and
| even have two different sets to keep them in check.
|
| Either a portion of each employees pay could fund all of this
| or since the company is providing everything then we could just
| do without pay entirely. Not sure which method is best really.
| govg wrote:
| I'm sorry, but without introducing blockchains you have just
| suggested a democratic republic and surely that can't work?
| ganlaw wrote:
| I grew up in a mining town in northern Canada where the company
| provided everything you mention, plus summer jobs at the mine,
| chartered plane to pick up students, train tickets for
| vehicles, and much more.
|
| The mine was originally owned by a group that started in the
| area so they had incentives to make the area great for the
| employees. Which they did, my grandfather and father got great
| paying jobs that allowed them to support their families.
|
| But then a massive mining company came in and bought majority
| shares in the mine and they have been scraping these benefits
| ever since.
|
| My point is, you never know what's going to happen. So don't
| get to attached to these benefits. For most places that's
| alright because there are other opportunities, but in a mining
| town there generally is one employer.
| serverholic wrote:
| [dead]
| lozenge wrote:
| Why do you trust the company will continue to provide said
| benefits? Someone new could come in and say, "hmm, let's raise
| the rent on the main street, close school canteens, add a co
| pay element on the universities..."
| Frost1x wrote:
| What's to prevent that in a _slightly less_ monopolized
| system? In some cases, players in a market may all even
| independently arrive at the same solution and decide not to
| undercut competition, they may add additional fees (e.g.
| tuition) to universities across the board. They may find
| canteens unsustainable with a profit motive.
|
| Functionally, the consumer has the same problem: competition
| isn't giving them alternative choices and variety, policy and
| options are mandated to them. Providers may find school
| canteens too expensive so they close them, the one who thinks
| an opportunity may open one but be forced to charge a fee too
| high for participants to consider so ultimately lunches get
| packed anyways. In theory the market dictates these things
| from consumer consensus but consumer consensus is really just
| some degree of a manipulated majority opinion over w
| minitory. In practice I don't care who dictates it, my voice
| (dollar in this case) doesn't seem to matter all that much in
| contexts without healthy competition.
|
| There's definitely some sort of threshold level of _actual
| competition_ (however we define that) that has to exist to
| create a landscape of options for the consumer. As time
| progresses, the argument for private enterprise grows weaker,
| in my opinion. The solution is for markets to become less
| anti-competitive, to allow real competition (not sure how we
| achieve this). An issue is, no one wants to do this and is
| incentivized to be anti-competitive in every way they can.
| segfaltnh wrote:
| Surely there's no histoic examples of this happening.
| Especially not in America. /s
| uoaei wrote:
| Even better: "your salary now comes in Metabux and those can
| only be used to purchase things at the Metashop."
| cj wrote:
| >Why do you trust the company will continue to provide said
| benefits?
|
| Not sure if this is a great example from history. But my 87
| year old grandmother still receives a monthly pension check
| from IBM from my late grandfather who passed away 6 years ago
| and retired over 30 years ago.
|
| I'm sure IBM wouldn't be making these payments if they had
| any other option. I think the answer to your question is
| "because they are obligated to" via contracts signed with
| employees (and ex-employees, and even deceased employees).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| One could counter that example with the multitudes of
| businesses who failed on meeting their defined benefit
| pension promises, resulting in laws like ERISA 1974 and PPA
| 2006, which resulted in businesses ceasing to offer defined
| benefit pensions because it turns out, predicting decades
| of future economic conditions and insuring volatility for
| that length of time is insanely costly.
|
| Not to mention that IBM has been dying for a decade+. I
| certainly would not expect them to make good on any decent
| size DB pension in a few decades, and unless you are part
| of a politically connected group, you may or may not get
| fully bailed out by the feds (see General Motors pension
| renegotiations in 2008).
|
| See also multi employer pension plans which have crazy
| regulations where if one employer fails, the other
| employers gets to pick up the tab.
|
| https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/the-american-
| res...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Once the company provides everything, they are in an excellent
| position to _alter the deal_ , and they will.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Sure. Same thing with government managed pensions. Same thing
| with market managed pensions. There is no certainty in life.
| tsgagnon wrote:
| "Everything has risks, so reducing risks is meaningless"
| doesn't sound like particularly sound stance to take,
| especially on an issue like housing.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I don't think it is a given that not relying on corporate
| pensions is reducing risk. I'm curious what percentage of
| people have been burned by unpaid/underpaid corporate
| pensions vs thinking they could rely on social
| security/government programs for retirement.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| And you will _pray that they don 't alter it further_.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Naively, I'm surprised it's not common(?) for large or well
| capitalized employers to offer favourable mortgages in their comp
| packages. Some banks certainly do it as a perk. It would also
| create a new asset for the company, where the loan itself could
| be sold on if needed.
|
| If you have a whole pile of balance sheet cash, buying up some
| city condos and leasing them back to key staff seems like a
| pretty good investment. You can use them to secure cheap debt if
| you need liquidity, or sell the leases, and it's an inflation
| hedge. It seems so simple and progressive that it must be illegal
| for some reason.
| guepe wrote:
| Ski resorts house employees - at least it's very common in that
| industry. So clearly not illegal.
| toast0 wrote:
| This sounds like a recipe for a messy divorce. It makes sense
| for a bank to offer a discounted mortgage, because they're in
| the business of mortgages, and it's not unreasonable to still
| bank with a bank you used to work for.
|
| OTOH, I wouldn't want to have to have a payment relationship
| with my employer after I left. Sometimes it's nice to keep a
| 401k with an old employer, but you end up caught up in their
| drama still --- when they change 401k providers, you need to
| pay attention, if they go through a merger, you need to pay
| attention, etc. It would be worse if they were administering
| your mortgage.
|
| Now --- if they want to partner with a bank/credit union and
| subsidize a lower rate or something, that might make sense. It
| could be win-win-win; it might be less risky loans for the
| bank, a nice perk for the employee, and a way to attract
| employees. Of course, it depends on what happens the employer;
| it also concentrates the loan portfolio of the bank; if you had
| a lot of loans to employees of a company that has a big
| problem, you've now got a lot of borrowers risking default at
| the same time. I got a nice deal on a car and factory loan
| incentives because of who I worked for, and there's lots of
| other employee perks available.
| opportune wrote:
| I think the only businesses willing and able to do something
| like this would get roasted hard by the media and even
| politicians for this. Classic handwringing about any perceived
| nefarious plot because it's done as part of a big
| tech/pharma/finance/whatever company
|
| Honestly, if my bigtech employer had some company housing
| benefit, I'd really appreciate it and likely use it. "Company
| towns" from a century go are so, so different from what a big
| tech housing development would be: none of us would be getting
| paid in scrip, we'd easily have transport options outside the
| corporate housing (it'd probably just be somewhere in the
| middle of an urban area like South Bay or Queens), we'd be
| consciously choosing it because of municipal policy failure
| making housing too expensive and not because it's literally the
| only option in the area.
|
| I would have to understand better what you mean by a mortgage
| though because I doubt I'd want to live in a corporate housing
| development years after leaving the company. It would probably
| be better for capitalization (capture the depreciation$$$) for
| the company to own the building but offer it for rent at a low
| rate to employees.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| If Facebook ever does build their employee housing, it really
| needs to be named Zuckerburgh.
| Tade0 wrote:
| _-berg_ is actually a fairly common component of city names in
| Germany - unsurprisingly especially in Bavaria and Baden-
| Wurttemberg:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_and_towns_in_Ge...
| maxehmookau wrote:
| The village of Bournville in Birmingham was created for this very
| purpose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville
|
| It didn't go quite as planned now though. The factory is owned by
| a US multinational and most of the homes are underoccupied and
| overpriced.
| krisoft wrote:
| > It didn't go quite as planned now though.
|
| It also doesn't sound like it went too badly either.
|
| Quote from the wiki page you linked: Bournville is known as one
| of the most desirable areas to live in the UK; research by the
| Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2003 found that it was "one of
| the nicest places to live in Britain".
