You’re living in a townhouse as part of an apartment complex. The apartment complex has benefits such as a pool and hot tub, indoor gym, full size basketball court, a library, and a garden. You have 2 other roommate/coworkers, and you have 6 neighbor/coworkers. A Labor neutrality agreement is guaranteed, and both tenant unions and labor unions will be voluntarily recognized.
No. Tying my housing security to my employment security only benefits the employer. A worker is allowed to leave whenever they want; a slave isn’t.
Understandable position
Same reason the US doesn’t have universal healthcare.
We tried this before, they were called company towns and they got banned because they’re a horrifically abusive practice.
Imagine living around the same people you work with. Imagine a company that won’t even let you take a piss break having control over your housing situation. Imagine getting fired and having to move out of your apartment the same day.
wouldn’t this have a different (slightly?) outcome if there were actual workers protection legislation? I’m pointing out how the whole ‘fire at will’ BS is flat-out inhumane…
I could see this working in NZ where it’s challenging to sack people unless they’re outright fraudulent or hostile, for example
No because everything will slowly be chipped away from you. There’s not a single country on earth that will be immune to that. $15 an hour 5 years later, 10 years later… having to fight for that raise. Having to deal with moving goalposts to keep your housing. Yall have lost your fucking minds thinking you’re immune to this.
Sure, but why have it in the first place? Better if jobs just pay people enough to afford housing. That gives workers more options.
oh, for sure - actually fixing problems is absolutely better
The broader idea is that the job is paid by the government as part of a program to end homelessness
Then it’s housing that comes with a job, not a job that comes with housing. There’s an important difference.
Never thought of it like that
He who controls things, decides how it’s used.
The apartment is managed by a board of elected residents
Invisible People (YouTube) did a great mini doc on how they provide housing for certain homeless people overseas. I think it was one of the nordics. Worth a watch if you’re interested in homelessness and systems used to solve it elsewhere.
I think this is it: https://youtu.be/0jt_6PBnCJE
That being said (I haven’t watched this one yet): https://youtu.be/GLvK31llklM
You have 2 other roommate/coworkers, and you have 6 neighbor/coworkers.
Immediate end of question for me.
I need a good separation of work and private times/places. Coworkers are not automatically friends.
At like 21? Yeah I’d have loved that job. At 30, no thank you to roommates.
Being able to live alone is one of the most important things to me. If I want someone in my space, it’s my choice.
I just need a small room to myself with the only agreement being to keep things quiet. My last roommate situation was fine. We had a big common area, but he only used it on dates, mostly we just stayed in our rooms.
Language is a bit of problem. “Roommates” can mean literally sharing a room, or it can mean sharing an apartment with separate bedrooms.
yes! as a non-American I never understood what context this was…
room mate clearly means someone you’re bunking with …in the same room
a flat mate is someone living in another room in the same place!
As American who has heard the term flatmate, I’m strongly tempted to use it instead of the more ambiguous roommate…
We don’t do roommates. To us sharing a house is sharing a room.
That makes no sense at all…
if its affordable.
The problem with accepting a deal like that is that $15/hr isn’t enough to leave you with any real savings at the end of the pay period, so you’re essentially trapped working for the people who provide you housing with no way to dig yourself out of that situation and move on to more normal employment.
When they know they have that much power over you, expect working conditions to be brutal, the hours to be long, and the managers to be unfair and cruel.
Also expect it to get enshittified over time
Depends what your cost of living is, and how good you are at saving.
If it’s located in Lilongwe, congratulations, the cost of decent food is going to be like $2 a day, so if your utilities and security are covered, you’re going to have a considerable disposable income to play with.
Lots of people work for $15 an hour, in the West, and get nothing extra covered. That is a bit of a trap.
This is what we call a company town. Soon you won’t get real money, just monopoly money you can only use at the company store. No thanks.
I know that’s not exactly what you’re scenario is saying but, feels too slippery of a slope for me personally.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.
I was gonna say, this sounds like a company town. I’ve seen some videos on company towns and they’re fairly glamorous tbh, I forget the drawbacks, I’m sure it has its drawbacks.
