I decided that I'd just go into credit card debt and live in the crappiest hotel that I could find until I had enough money to pay the first/last/security deposit.
Luckily, I found some shady landlord on Craigslist that turned out to be pretty chill, and just let me move in without even paying until I had the money. Dude even picked me up from the airport and moved me right in. It was kind of a rip-off for a room, but it was furnished, and I wasn't going to be in a position to buy furniture for months, so it worked out for both of us for 6 months or so.
I do wonder... At what point does this start to impact who can and can't even move to your area for work? Have we already reached that point?
Just build corporate housing.
Then we can have little Amazon towns where all your needs are met and everyone lives in perfect harmony in downtown San Fransisco.
* Non-transferrable, no cash value, forfeit upon separation, taxes on items purchased with credits must still be paid in USD by user
If it's a bad offer, it's a bad offer. If there aren't enough good offers, forbidding a weird benefit probably won't fix that anyway.
Vertical integration isn't that unethical if you religiously stick to only integrating what would otherwise suck.
Corporate housing, and worker housing in general, is what we're bouldering towards. The only way to extract further wealth from most of the population is for them not to own anything. It's the Western equivalent of South Asian brick kilns.
What we need instead is social housing like Vienna [1]. Americans in particular always associate such thing with ghettoes and Section 8.
And here's another problem: US corporations already keep employees and pay them less with the fear of losing health insurance. That's why the system exists. How much worse would it be if it's also your housing you'll lose?
I think there's always a way to make these moves work. You just need to take a risk and be ready to suffer.