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Oh, don't get me wrong, it's beautiful. (I live very nearby).
|
| But it's definitely not a village with affordable housing for
| the local factory workers. It's a pretty village where rich
| people live, and aspiring rich people want to live.
|
| It went _well_, just not as planned...
| blitzar wrote:
| It went as planned, the rest of the Country went down the
| toilet.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| The UK is full of nice places where people can't afford
| to live. I don't see how this is any different.
| llsf wrote:
| Michelin started his own experiment in 1920's.
|
| "The Group provided housing, schools, health clinics, swimming
| pools, and other recreational facilities in a system that became
| known as paternalisme (paternalism) or in more modern terms,
| societal or responsible support."
|
| "Rather than relying on union representation, Michelin management
| tried to foster the loyalty of employees through the generous
| provision of social benefits."
|
| source:
| https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Sucher%20Micheli...
| davidjfelix wrote:
| Aside: Many HN readers may remember that Basecamp's drama from
| 2 years ago [1] made mention of "paternalism" and how they
| planned to end the practice within their benefit structure. I
| recall the phrasing to be a source of confusion and argument. I
| think there were still a lot of folks (myself included) who saw
| this as a form of societal absenteeism in an economy with
| challenges that are often not easily overcome with simply more
| money at an individual level. I do, however, think this is a
| dicey area where companies can spend more efficiently on some
| paternalistic benefits rather than flatly increasing salary
| (which may have fewer tax incentives). This needs to be
| balanced with the fact that US corporations are not legally
| incentivized to maximize employee happiness, they're
| incentivized to maximize profit and without a legal entity
| around worker benefit, this form of paternalism can feel cheap
| or dystopian with callbacks to "company stores" and jumping
| through hoops and checking boxes to maximize your salary.
|
| [1]: https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5o
| [deleted]
| cvccvroomvroom wrote:
| Woz did one step further: had custom homes built beside one
| another.
| zackkatz wrote:
| Headline: Innovative company reinvents company town. Visionary
| leaders hope to drive employees into debt and eventually forced
| servitude.
| labster wrote:
| Headline: You'll never guess what this worker got for hauling
| sixteen tons
| orwin wrote:
| Another day older and deeper in debt?
| tommica wrote:
| Nothing!
| autoexec wrote:
| I can't wait until they start paying their people in company
| scrip! Walmart already tried to bring it back to Mexico in 2008
| (https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-walmex/court-
| outlaws-...)
| fathyb wrote:
| Isn't this similar to McDonald's point system? Workers get
| points as they work, different menu items cost a certain
| amount of points. They have to use all points (and eat their
| terrible food) before a certain period, else they lose them.
| autoexec wrote:
| If McDonald's is taking money out of people's paychecks and
| replacing it with McPoints or whatever they call them, then
| yes.
|
| Companies can give prizes or awards on top of paying their
| usual wages with actual money, but as soon as they start
| paying people less because they're compensating them with
| fake money it's a problem.
| mikestew wrote:
| I'm astounded that someone could read TFA, as I'm sure you did,
| and come away with that summary. Because it's the summary I
| might come up with if I read _only_ the headline and was in a
| hurry to let the world view my hot take.
| tsgagnon wrote:
| _So a growing number of employers around the country have
| decided to build their own housing for workers, mostly for
| them to rent but sometimes to buy._
|
| You can't image where the connection to company towns could
| come from in an article about people renting from their
| employers?
| fugalfervor wrote:
| > You can't image where the connection to company towns
| could come from in an article about people renting from
| their employers?
|
| You didn't read the article. The homes are for sale, not
| for rent.
| pc86 wrote:
| Headline: This isn't a company town and nobody is going into
| debt to the company.
|
| I know it violates the guidelines but I suggest you actually
| read the article and reply to that, rather than just making
| things up in your head and replying to the fantasy.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >I know it violates the guidelines but I suggest you actually
| read the article and reply to that, rather than just making
| things up in your head and replying to the fantasy.
|
| How deliciously ironic. How about, from the very article
| itself:
|
| "So a growing number of employers around the country have
| decided to build their own housing for workers, mostly for
| them to rent but sometimes to buy. "
| pc86 wrote:
| The article is about Cook Medical, which is having homes
| built and arranging for them to be _sold_ to employees.
| Nobody is renting anything.
|
| In fact, the line you quoted is from the first of exactly
| two paragraphs in the entire story that mentions any other
| companies (and the second is a historical reference).
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Back in Egyptian times, they'd call it slavery. I thought that
| was banned
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Haven't companies been doing this for decades? Between 2000-2010
| Halliburton subsidized housing for engineers in West Texas. In
| the 1970's, IBM subsidized housing for employees in Boulder.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think it's interesting that all the people in this article that
| need housing assistance are clearly overweight, and the rich
| (presumably) ones are all thin.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's almost like you have to have a pretty healthy income to be
| able to afford to eat decently.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's not true, though. You can eat decently more cheaply than
| you can eat junk food. People just like junk food better, and
| stuffing your belly with high-carb "comfort food" is
| basically a compensation mechanism if not an addiction.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Raw veggies and basic foods can be cheap, but starting from
| real ingredients also costs _time_ , something that can be
| hard to come by for the single mom working 60 hours a week.
|
| Ask me how I know, and how I learned to cook really well.
| orangecat wrote:
| Right, and I'm not even criticizing those people. If you
| have a well-paid and fulfilling job, a nice home, and a
| rewarding social life, it's not that hard to turn down the
| triple cheeseburger in favor of a salad. If you're on the
| opposite end, that cheeseburger may be the most pleasure
| you can look forward to all day and it takes a lot more
| willpower to resist.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You can eat decently more cheaply than you can eat junk
| food.
|
| Whether or not that's true depends a lot on where you live.
| In economically depressed areas, just finding decent food
| is a challenge, let alone being able to afford it.
|
| In the US, it's generally cheaper to buy processed foods
| that are heavy on salt, sugar, and fat than it is to eat
| fresh, healthy food.
|
| There's also the issue of food preparation. Many (maybe
| most) people don't know how to cook from scratch in a way
| that is fast and healthy.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It's not like that at all, considering in many other parts of
| the world, the opposite trend is present - the poor people
| are thin, and the richer people are fatter.
|
| There's nothing stopping rich-country poor people from eating
| like poor-country poor people, except the lack of life skills
| and desire.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6880978/
|
| This phenomena is sometimes exemplified on certain reddit
| subs, where people will post complaints "Here's all the
| groceries I can buy in my budget of $X. Guess I'm going
| hungry this month". And then they post pictures filled with
| processed/packaged food which is far more expensive than if
| they made better purchasing decisions. eg
| www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/10o985p
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| If there is one thing I can say about reddit, it's that
| they get particularly sensitive when talking about calorie
| consumption and weight. And there is definitely nothing
| they can do to stop eating so many calories.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > There's nothing stopping rich-country poor people from
| eating like poor-country poor people, except the lack of
| life skills and desire.
|
| This just isn't true as a blanket statement in the US. I've
| been both wealthy and poor, and my experience is that when
| I've been poor, it was simply unaffordable to eat decently.
| My problem was not a lack of skills or desire, but money.
|
| But, as I said in a different comment, this depends quite a
| bit on where in the US you live.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| While food deserts do exist, and increase the risk of
| obesity for residents in one, "only" 6% of Americans live
| in one. Access alone does not account for the incredible
| rates of obesity among the poor in America.
|
| I was also poor at one point, and I don't really know
| what to say about our differing experiences - I couldn't
| afford to eat junk food. I subsisted on rice, beans,
| grains, sale fruits/veg, and cheap cuts of meat. At my
| local walmart(which is in a HCoL area), you can buy 3500
| calories of rice, 2600 calories of beans, and 5000
| calories of chicken for $15, or 750 cal/$. It is hard to
| find processed food with a better cal/$ ratio than that.
| For example, a bulk box of velveeta mac and cheese at the
| same walmart is 3330 calories for $7.47, or 450 cal/$.
|
| Absolutely, if you don't know how to cook or prepare
| food, processed food might be your only option. But, that
| is a knowledge issue, not a monetary issue.
|
| https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
| wahern wrote:
| I think the disconnect here is that in the U.S. "poor"
| encompasses a whole universe of relative incomes and
| experiences. I grew up poor as a kid, but for the most
| part never thought much about food. Some days maybe all I
| could scrounge together would be toast + butter, but I
| rarely if ever felt deprived.
|
| Except during one of our homeless stints, when we were
| staying with a family my mother met through (I think) a
| church program. We stayed at their house for only two
| weeks or so. My mother was working most of that time, and
| the wife made meals for her children, myself, and my
| little sister. It seemed like all we ever ate (or at
| least they let us eat--maybe they were worried we'd eat
| too much, though there wasn't much of anything else in
| the cupboards) was Bisquick pancakes. I was constantly
| hungry. I had never felt hunger like that before. And as
| a kid the situation felt so bizarre because this family
| lived in what seemed to me to be a beautiful, modern
| apartment (in retrospect, probably recently constructed
| public housing), yet they seemingly had no food. Also,
| the son was younger than me but weighed significantly
| more than I did--I was skinny but well within normal
| weight and height.
|
| Fast forward about 15 years and as a young adult working
| in SF I became acquainted with a struggling older woman
| with a teenage daughter, and I'd sometimes drive her
| around town if she needed a lift--e.g. needed to make an
| appointment. (I forgot how we met, but growing up there
| was never anything strange about strangers helping out,
| and somehow I found myself on the other side of the
| situation and just went with it.) One time she invited me
| over to her apartment for dinner to thank me, and out
| comes a box of Bisquick and a dinner composed of
| Bisquick-related dishes.
