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I think the people complaining in this thread would complain about anything. When government won't allow construction of "workforce housing," complain, because

• davidw 4y ago
  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.
• zyang 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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.
  • bko 4y ago
    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
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      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_option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_insurance_option 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.
    • wildrhythms 4y ago
      >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?id=H https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/sectors/summary...
  • bell-cot 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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 4y ago
          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.
  • no_wizard 4y ago
    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-insurance-rejection-claims https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health...
    • throwway120385 4y ago
      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 4y ago
      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.
  • orangecat 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      Do you have a viable suggestion for an alternative provider?
      • SoftTalker 4y ago
        Car insurance model. You go buy your own in a competitive marketplace.
      • kbelder 4y ago
        The person themselves? Certainly better than the employer, and some argue that it would be better than the government.
      • yamtaddle 4y ago
        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 4y ago
          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).
  • toast0 4y ago
    > 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.
• tehjoker 4y ago
  just have mass public housing. easy. then you can plan based on population level needs instead of what will make people money.
  • hraedon 4y ago
    Assuming away all of the constraints that led to this situation in the first place does make solving the problem easier, for sure
    • tehjoker 4y ago
      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.
• discardedrefuse 4y ago
  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."
• Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Thank you so much for posting this summary! This honestly seems like a great balance for everyone involved.
• moe091 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    Yep, it's optional until it's not.
  • arcticbull 4y ago
    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.
    • johnchristopher 4y ago
      > I guess next step is company scrip? Yes, but.. wait for it.. with NFC and company-crypto \o/. What a twist !
    • throwway120385 4y ago
      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 4y ago
• charlieyu1 4y ago
  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
• ericmay 4y ago
  > 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.
  • arcticbull 4y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board
    • metapsj 4y ago
      The Limits of the Singapore Housing Model https://marketurbanism.com/2020/08/05/the-limits-of-the-singapore-housing-model/ https://marketurbanism.com/2020/08/05/the-limits-of-the-sing...
      • arcticbull 4y ago
        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 4y ago
          No. The US housing system works for the people included, which is the existing homeowners. Plenty of housing systems work like that.
          • arcticbull 4y ago
• kennend3 4y ago
  > 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?
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    Those factors make it dramatically different from a company town.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• yamtaddle 4y ago
  > 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.
  • lazyasciiart 4y ago
    When has this specific thing happened before?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • powersurge360 4y ago
      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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
      • smeej 4y ago
        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.
• Convolutional 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    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
• thebooktocome 4y ago
  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.
• snarf21 4y ago
  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.
  • SoftTalker 4y ago
    > Why not just sell these houses with no restriction even at a market profit? Because they will be bought up by property management companies, headquartered in another state probably, who will turn them into rentals that the people there can just barely afford. Cook is trying to come up with an alternative to that.
    • snarf21 4y ago
      It seems like that would only be viable if supply remains constrained. If they kept building for new hires plus a spare percentage, then holding tons of empty un-rentable properties seems like a bad return. It is a complicated question for sure.
• chasd00 4y ago
  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.
• HWR_14 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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!
      • SoftTalker 4y ago
        I mean, this is a company that has operated and expanded in this area for a long time. They are well established. Obviously nobody can predict the future but it's a pretty good bet that they will be there for another three years. That's a bet I'd take if I worked there. This is not an SV software company, it's a company that makes physical products, has a huge investment in the facility to do that, and have been operating in the area for decades.
        • HWR_14 4y ago
          Oh, I totally believe the company will still be there (although they could move the factory to another country, it's not unheard of.) My point is if you want to own that house, you need a job and they have most of the jobs. So if they fire you or you quit, you probably will have to sell the home back to the company. That's a lot of pressure they can exert on you.
• qbasic_forever 4y ago
  > 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.
  • kcplate 4y ago
    > 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 4y ago
      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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31850250
    • qbasic_forever 4y ago
      If people had a choice of affordable housing then these companies wouldn't need to build the housing in the first place...
      • kcplate 4y ago
        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?
• cratermoon 4y ago
  > 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.
• inglor_cz 4y ago
  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.
  • c-hendricks 4y ago
    All this is saying is that building quality houses in walkable areas is a good thing.
• rocket_surgeron 4y ago
  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.
• DubiousPusher 4y ago
  Yeah, I agree. You can see something like this as a clear signal of a market and regulatory failure and yet recognize it as an ultimately pro-social stop gap. If this becomes routine, it will mutate. It's an absolute breeding ground for abuses. Thus it should not be seen as a reliable source of relief but as another catalyst for the urgency we need to have regarding the housing crisis which is rising to the level of an emergency. Policy makers are the only ones who can swallow hard and make the decisions which will get us out of this.
• loldk 4y ago
  [dead]
• yieldcrv 4y ago
  nobody needs to offer a solution just because they can spot a false dilemma from halfway across the countrt