Did I miss the part in this article where it explains why working from home costs more? The company is not paying me any more for my internet connectivity, my homeowners insurance, my mortgage, my taxes, or my utilities. I also don't get a cleaning staff. The fact that the executives feel lonely in largely unoccupied office space the company continues to needlessly hold onto isn't the work-from-home employees' fault.
This is seriously the most shallow reason to justify returning back to the office, and the sadly ironic thing is it's rather compelling; I still think it's more that the corporate and large Real Estate owning class has too much investment tied to their real estate portfolio and it's suffering, such that in order to maintain these inflated prices they've benefited from they need to force people back to the office to justify have an office. Rent seeking has to end somewhere and commercial RE is a good place to start.
Furthermore, I hope they see the follow of labour participation flailing as a KPI in their quarterly reports since they love those so much: no cares about the corner office or the exclusive parking spot. Those are relics that only ever mattered to a few people, who now feel lonely, most people just want to earn a living that allows them to do want they really want to do in life, which is not spend it with a bunch of strangers they can barely stand under the best of circumstances on a project they barely care about.
If all things are equal, and the productivity hasn't suffered then their is no excuse for remote first to not be standard for roles that can do so.
Worst case scenario you're always free to find another employer. I'd be willing to take an effective $800 pay cut for work from home (if I didn't have it already, that is). But I suppose you prefer to be in the office, and that's fine.
Did you plan on living in that room forever? If it was too small for you to comfortably work from home in I imagine you'd have been moving out sometime soon anyway. At worst the job just made you take on that additional expense a bit earlier than you'd have preferred.
The company decided unilaterally that they no longer want to provide that space and are now altering our existing deal to force that cost on to me.