|
| Even today, in neither case can I really comprehend why
| Bisquick figured so prominently. I mean, from a dollar-
| and-cents standpoint, I can see the value, but I'm like
| 70% confident that in both cases neither families had no
| alternative but Bisquick. OTOH, you can't really second
| guess those decisions on the spot, and those periods are
| just snapshots in time. OTOOH, that doesn't imply people
| are making the most rational decisions.
|
| In any event, I guess the moral of the story is that
| there's an immense diversity of experiences even at the
| bottom of the income and wealth brackets, and we should
| be cautious drawing broad conclusions one way or another.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Not to harp on it, but bisquick pancake mix perfectly
| exemplifies my point: The cheapest per unit bisquick they
| have at walmart is 6 lbs for $9.38. Keep in mind you
| still need to add your own milk and eggs to this anyway.
|
| Compare to home made:
|
| - 10 lbs bag of flour for $3.98,
|
| - 1 8.1 oz can of baking powder - $1.98 -- you'd have a
| few tablespoons leftover but let's just allot the whole
| can to it
|
| - 48 oz vegetable oil - $3.64 -- you'd use 20oz per 10
| lbs flour, so $1.52 worth, with 28 oz remaining for other
| cooking.
|
| So, you can have 6 lbs of bisquick for $9.38, or 11 lbs
| of homemade mix for $7.48. That's $0.68/lbs homemade,
| versus $1.56/lbs for bisquick.
|
| You're paying about 2.5x in order to not dump a little
| bit of baking powder and oil into some flour. It's a bad
| financial decision to buy bisquick instead of the
| ingredients and DIY.
| [deleted]
| smeej wrote:
| What a bizarre presumption to make with no evidence whatsoever.
| wink wrote:
| Guess it depends on so many factors. I live in an 8 story
| building and I hardly see my neighbors, so unless we could car
| pool some days I couldn't care less if coworkers past and present
| I like or dislike are living next door.
|
| We have many blocks of old "company" apartments for the railway
| employees (used to be state owned, so even a little different) in
| my town (and probably in the whole country) - so they're
| technically co-workers in an org with many 10k of employees, but
| the chance your neighbor is visible in your daily life at work is
| pretty slim.
|
| Kind of a non-story, but if it helps the employees it sounds
| good, not much to discuss I guess?
| ghaff wrote:
| "Company towns" sets off all sorts of alarm bells and rants.
| But the reality is that, in a lot of smaller cities, there
| pretty much are one or maybe two dominant employers and
| everything else exists primarily in service of people working
| for those employers.
|
| As in the case of one person I know, if you live in Bentonville
| you're probably working for Walmart and if your position is
| eliminated and you can't get a new one, you're probably moving.
| moe091 wrote:
| and those towns are guaranteed to stay that way if even
| housing is controlled by that singular employee
| HPsquared wrote:
| [flagged]
| mperham wrote:
| Companies already control workers by controlling access to
| their health care (wanna start your own business? quit a
| toxic work environment? can't because you can't afford
| losing healthcare!).
|
| This is one solution to the lack of housing but a massive
| side effect is that we consolidate even more power in the
| hands of employers.
| eppp wrote:
| Seems kind of silly to pay rent for company housing though.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It has to be paid for either way. Could be offered to
| rent by employees or simply provided as benefit. Probably
| tax rules will decide which path to take...
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Not necessarily. You could be working for a Walmart supplier!
|
| Once I got an email from a recruiter saying they were looking
| to fill a position at a large retailer in northwest Arkansas.
| Just come out and say it!
| mikestew wrote:
| If your employees can't afford to live Spencer-friggin'-Indiana,
| and your company name isn't "McDonalds", you're just not paying
| them enough. Now, granted, it's been a couple of decades since
| I've spent a lot of time in Spencer, but I cannot fathom that in
| the intervening years that Spencer (nice town as it is) suddenly
| exploded into a tech hub where no one can afford a house anymore.
| A quick glance at Zillow says that it is not hard to find what
| appears to be perfectly livable homes for <$200K. Many are
| larger, nicer, with a bigger lot than the ~$900K houses around me
| in Redmond, WA.
|
| So I don't know what's going on in the leading example in TFA. On
| the one hand, it's not Mountain View, it's as-rural-as-rural-
| gets-in-Indiana with low CoL. And yet the company says, "we can't
| find people because they can't afford to live around here".
| Something just doesn't add up to me.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| In my opinion, if your employees can't afford to live Spencer-
| friggin'-Indiana, that's between them and their government.
| Your employees probably still wouldn't afford to live in
| Spencer if you didn't hire them. But unaffordable housing
| suddenly becomes your problem just because you hired someone,
| which strikes me as backwards. You didn't decide how much
| housing would cost, and unless you're a monopsony or close to
| it, you didn't decide what the market prices for their labor
| are. And in many industries, margins are so tight that it's
| impossible to stay solvent while paying much above market
| prices, because your competition certainly won't.
| greenfield1 wrote:
| If those "market prices" are not enough to pay for somebody's
| housing, then they are not truly "market prices". Nobody is
| going to accept employment at that rate since they can't live
| off it. So it's not actually the "market price". It only is
| if there are recent deals made at that price.
|
| It's like saying "well I'm only asking for market prices"
| when offering somebody to sell some stock to for 100 USD even
| though they and everybody around them only want to pay 50
| USD. That doesn't make 100 USD the "market price". Only if
| you've seen some recent trades for 100 USD, then it's the
| "market price".
| smileysteve wrote:
| > and your company name isn't "McDonalds"
|
| Seems inappropriate; McDonalds beats minimum wage and has
| significant opportunities for career growth that many other
| "fancier" restaurants don't offer.
| opportune wrote:
| This is a good point, the motives for first party corporate
| housing in an inexpensive area without severe supply
| restrictions are going to be completely different than in an
| expensive area with those restrictions.
|
| I still think it's possible for it to be a win-win and solve a
| collective inaction problem. When a business wants to expand in
| a rural area, it may create an acute housing shortage which the
| market would only eventually address, and it requires each
| individual developer or buyer to go through the process of
| finding new housing. If the business knows it's gonna need a
| 100 new homes they might as well start the process asap, and I
| don't mind if they get rewarded for doing so as it incentivizes
| job creation and housing construction.
|
| In the scenario where it's not nefarious and just a smart win-
| win, it reminds me how Japanese rail recoups its costs by
| purchasing/developing land adjacent to stations. It's just a
| smart way of capturing externalities from an economically
| beneficial endeavor, which reduces costs/increase the incentive
| for the good thing. I support it
| voxadam wrote:
| Sounds a little like Henry Ford's idea for Fordlandia[0] down in
| Brazil back in the late twenties.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Pullman, only a couple miles from where I grew up. The houses are
| beautiful and still in use:
|
| https://www.pullman-museum.org/theTown/
|
| It was also the site of the famous Pullman Strike of 1894:
|
| https://www.history.com/news/labor-day-pullman-railway-strik...
| m463 wrote:
| pretty relevant:
|
| _As the Panic of 1893 weakened much of the economy, railroad
| companies ceased purchasing new passenger cars made by Pullman.
| When his company laid off workers and lowered wages, it did not
| reduce rents, and the workers called for a strike. Among the
| reasons for the strike were the absence of democracy within the
| town of Pullman and its politics, the rigid paternalistic
| control of the workers by the company, excessive water and gas
| rates, and a refusal by the company to allow workers to buy and
| own houses._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike
| abeppu wrote:
| > What about simply raising workers' pay? Median U.S. wages have
| long failed to keep pace with rising housing costs. But Ferguson
| says that raising pay won't create new homes.
|
| > Only 10 of the first 14 houses found buyers immediately. Walker
| says some interested employees can't break their lease yet or
| need more time to improve their credit scores or save for a down
| payment.
|
| If even when selling them at cost, the company doesn't have
| employees lined up and ready to purchase, then it sounds like
| their wages _also_ need to come up. They're not paid enough to
| have the financial stability to save even for a home being sold
| at cost.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Pay people enough to afford it? Lol, that would be socialism.
| Selling at cost means they can make some housing available but
| at no cost to themselves. It might still work out to be a
| better deal for the employees though--if they were paid more
| and bought houses from commercial developers, they'd probably
| have to pay twice as much for the house.
| FateOfNations wrote:
| It also said something about a lottery, so I suspect there are
| enough buyers for them. "Immediately" likely meant that they
| had their down payment and everything else all ready to go.
| Others likely needed to make arrangements to sell their
| existing homes and other things before committing.
| Tade0 wrote:
| My father used to work at a university, which provided apartments
| for its employees as a benefit. Largest place I ever lived in.
