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Comment by qbasic_forever | Hacker News Reader

If people had a choice of affordable housing then these companies wouldn't need to build the housing in the first place...

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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?

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).

They are literally solving the supply issue at below market prices for employees and yet this is not enough for many here.

I suspect the disconnect lies more in the fact that a company is working to solve the problem than the government.

Who’s “they”? This is the important part from the article you’re not discussion: “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.”

Renting from the company is bad, like my original post. It’s solving for employee retention, not affordable housing.

But go off

> Renting from the company is bad, like my original post. It’s solving for employee retention, not affordable housing.

If the rent is below market rate, it’s solving for both, at least temporarily during the employment period. Which may be ok or desired by the employee.

If the employee wants to stay within that area even after their employment ends, they can use the time that they are in the cheaper employer provided accommodations to find other housing. I think describing an employer provided housing for rent may really only be generally bad if the employer forces you to stay there and pay a captured rate as a condition of your employment.

Yeah, no shit. But they (I assume) don't. It's significantly better option than alternative.

The alternative is the company pays employees enough to afford to live in the area without having to rent them company housing. The free market system is broken and not working.

No, the system where building housing is basically illegal is broken and not working. The free market system is just fine.

It's not a problem of being unable to build. This article mentions the company is building an _entire neighborhood_ with 14+ homes all brand new. That clearly isn't some lack of space or zoning problem.

The problem is the housing market has been inflated to astronomical levels because the housing industry is a critical part of our country GDP. If the price of homes fails to go up then banks will lose money and fail (just like in the aftermath of 2008). It's not profitable to build cheap, affordable housing so it doesn't happen.

The market is broken.

There is also a lot of money sloshing around in real estate due to previous sustained low interest rates and QE. The problem is that some people can afford the current high prices (and will bid up anything they want), just everyone else can’t. Increasing money supply went into real estate for far too long.

But they don't, so they are?

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.

Exactly what did you refute? You downplay a company’s solution to a housing affordability problem by simply complaining that there is a housing affordability problem?

The company refuses to pay employees enough so they can afford what the market will bear for house pricing. Instead of--shocker!--paying employees more, the company is building housing to rent to employees so it can continue paying them peanuts. The entire system is broken and not in favor of the rank and file workers. The free market isn't working.

Ahh, so it’s apparent you didn’t read the story. The company is building new houses near a given plant that they are offering to sell to employees at a below market rate because local older homes are purchased quick by cash buyers. There is other housing in the area, but this company wants to give an option for a lesser commute to the plant for their workers. A quick Zillow search shows quite a lot of affordable rental housing at the same price point of a monthly mortgage of the company offered homes within a 15-20 mile radius from the Plant’s town. This is not an uncommon commute distance for a rural area.

If the employee leaves the company, they still own the home. The only caveat (and it’s understandable and reasonable IMO) appears to be that if the homeowner decides to sell the home within 3 years, the company has right of first refusal to buy the home at the same cost they originally sold it for to the employee.

You are making assumptions about the company’s motives that are based on your own biases. You seem to feel that the employee is somehow being wage abused for being offered a house to own at a below market rate. How is it that a) this situation describes a “company” town in the historical sense. And b) the employee is somehow abused for choosing to purchase a home below market value?

Edit: hit send too soon.

Ahhh you failed to read both the article and my original comment that started this entire thread. As I said there the first paragraphs of the article highlight that _most companies are buying property to rent, not sell_. They talk about a specific example of selling but the bottom line is more companies want to rent homes.

I read it, but I didn’t assume the article was about a single sentence literally found halfway in to the article that mentions the word “rent” (along with “buy” BTW).

At any rate, you want to complain about the problem, and claim that what appears to be a working solution for an employer and it’s employees is somehow spurious, but have offered zero solutions other than outrage.

We get it, you are mad about housing affordability and want to comment about your anger. Post a solution, both here and elsewhere in the conversation you seem to avoid that. So be it.

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