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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

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.

Yes. But even more so in a company town.

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?

Good luck selling that house in a company town to anyone outside the company.

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.

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".

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