|
| Anyway I can't imagine actually _buying_ a place from my
| employer. What if I get laid off like so many already have during
| the last 12 months? These things tend to happen every 20 years or
| so.
| FateOfNations wrote:
| At least with the company featured in the story, it's your
| house to keep regardless of your employment status. The company
| does say it's keeping an option/first right of refusal to buy
| it back from you for the first three years at the same price
| you paid (to prevent flipping). Once that period is over, you
| are free to sell it on the open market.
| gms7777 wrote:
| I did a postdoc at a hospital in a HCOL city which offered still
| expensive but below-market hospital owned apartments for
| postdocs. It was a massive perk at the time and I'm not sure I
| would have even taken the job without it. Even setting aside the
| cost part, it was a massive relief just not having to visit the
| city in advance and trying to find an apartment in a brutal
| housing market and dealing with sketchy landlords.
|
| Of course it came with the stressful side of knowing that if I
| ever left the job (or was fired), I'd also need to move out of
| the apartment as well within a month.
| jleyank wrote:
| As long as these company investments are proximate to cities and
| towns where partners can find fruitful employment in other
| companies, children have access to good schools and activities
| and the various kinds of people required for life have easy
| access (medical, fire, cops, ...). If the companies instead want
| a monoculture of single, childless workers it's going to be
| (quite) unstable.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Having your employer as your landlord and the owner of the
| local shop shifts even more power to the employer. Maybe it
| would be acceptable with a very strong union.
|
| "Oh can't work this weekend, that's a shame, your rent review
| is due"
|
| Or of course the old "Oh no you can't drink alcohol here, we're
| a good company" favoured by company towns a century ago
|
| "Selling" a modern house can come with thousands of different
| obligations too. Imagine a HOA, but it's actually a company.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Or of course the old "Oh no you can't drink alcohol here,
| we're a good company" favoured by company towns a century ago
|
| A century ago, at least in America, we had Prohibition* - so
| "no booze" was the law, no matter how the company felt.
|
| *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat
| ...
| smeej wrote:
| The article specifies that the people are buying, not
| renting, the houses, and they're even subject to rules
| (probably an HOA) saying they _cannot_ rent the homes to
| others. If they want to sell in the first 3 years, the
| company has an option to buy the house back for what it was
| sold for, and for four years after that, the company has
| right of first refusal to buy the house at market rate.
|
| This sounds like a fairly reasonable compromise to me, though
| it's far from the only model that would make sense.
| ldhough wrote:
| I've seen people say this a few times here but the article
| says:
|
| "a growing number of employers around the country have
| decided to build their own housing for workers, mostly for
| them to rent but sometimes to buy."
| smeej wrote:
| And if you read past the introduction, you'll find the
| article is about one specific instance, which is what
| people are talking about.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| When I worked at Google, there was a group for people to
| advertise apartments to each other in SF. I think 20% of them
| were rentals owned by VPs/Directors or other high level
| employees. _that_ seems like an even bigger conflict of
| interests. When you rent from a megacorp, there's
| realistically a million levels of bureaucracy between "work
| weekends" and "rent review". When you rent from your skip
| level manager... your landlord can be directly approving your
| raises AND rent rates.
|
| ...might help with layoffs though.
| pc86 wrote:
| You're responding to things irrelevant to the article - the
| employers are not landlords, don't own shops. Nobody is
| renting anything. The company doesn't own anything.
| ta1243 wrote:
| "So a growing number of employers around the country have
| decided to build their own housing for workers, mostly for
| them to rent but sometimes to buy. "
|
| Seems relevant to me
| vcryan wrote:
| This is very silly. I don't want any part of my personal life
| connected to my employer.
| dreen wrote:
| From one side you are correct and entitled to be able to do
| that. From another, and IANAPsychologist, I doubt the
| psychological effect of trying to emotionally isolate yourself
| from people you spend most of your time with is positive.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I am a huge believer in keeping my personal life as separate
| from my employer as I possibly can, for a whole host of
| reasons. I may technically spend a lot of time with my
| coworkers, but we're working, not socializing. My coworkers
| are acquaintances, not friends.
|
| That's not the same as being emotionally isolated. You still
| (presumably) have friends and family.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I wouldn't really call my neighbours a "part of my personal
| life". They're just people who live near me and have relatively
| little impact on my life. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised
| if people working at my company are more similar/relatable to
| me than just a random set of people in the same socio-economic
| class that move next to me.
| lallysingh wrote:
| It's not just the people. It's also the same company
| providing your home, utilities, etc.
|
| Are the prices and quality at market norms or are you paying
| back your wages for extra profit to your employer?
|
| That's a lot of eggs in one basket.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm buying the home from the company with a mortgage from a
| bank, which I assume is not the company's bank. I'd also
| assume that the utilities are covered by a third-party. And
| if I have to move somewhere where there's basically no
| utility companies outside of my employer to service the
| area, then moving there is basically putting all of the
| eggs in one basket anyways.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Is the company the only basis for your property value? If
| the company fails or moves out of town, do you lose both
| your job and all your equity?
| uoaei wrote:
| That's extremely sad to hear.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Why?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > They're just people who live near me and have relatively
| little impact on my life.
|
| When shit hits the fan, you will suddenly hope they become
| part of your personal life. It is only in a relatively high
| trust society with a mostly working police/court/government
| that you can afford to exclude your neighbors from your
| personal life.
|
| My parents taught me a saying from their native language that
| translates to the people physically closest to you are your
| closest family. They are going to be the ones who can help
| you in times of need (or harm you), so building and
| maintaining relationships with them is advisable.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Okay, just ignore the company's offers.
|
| But if your coworker says "yes, please!" to the company's free
| Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas hams and cheap T-shirts with
| company logos and subsidized health care and retirement plan
| and such - that's their choice.
| moe091 wrote:
| the problem is that if this becomes more common your argument
| won't be an option. It'd be akin to saying "just ignore the
| company's offers for health insurance" - well now our whole
| system is designed to account for and expect employer
| sponsored health insurance and you'll be at a massive
| disadvantage by not accepting it.
| nfriedly wrote:
| I've read that unions used to build affordable housing with the
| union members retirement funds, but a law was passed (maybe Taft-
| Hartley?) that said they had to focus on returns only, rather
| than consider any other benefits. So, unions don't build
| affordable housing any more.
| coldtea wrote:
| All kind of robber-baron capitalist crap is coming back to
| fashion, along with neo-feudal crap...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The company here is avoid this to some extent by selling the
| houses to the employees at a good deal. So they wont be paying
| rent for the rest of their lives to the company, and presumably
| they can sell the houses later. Basically sounds like they want
| to boost the housing supply in a small town.
| Kaotique wrote:
| Good luck selling that house in a company town to anyone
| outside the company.
| smeej wrote:
| How is this an argument, though? This is true of every
| small town that has one major company in it. The huge
| majority of people in town work for the company, and people
| don't really otherwise have much incentive to live there.
| coldtea wrote:
| How does this refute the parent's argument? If anything,
| it just says how similar it is with the already
| problematic case of "one major company town".
|
| And this is even worse, as it's not "one major company
| town" but "just a major company and nothing else town".
| coldtea wrote:
| > _So they wont be paying rent for the rest of their lives to
| the company, and presumably they can sell the houses later_
|
| To newer incoming employees? Who else would buy it?
|
| Not to mention the houses will be near worthless if the
| company moves from the area.
|
| This ties the employee with the company, but not vice versa.
| soco wrote:
| First of all, the employees are not _forced_ to buy there,
| they can still commute like before. Speaking of moving, the
| company made quite an investment building those houses so
| it will be less motivated to move easily someplace else.
| But if it does, what's stopping other businesses stepping
| into a pool of workers which may - or may not, of course -
| be readily employable in that area?
| ghaff wrote:
| Though those concerns apply if the major employer in a non-
| diversified area picks up and moves, goes bankrupt,
| downsizes, etc. whether or not something is a "company
| town" in some formal way or not. Look around the US Midwest
| for examples.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes. But even more so in a company town.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Well, it seems our return to "the guilded age" is complete with
| the return of company towns. It's only a matter of time before we
| start hearing the same horror stories that we heard in that era.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Only this time whistleblowers will be drowned out by
| accusations of astroturfing/botfarming. Progress!
| rsecora wrote:
| It was a common practice in the XIX and XX century, because there
| were not good living areas near factories. Some big conglomerates
| build houses for their workers, and they assign them to employees
| based on category, family size or marital status. Example Berlin
| [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemensstadt
| kyleblarson wrote:
| Pretty cool "company town" near where I live in Washington State:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newhalem,_Washington
| [deleted]
| omgomgomgomg wrote:
| So your housing and your job depends on the company?
|
| Ever had a bad boss?
|
| No thanks, unless the rental agreement is untouchable.
|
| They make a profit or two and increase your dependencies.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Second paragraph states they are selling the homes, not renting
| them. You don't have to sell if you're fired, but the parent
| company gets right of first refusal at market rate for four
| years. So these concerns as articulated seem moot.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| And then the sixth paragraph says:
|
| > So a growing number of employers around the country have
| decided to build their own housing for workers, mostly for
| them to rent but sometimes to buy.
| wnolens wrote:
| Healthcare, too.
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| Some people don't have much of a social life outside work so
| colleagues become their friends and support system. It may sound
| depressing but many are perfectly happy living like this so in
| that context this sounds like a good deal to me.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yeah if you all get on it you are in walking distance to work
| and all your friends! Downside is if you fall out with someone,
| there is no escaping them!
| smeej wrote:
| I think the people complaining in this thread would complain
| about anything.
|
| When government won't allow construction of "workforce housing,"
| complain, because nobody's big enough to try to push back and get
| concessions to make it possible.
|
| But then when a company, which _is_ big enough, especially
| relative to its small town, _does_ do the hard work of
| negotiating construction contracts and helping people find
| financing so they can sell homes at cost by removing
| inefficiencies from housing production, complain about that too?
|
| Some important points from the article:
|
| 1. The houses are being sold, not rented. 2. They're being sold
| at cost. 3. Anyone who buys one can sell it later to someone
| outside the company. The only restrictions are that if they sell
| within 3 years of buying, the company has the option to buy the
| house back at the previous sale cost, and for four years after
| that, the company has ROFR at market price.
|
| Is it a perfect solution? Of course not. These are humans. Humans
| don't come up with perfect solutions.
|
| But if you're going to complain, what would fix it for you? And
| is that just a matter of personal preference? 'Cause it's not
| like most of you are willing to live in a Midwestern small town
| with one major employer in the first place, but clearly these
| people are.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Because of the restrictions do the homes show up as assets on
| the company's books? If so, what happen in bankruptcy?
| Something about the deal doesn't sit right with me but I can't
| put my finger on it.
| tehjoker wrote:
| just have mass public housing. easy. then you can plan based on
| population level needs instead of what will make people money.
| hraedon wrote:
| Assuming away all of the constraints that led to this
| situation in the first place does make solving the problem
| easier, for sure
| tehjoker wrote:
| The constraints are the political power of the ownership
| class. By discussing alternative solutions, we slowly build
| consensus, and eventually power to dismantle upper class
| power.
| davidw wrote:
| Yeah, I'm much more of a "yes, and" guy with regards to our
| housing shortage. Would I want to see this become the dominant
| model of housing? No. But if it helps someone, that's good! We
| just need more housing of all shapes and sizes in the places
| people want to live.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > I think the people complaining in this thread would complain
| about anything.
|
| This specific thing has a history all tangled up with bad
| company behavior during the labor movement. You'd get the same
| reaction about a company paying in scrip and having a company
| store, no matter how many paragraphs one may compose of
| reasoned arguments that it's a decent, or even great, idea.
| People's first reaction will be, "yep, seen this before, fuck
| that" and they'll not pay attention to all the words about what
| a good idea it actually is.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > People's first reaction will be, "yep, seen this before,
| fuck that"
|
| And that would be the right one.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| When has this specific thing happened before?
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| How about Ford, in Dearborn MI? They were really into
| controlling their workers' behavior outside of work. If
| Ring had existed in Henry Ford's time, he would have had
| surveillance cameras in every home, reporting to Ford's
| internal sociology department.
|
| https://askus.thehenryford.org/faq/169797
|
| https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-
| research/digita...
|
| The Ford Homes are not to be confused with Fordlandia,
| Henry Ford's disastrous attempt to build a utopian rubber
| plant in the Amazon rainforest.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| This is such a visceral "oh no" for so many people that
| I've seen part of the rising tension of _multiple_ horror
| movies, including one released _this year_ , be either
| revealing or highlighting that an employee will be
| sleeping on employer-owned property, which the viewer is
| expected to implicitly understand to be _dangerous_.
| Which, in the horror tradition, goes back to gothic
| horror--Dracula, the live-in governess, that kind of
| thing. It 's a well-trod trope that this situation makes
| one vulnerable.
|
| Now, none of this (and even my original post) means it's
| _necessarily_ a bad idea--but that, the actual history
| and the way we _read_ that situation in fiction, is why
| people are inclined to immediately have a bad reaction to
| such a plan.
| kipchak wrote:
| Some examples are the TVA/Arthur Miller's Norris TN,
| Pullman Chicago, Fordlandia in Brazil and Lowell MA
| (mills), with the latter 3 being popularly known mostly for
| the associated labor strikes.
| powersurge360 wrote:
| It isn't literally the same thing as a company town but the
| concept from the headline at least is close enough to cause
| a pretty visceral reaction. Honestly, even as explained in
| the top level comment I am uncomfortable with my corporate
| employer having any rights to my property after I leave
| their employ no matter how 'weak' they may seem. Work
| should be a fair exchange of labor or product for capital,
| imo. It's more a symptom of housing being used as an
| investment than as actual housing for humans that this is
| considered a good deal. If housing wasn't increasingly
| difficult to come by, this wouldn't even be on the table as
| a compelling offer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
| smeej wrote:
| The restriction that you have to own it for 3 years
| because you're getting it at cost seems aligned with
| nearly every government mortgage subsidy. They're
| normally loans that have to be repaid if you sell within
| a time period. And ROFR at market value after that
| doesn't seem like it has any negative effect on the
| seller.
|
| And, to be clear, these restrictions would apply to
| someone who was still an employee and wanted to sell, not
| just to someone who wasn't an employee anymore. The
| restrictions are because of the financial considerations
| being offered at the purchase of the home, not _because_
| of the employment relationship.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Throughout almost all of human history. An exceptionally
| few persons of any population owned their own dwellings,
| most people were a variant of servants/serfs/slaves to the
| landed gentry. Today's ruling generations decided that this
| order of things had to come back - and here we are again.
| rukuu001 wrote:
| Coal mining towns mostly.
|
| Companies built worker housing (and charged for it), paid
| workers in scrip that could only be redeemed at the company
| store. It became de facto slavery.
| chasd00 wrote:
| yes, there's a famous song "16 tons" written about it
| too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons
| [deleted]
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Cotton/plantation sharecropping, ~1860-1950 in the US
| south.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping
|
| Generally exploitive features include: an exclusive buying
| right by a certain party (allowing them to set prices),
| incidentals and necessities of life only being purchased
| from a certain party, mortgaging future assets in exchange
| for current goods/services (often with steep or complex
| credit terms), and restrictions on free sale of assets to
| arbitrary third parties (preventing price discovery and
| realization of fair market value).
|
| As GP observed, these specific modern agreements generally
| avoid those pitfalls.
| zyang wrote:
| I think this is a tempting solution but a bad idea in the long
| run. Just like how employer provided medical insurance sounds
| good on the surface, but it gave employers an incentive to
| lobby against socialized medicine, which reduces worker
| mobility and hurts the economy.
| pydry wrote:
| Or just makes it harder to move jobs which inevitably makes
| people more exploitable.
|
| It's not exactly bad ideas getting us into this situation but
| a rapid shift in power from workers to owners.
| moe091 wrote:
| yeah very true. I don't think anyone could disagree with
| this but somehow many people seem to be missing this
| perspective entirely
| spaced-out wrote:
| It because a lot of people are already struggling with
| the cost of housing. It's hard to tell people they should
| be worried about this company exploiting them, when their
| only other option is to pay someone else even more money
| to keep a roof over their head.
| orangecat wrote:
| _Just like how employer provided medical insurance sounds
| good on the surface_
|
| It doesn't even sound good on the surface.
|
| _it gave employers an incentive to lobby against socialized
| medicine_
|
| I continue to be baffled at the common assumption that the
| only two possible sources of health insurance are employers
| or the government.
| ygjb wrote:
| Do you have a viable suggestion for an alternative
| provider?
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| One example is Medi-Share (https://www.medishare.com).
| I'm sure plenty people will find some reason to hate it
| due to the explicitly Christian theme and I'm sure there
| are some downsides I am not aware of. I do not use it
| myself, but I know several people who do, and they have
| used it to cover their bills. To a person, they are quite
| pleased with the cost and idea behind it. I haven't dug
| into it, but I find no issue on the surface. Maybe they
| refuse to cover sex change surgery or something and that
| makes them Literally The Worst, I don't know. The idea of
| "everyone puts in a bit and when someone needs help they
| take some out" is the basis of insurance as a concept,
| and it seems to work if there's just a little bit of
| gatekeeping. ACA and coverage of preexisting conditions
| under the insurance model really fucked things up imo.
| Not that preexisting conditions shouldn't be cared for,
| but as an entirely separate model.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Two forms that are widely used right now (ie hundreds of
| millions of people covered):
|
| - Private personal insurance (You pay the premium and
| that's it)
|
| - Guild insurance (Same as above, but these companies
| only insure people within a specific industry)
| kbelder wrote:
| The person themselves? Certainly better than the
| employer, and some argue that it would be better than the
| government.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Many other OECD states feature private insurance that's
| (at least largely) not employer-provided. Private
| coverage may be the main coverage for a large proportion,
| or even majority, of the population.
|
| How does it differ from the US?
|
| 1) Less emphasis on or no norm of employers providing
| healthcare (and this may not be encouraged through tax
| law, leaving little reason to do it versus just paying
| more money)
|
| 2) These are often more tightly-regulated than in the US
| --coverage minimums (we kinda have these now, in the US,
| sort of, so that's nice), disallowing for-profit
| insurance, et c.
|
| 3) There's often a government fallback plan
|
| 4) AFAIK every single other OECD state leverages price
| controls in some fashion, whether _de facto_ or _de jure_
| (usually _de jure_ , in the countries with strong private
| insurance markets), which affects everything, including
| the price of private health insurance.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| ACA definitely moved us closer to that model.
|
| The biggest misses were providing a government fallback
| plan (aka Medicare-if-no-other, which I don't think is
| part of it?) and regulating negotiations between
| providers and payers (so as to avoid payer combination
| into a few large companies, who can then get the best
| prices from payers).
| lumb63 wrote:
| I feel like a broken record, as I'm always saying what
| you're saying when people discuss health insurance. Most
| folks want to trash public health care under the quick
| quip of "that's socialism" or trash "privatized health
| care" with the current employer-provided system as a
| proxy for "privatized health care". People get so caught
| up defending "their side", that they forget the objective
| is to get a better health care system.
|
| IMO, a huge number of the problems that exist with US
| health care (non-portability between jobs, people stuck
| with plans ill-suited to their needs, lack of access to
| affordable health care) could be easily addressed by a
| ban on employer-provided healthcare with a provision to
| ensure the costs are forwarded to the workers as monetary
| compensation. Workers can go choose a plan that works for
| them.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Perhaps in theory. But how hard are we-don't-build-housing
| employers currently lobbying in favor more housing for their
| workers? And how many orders of magnitude would employers
| providing housing have to grow by, before any cutbacks in
| that lobbying could have a meaningful effect?
| moe091 wrote:
| couldn't someone have said the same thing about health
| insurance when it was new and only a few companies were
| doing it?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Sure. But "if this was scaled up several orders of
| magnitude, and continued for years, then there would
| likely be bad side-effects" is a argument against doing
| pretty much anything. Ever.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| It's also a really good argument for not putting all our
| eggs in one basket and for avoiding total homogenization
| of the systems by which we live. This is not currently
| practiced at scale, as anyone who has boarded a plane in
| one state and lands in identical surroundings in another
| state can attest.
| toast0 wrote:
| > I think this is a tempting solution but a bad idea in the
| long run.
|
| The best part about this plan is it sounds like the company
| doesn't want to be in this for the long run. Selling the
| homes rather than renting them, and having a fairly limited
| term on restrictions means in the long run, these will end up
| being just regular homes with a historic tie to the company.
| IMHO, this looks like the company doing something good for
| itself and its employees in a way that's hard to manage
| otherwise. Building the housing as a bulk project makes it
| less costly and easier to manage shared costs, but it would
| be hard for the employees to organize that on their own.
| bko wrote:
| What companies lobby against socialized medicine? Employer
| based health insurance is ridiculously expensive and the cost
| is usually hidden from the employee. You get quoted a salary
| net of benefits. And a lot of jobs are required by law to
| provide insurance which means the mandate could be a huge
| percent or the employees overall cost to the employer.
|
| This is closer to employee 401k since you take it with you if
| you leave, which has been very beneficial even compared to
| pensions as you don't have to bet on your current employer
| being around and able to support the benefits 30 years from
| now
| wildrhythms wrote:
| >What companies lobby against socialized medicine
|
| The health insurance companies? Both Ds and Rs collect
| millions in lobbying efforts from the healthcare industry;
| it's the 6th largest industry in terms of campaign
| contributions, more than the oil and gas industry.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-
| lobbying/sectors/summary...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The law should require this disclosure upfront, or at least
| the proportion of premium of the metal level, such as
| employer will pay 50% of silver level plan within x
| network.
|
| The employer is required to disclose total premium cost on
| the W-2 however, line 12 code DD I believe.
|
| White collar employees that have marketable skills really
| benefit from being able to silo their risks in employer
| pools, because their healthcare costs are lower than those
| of blue collar workers.
|
| I specifically remember people complaining about increasing
| premiums after Affordable Care Act because they would have
| to subsidize sicker people who simply did not have
| insurance in the first place, and I believe former Senator
| Lieberman from Connecticut, home to many health insurance
| companies, was able to capitalize on this and strip the
| "public option" from the Affordable Care Act.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_insurance_optio
| n
|
| The whole thing is an exercise in splitting the populace
| into various tribes of haves and have nots and pitting them
| against each other.
|
| Another handout to big businesses by government is the pre
| tax purchase of health insurance premiums by a business for
| employees, but if an employee of a business that does not
| offer insurance subsidies buys it themselves, they have to
| pay with post tax income.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Depends very much on the employer. I've spoken at length with
| a small sample (13, to be exact) leaders of companies from
| SMBs to mid-sized enterprises and they're all for national
| healthcare, as taxation is a relatively predictable expense
| and reduces overhead in other ways (like paying for benefit
| management services). Its also likely a shared tax, and in
| some cases is a net benefit for them because it makes
| recruitment easier (this in particular with blue collar
| businesses and those that aren't what would be considered
| traditionally technology companies. Benefits is a big part of
| the recruitment tactics still)
|
| I think health insurance companies run the biggest two faced
| business of all time, extracting money out of companies and
| individuals while line driving the cost down as much as
| possible without benefit to those who use their plans.
| Cigna[0] even uses automatic denials based on automated
| heuristics, a human doesn't even look at the file, for
| instance.
|
| I know "Medicare For All" programs aren't a silver bullet
| either, but I think it would at least put everything and
| everyone on a playfield that is even enough to have smaller
| reforms over issues that get missed in these proposals
|
| [0]: https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-
| health...
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Speaking from personal experience Cigna's line employees
| will also lie directly to your face on a recorded phone
| call while you're taking notes because their policies are
| geared toward following the letter of the law vis a vis
| retention while ensuring that their arbitration process
| effectively blocks you from suing them effectively unless
| you sue them before trying to work with them.
|
| We've been quoted 6 weeks to have a manager listen to a
| phone call, which is the exact period of time that their
| call recordings are retained. They're the worst health plan
| I've ever had the displeasure of using.
|
| They will also from time to time edit your explanation of
| benefits, which is against the law. Don't trust them and
| keep all the paper copies of everything they send you.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Minor point that you also have the non-profit Blues (i.e.
| Blue Cross Blue Shield) in the US health insurance
| marketplace, who are literally obligated to return
| healthcare savings to customers in the form of rates.
|
| They have their own problems, but profit-mongering is not
| one of them.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| I grew up in a Midwestern small town with one major employer.
| It's not a sustainable way of life. When that employer
| inevitably pulls out, the taxpayer pays the brunt of their
| externalities and the people pay with their QALYs.
|
| I see no reason to incentivize that kind of development no
| matter how badly some people think they want it.
| kennend3 wrote:
| > I think the people complaining in this thread would complain
| about anything.
|
| So much THIS!
|
| If they were free, people would complain that you still have to
| pay property taxes/utilities.
|
| Everyone LOVES to criticize but that same group rarely offers
| solutions, lest others criticize them.
|
| Here (Ontario, Canada) housing is a major issue for the reason
| you list : Nobody is big enough to push back and make it
| happen.
|
| Try and build anything here and you will be NIMBY to death. I
| ride my bike by an area where they are tying to build low-rise
| apartments and everywhere you look are signs protesting it..
| where should they build?
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| There was a scandal in China where a company sold homes to the
| employees then fire them a couples of years later. Former
| employees stuck with mortgages they couldn't pay. There are so
| many problems that happened, these homes were close to the
| workplace while being far away, very undesirable to outsiders
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Thank you so much for posting this summary! This honestly seems
| like a great balance for everyone involved.
| ericmay wrote:
| > 2. They're being sold at cost.
|
| There's no reason the government can't do this either, except
| (and I'll speak for my city) they don't want to do any of the
| hard work to actually make this happen. We need better leaders.
| spullara wrote:
| Governments in the US don't have a great history of doing
| things efficiently. Cost for them is likely to be above
| market.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yes but this isn't a rule or a law. We just actively and
| loudly choose for this to be the case.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Absolutely. The Singapore HDB model is a great example to
| follow. [1] Almost 80% of Singaporeans live in HDB flats.
|
| But the reason the government won't build is the same reason
| they don't let individuals build. They are beholden to the
| voting land-owning class who doesn't want to see the value of
| their properties go down by adding new supply.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board
| metapsj wrote:
| The Limits of the Singapore Housing Model
| https://marketurbanism.com/2020/08/05/the-limits-of-the-
| sing...
| arcticbull wrote:
| It's an interesting article but their conclusion appears
| to be:
|
| > Haila argues that "Singapore has solved the housing
| problem" but this certainly isn't true for those shut out
| from the HDB system.
|
| So it works for the people included, and not for the
| people excluded. Which is another way of saying it works?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| No. The US housing system works for the people included,
| which is the existing homeowners. Plenty of housing
| systems work like that.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Here the people excluded are non-residents and non-
| citizens. So the system works for all residents and
| citizens, to whom the government is beholden. It could
| just as easily be extended to include foreign workers,
| and they've been moving in that direction already. This
| is an explicit decision not an implicit one. It's not
| that the system wouldn't be able to support them due to
| some fundamental or intrinsic issue, it's a choice. That
| isn't true of the US model.
| im3w1l wrote:
| To me it sounds like failure actually. Kind of like soup
| kitchens, it's great that they exist, but I wouldn't cheer
| if 80% of people used their services. Free markets are
| better providing variety and choice, while governments are
| better at providing consistency and a minimum floor on
| quality.
|
| A successful government intervention would look to me like
| ~0% homelessness but >90% living in privately produced
| housing.
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| They just didn't read the article and are knee-jerking.
|
| I don't comment unless I read the article, and then read most
| if not all of the links within the article.
|
| Cook Medical isn't a coal mine, and Pike Place isn't a company
| town, and employees aren't being debt trapped.
|
| But knee jerking is easier, and the hormones it releases are
| very attractive to many people.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Company towns have a pretty bad historical record in the USA.
| Try asking ChatGPT:
|
| "What is a 'company town' in the context of late 19th and early
| 20th century America from the perspective of both business
| interests and labor organizers?"
|
| I suppose nobody will be able to get away with paying workers
| in scrip these days, however. Also, the housing is actually
| owned by the employees as you note, so that's also an
| improvement over past arrangements. It's still a little creepy,
| I think.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Those factors make it dramatically different from a company
| town.
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Where I live (Ostrava, a heavy industry city which expanded
| massively during the 19th and early 20th century), there are
| some worker colonies left, which were built by the mining and
| steelworking companies around 100-120 years ago.
|
| The houses are somewhat modest, but low-key beautiful (redbrick
| architecture similar to England and very rare in Czechia), and
| they were _real houses_ , suitable for families and situated in
| a walking distance from the workplaces, schools, churches and
| marketplaces.
|
| It seems to me that building them was a fairly good idea.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| > 1. The houses are being sold, not rented.
|
| That's not at all what the article says, here is a direct quote
| from it (emphasis mine):
|
| "So a growing number of employers around the country have
| decided to build their own housing for workers, _mostly for
| them to rent_ but sometimes to buy."
|
| I would hope it's extremely obvious the major problem there is
| with linking your housing (through renting) to your employment.
| It's the 'company town' problem all over where workers can be
| exploited with the constant threat of homelessness if they're
| terminated.
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| Restricting resales for 3 years would be OK if the company
| would agree to no layoffs, no facilities closing, and no
| takeovers of the company or the local facilities for three
| years, etc, etc.
|
| Creating neighborhoods according to short-term needs is
| surely short-sighted. Houses should be built to last at least
| 50 years, and neighborhoods longer. Whenever things turn bad
| for the company that has built a neighborhood for its
| workers, things will likely turn worse for the neighborhood.
| It would be extraordinary for a firm to create a community in
| its own image and have that image be long sustained as
| praiseworthy.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Did you read the next sentence?
|
| > They include big names like Disney and Meta, the meatpacker
| JBS and local school systems and health care providers
|
| That is not what Cook is doing. Cook is only selling.
| kcplate wrote:
| > It's the 'company town' problem all over where workers can
| be exploited with the constant threat of homelessness if
| they're terminated.
|
| I think people on conflating it with that, but there is some
| distinction. The company doesn't appear to have a monopoly on
| all housing, commerce, entertainment, and employment within
| the area, but are working to provide some housing options for
| its employees. It's kind of hard to draw a direct parallel to
| "company towns" where the company controls _everything_.
| smcin wrote:
| The even more extreme case being "company island": Larry
| Ellison's Lanai Isn't for You-Or the People Who Live There
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31850250
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| If people had a choice of affordable housing then these
| companies wouldn't need to build the housing in the first
| place...
| kcplate wrote:
| Ok. So what exactly does _that_ look like? Also, _who_
| should do it and _who_ should pay for it.
|
| We already have great examples of the shitshow tenements
| the government builds. Who you going to trust to do it
| right?
| moate wrote:
| The problem the complainers want to solve: More housing,
| more affording housing specific, for as many people as
| possible.
|
| The problem the company is solving, specifically when
| they rent the house and don't sell it: employee
| retention.
|
| If a company wants to become a real estate developer and
| sell the housing to its employees, that's fine. Assuming
| they're actually increasing housing stock and not just
| gentrifying at the expense of locals. But as we all see
| with the American health care system, linking basic
| living needs to your employment is a terrible plan, and
| renting a company house sounds like "company towns" for
| that reason.
|
| Going from employed, housed and insured to the opposite
| of all 3 because you got sick of your boss demanding you
| work weekends is pretty dystopian and exactly where this
| plan would lead.
|
| Tl:dr- we don't need any more fucking rentals, we need
| more home owners (generally, idgaf about anyone's
| personal preference for renting or owning. If you want to
| hire a parasite to fix your pipes 3 weeks after they
| break in exchange for paying his mortgage that's between
| you and your god).
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| But they don't, so they are?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Right, which is why I bring it up to directly refute the
| parent comment that it's not a company town because
| people have free will to simply live somewhere else.
| There is nowhere else they can afford, and that's the
| problem.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Why not just sell these houses with no restriction even at a
| market profit? If reasonably priced nice houses are required to
| attract talent, just solve that problem.
|
| Healthcare shouldn't be tied to employment, WWII is over.
| Housing shouldn't be added to that list. We don't need to have
| a Company Store model.
| Convolutional wrote:
| > When government won't allow construction of "workforce
| housing," complain, because nobody's big enough to try to push
| back and get concessions to make it possible.
|
| You'd make a great 19th century robber baron.
|
| Arkansas just tossed out its child employment laws for 14 year
| olds, so it sounds like things are going your way.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Maybe if all the people in their 20s and 30s stopped watching
| the toktok and star comic and buying furbobbles and being too
| fat or too frail to work just got their act together and went
| to work we wouldn't have to hire 14 year olds!
|
| /s but only kinda sorta
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You left out that the house cannot be rented out. So if you get
| fired in two years, you get to sell the house back to the
| company for what you paid for it (losing appreciation). Since
| you're not going to be able to stay in the neighborhood because
| there are no other jobs around.
|
| Which means that the company can price in "forcing you to sell
| your home" into your salary discussion.
| winphone1974 wrote:
| Losing appreciation on your primary residence, that was built
| specifically for housing supply and not as an investment is a
| pretty funny complaint!
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It's being explicitly sold to employees as a way to build
| wealth. Steve Ferguson, chairman of the board of Cook
| Group, the parent company of Cook Medical, said "And people
| don't build wealth living in apartments."
|
| Seems like the guy who approved this project thinks its
| supposed to be an investment!
| moe091 wrote:
| I think people who don't like it are just afraid of where this
| appears to be heading, and they are just resisting the idea of
| employers gaining anymore control of other aspects of peoples
| lives. Of course, the people who do this are technically
| choosing to give up this control to employers on their own
| volition, but it's possible to imagine a future where this
| becomes very normal and difficult to avoid
| mydogcanpurr wrote:
| Yep, it's optional until it's not.
| arcticbull wrote:
| My objection is the additional leverage it grants over
| employees. If by reporting a safety issue in the workplace,
| harassment or even just landing on a bad boss I risk getting
| evicted from my house - I'm going to be far more motivated to
| suck it up and deal with it. Strike? Eviction. Complain?
| Eviction. Try to unionize? Turbo-eviction.
|
| Now that's less likely when the employee owns the house as
| the article says, but that'll change too. And of course it
| ties your fates together. If the company goes under, your
| house becomes worthless too. If you want to move to a new
| employer chances are you'll have to relocate anyways.
|
| I guess next step is company scrip? What's old is new again.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| In the specific case above you have purchased and own the
| house. Nobody can evict you. So you're comparing company-
| owned rental housing to companies buying tracts of land and
| constructing housing for purchase by employees, which is
| totally different.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| More likely you have a mortgage, and now there's all the
| incentive in the world for the bank backing that mortgage
| to have a sweetheart arrangement with the company that
| "sold" you that property.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Has this ever happened in American history? That someone
| who was paying their mortgage was evicted because the
| bank had a sweetheart deal with someone? That's not how I
| understand mortgages to work.
| dsr_ wrote:
| That's not what happens. What happens is this:
|
| - You buy your house from the company via a mortgage
| owned by the company bank.
|
| - You start to build equity in your house.
|
| - You talk on your lunchbreak with your coworker about
| whether a union would be a good idea.
|
| - The company fires you for no particular reason.
|
| - There are no other employers in commuting range, and
| your skill-set is not conducive to working from home. As
| a result:
|
| - You fall behind on your mortgage. The company bank
| notes that you are delinquent and immediately starts
| foreclosure.
|
| - The company real estate agency doesn't show your house
| to people. There are no other real estate agencies in
| this town.
|
| - The company bank takes possession. You leave. The bank
| sells the house at auction. There is one bidder: the
| company-owned house leasing company. They bid less than
| the amount the bank is owed. The bank takes all of that
| money, as first creditor, and you get no money from the
| sale.
|
| The company-owned house leasing company cleans it out and
| leases it or decides to sell it to another employee.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Fannie Mae just settled a foreclosure discrimination
| class action in which they where failing to maintain
| foreclosed properties in minority neighborhoods. This
| caused a chain reaction where nearby homes went
| underwater and were subsequently foreclosed upon.
|
| Mortgage lenders have remarkable legal resources with
| which to make a homeowner's life miserable. While they
| usually have a financial incentive not to, that doesn't
| always pan out.
| Animats wrote:
| The trouble with owning a house in a company town is that
| it's hard to sell it. If the company won't buy it back,
| and they're the only local employer, and employment is
| declining, you're stuck. This is the story of many coal
| mining towns in West Virginia.
| smeej wrote:
| Yes, but this is true regardless of whether the company
| helps build the housing.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > helping people find financing
|
| Yeah, that's how indentured servitude works. The employer
| finances your purchases, then you owe the company.
|
| > if they sell within 3 years of buying, the company has the
| option to buy the house back at the previous sale cost, and for
| four years after that, the company has ROFR at market price.
|
| What if the company fires the employee after 2.5 years? The
| buyer could be seriously underwater. Heck, depending on the
| housing market, the buyer could be underwater even after 3
| years.
| depingus wrote:
| Another important point from the very same article, "a growing
| number of employers around the country have decided to build
| their own housing for workers, _mostly for them to rent_ but
| sometimes to buy. "
| User23 wrote:
| I recall thinking when Amazon was building out SLU that they
| should just go ahead and build the apartment buildings too. Why
| let Equity Residential take the vig? At that point they could
| include housing in the comp package and it would essentially be a
| barter arrangement of work for housing. While that's still
| taxable, it would help maximize the ever important future free
| cash flow.
|
| If that pattern became widespread popular then I expect some kind
| of COBRA, but for housing, would be legislated.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I think selling the houses is fine. Renting them out, brings up
| issues of company towns.
|
| But as long as they are sold, I don't see much of an issue.
|
| If the company is large, it is likely that a significant number
| of people in any new housing development close to the company
| would be employees of that company.
|
| In addition, with the ebbs and flows of employment, it is likely
| that the housing would end up getting sold later at market prices
| to people who did not work for the company.
|
| In addition, having company built housing, ends up relieving the
| price pressures on housing in the area.
|
| I think this overall is a good thing, as long as the houses are
| being sold, not owned and rented out by the company.
| dagw wrote:
| On the flip side, by buying the house you are taking on a lot
| of extra risk. If the company shuts down or moves its factory
| you will be left both unemployed and left with a virtually
| worthless house, since no one will want to buy a house in a
| place where the by far single biggest employer just left. If
| you're renting you'll just be unemployed and can easier move to
| where you can find a new job.
| smeej wrote:
| That risk exists for any home purchase in a small town/area
| with one major employer, not just homes the company helped
| build. If you work for the company and live in the town, you
| take on that risk, regardless of whether the company helped
| build the house.
| dagw wrote:
| Indeed, that was my argument for renting your company
| housing instead of buying it.
| depingus wrote:
| Even though the article is about a home buyer, the article says
| at the very beginning, "a growing number of employers around
| the country have decided to build their own housing for
| workers, _mostly for them to rent_ but sometimes to buy. "
|
| As if employer provided health insurance wasn't enslaving
| enough; now they want to bring back fiefdoms.
| Wronnay wrote:
| Ford did similar things... "The Ford Motor Company's interest in
| employee loyalty went far beyond the shop floor workers. Ford
| owned a great deal of land near Detroit and established a land
| development subsidiary explicitly for the purpose of erecting
| middle-class housing for managers and supervisors. These homes in
| Dearborn were completed in 1919."
| consp wrote:
| Ford is not the only one, there are many examples (google the
| wiki page for company town for a basic example list). Almost
| all failed eventually due to changing economic instances or
| company malice and the end result is either incorporation into
| an existing town (the good outcome) or decline and eventual
| devastation. Wile less evident than the real town examples, we
| have here lots of smaller end 19th, early 20th century
| "communities" which have the same result. There is a name for
| the type of houses: Arbeiderswoningen (laborer housing).
| Eventually the government took over over from private or
| corporate initiatives and a rent system was created which was
| far less tied to the actual place of employment.
| [deleted]
| walterbell wrote:
| _Sixteen Tons_ by Tennessee Ernie Ford (1956),
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1980WfKC0o
| tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
| My grandfather and mom would sing this occasionally.
|
| There's a danger to society when the common case becomes a
| factory town. Too many risks of depending on the company store
| for everything.
| opportune wrote:
| I want more businesses to try this. I think the kneejerk "company
| town bad" misses a lot of the contextual differences between how
| and why they were needed in the past, vs what employer-
| built/managed housing would look like today.
|
| For starters, company towns in the past (and these actually still
| exist) were usually for raw resource extraction in isolated
| areas. The workforce was a lot poorer than today and whereas now
| you could probably go on SSI or take a different job to not
| starve, people were desperate enough to take these jobs just to
| put food on the table. Once there, technology and infrastructure
| were such that connections to the outside world were difficult to
| make, and done by the company (who imported all the goods and
| provided all the services). So yeah, putting a lot of desperate
| people in complete control of a for-profit business led to a lot
| of abuse, de facto indentured servitude or what we now call debt
| bondage/ modern slavery, and other bad stuff.
|
| Employer housing in a place like the Bay Area would be entirely
| different. You're completely connected to the rest of the world,
| you'd have plenty of money and options to switch jobs or engage
| in consumption outside the company development, you could just
| take your pay and use it for non-corporate housing (just like
| some people do with company food). There are for sure pitfalls
| we'd need to prevent, like lease or mortgage terms that make it
| too hard to switch jobs, or the employer being too nosy about
| what happens in its housing. But like, this model is a thing
| we're all familiar with already in the form of university dorms,
| live-in resident managers, military housing, except it could be
| even more hands off.
|
| I actually think it would incentivize a lot of win-win outcomes.
| Employees get reasonably priced housing, employers offer a perk
| with nice balance sheet effects, employees get to live in
| presumably a safer area nearby (but not with) friends and
| acquaintances (ie a community), employees get a short commute,
| employers don't have to pay out the nose for expensive third
| party corporate housing, employers get to capture positive
| externalities of job creation, it incentivizes development and
| would actually be able to make it happen because it's a priority
| for a well funded and more importantly well-organized pro-housing
| entity... and if you thought it were creepy or better for young
| people than families you could just not use it.
|
| It's a little dystopian at first glance, serfdom yadda yadda, but
| in the Bay Area we already have serfdom except our lords are
| random people who bought or inherited housing when it was cheap
| in the 70s-90s. And those people fight tooth and nail against
| development which keeps prices high and them in power. If we're
| gonna have lords I'd rather have them be pro-development and
| giving me shares of their fiefdom.
| systemtest wrote:
| Company housing is used in The Netherlands to pay people below
| minimum wage. Migrant workers (often seasonal) get paid minimum
| wage to work in agriculture, in fulfilment centers or similar
| jobs and have to pay a very high rent to their employer for
| renting subpar housing. That way the employer effectively pays
| less than minimum wage due to money flowing back in the form of
| rent. Terrible all around.
|
| Due to the housing crisis and people not being open to rent out
| their home to migrant workers this is often their only option.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9L_I1WU6w
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