In old school mining company towns the drawback was that they didn’t pay you in real money. They paid you in essentially monopoly money. The currency they gave you was only usable at places owned by the company. The issue becomes, you don’t like your job and want to leave? You have no money. You can’t leave.
What about being fully enslaved to a fucking corp seems glamorous?!
Like the living conditions I saw were pretty good. From housing to the gym they had and everything
It is one step back into this. It’s something we fight and died over in the past as workers only for these people to bring it back up again as a perk.
We learned this in school so I’m assuming the younger gens aren’t learning any history at all unless it’s a lie “Trump fought wwii single handedly!”
OP specified actual, real currency.
I’m aware. That’s why I said this isn’t your exact scenario.
D’oh! I think I stopped reading and responded early. I hate it when people do that, my bad.
There are cases where whatever business just has a residence in an otherwise private area. Or at least have been. OP didn’t specify either way about the surroundings, though.
They did state some more info in a comment that I saw after I made my post. Regardless, I would be wary but, it wouldn’t be a no if there were good checks and balances
I have more details in other threads, but it’s distinct from a company town in that the job is paid by the government, the housing is provided independently of the job, and the housing is controlled by the people who live there
Your scenario sounds like it at least has checks and balances which is the only way this could work without employees getting screwed.
If that were the case then why would your roommates and neighbors be fellow employees? Also how would the government afford said housing if they’re also subsidizing the company you work for to allow them to be competitive for employees while only paying $15/hr?
How do you save money to leave if you want to? That’s where the difference will be and at $15 an hour… you’re never leaving.
No. You don’t want to be in a situation where losing your job means losing your housing.
But you can also save up what you’d spend on housing, then rent from savings.
Not if I’m only getting paid $15 an hour.
How can anyone keep housing without a job?
That six month savings cushion should include whatever you pay for mortgage rent etc.
Looooooool
Sure pal
No.
We tried that with coal mining. Results were disastrous.
Read history.
Read the thread. It’s not a company town.
It’s entirely exactly a company town.
A company town has all of these things?
- Provides housing independently of the job
- Job is paid by the government
- Apartment complex is managed by the people who live there
- Has a Labor neutrality agreement
- Will voluntarily recognize labor and tenant unions
The job providing housing while paying starvaton wages is what makes it a company town.
Forget the official rules. It will get ugly fast.
No.
Housing tied to employment is too close to slavery for me.
I owe my soul to the company store.
Yes, but I’d immediately suspect I was joining a cult.
No lol it’s an idea I’ve had that I want to propose to my state to handle the housing crisis. Basically make really nice apartments with a lot of amenities nearby, and then hire librarians, maintenance crews, and social workers. The folks that rent have payments set to pay off the cost of construction plus an emergency repair fund with no profit margin
We can’t even open homeless barracks in my state.
Are you in the US? If so, you sound psychotic.
I am in the US. Are you saying you wouldn’t support this if it was proposed?
People like you and me are kept far the fuck away from making governmental decisions.
I’m not going to go to government, I’m going to go to tenant unions and housing advocates and get their support, then use my union connections to get time with the AG
Anything to alleviate problems. Good lick getting anything like it. If they allow anything like it, it most likely won’t look the way you imagine, by a longshot.
I’m saying that you think the government cares about homeless people enough to, you know, HOUSE them.
Providing housing is a pretty basic concept, and not in anyway new. We have several types of housing programs, ALL of them desperately underfunded.
You are expecting a housing program that is much more convoluted and complicated and expensive but probably no more effective to be implemented. Why?
So this sounds like low income housing. Which they can’t afford. Because we already can’t afford to pay for this kind of stuff in nicer areas.
Do you allow dogs? Cats? Children? What if someone is allergic that is rooming with someone else? What if someone destroys the house because they don’t see value in something they aren’t paying for? Apartments have people coming in to take advantage you can’t even out toilet paper out because it would get stolen. My last middle class apartment smelled like piss in the hallways. One person was housing wild animals. There’s a reason why the state has its housing set up like it is.
Does it sound wonderful in theory yeah. Can I think of 1 million reasons on how to take advantage of that? also yeah.
I would support it, but good luck getting it.
It’s going about the problem the opposite way. People should be paid sufficient wages to afford housing. In general, the jobs that provide housing are in apartment complexes or hospitality, so they already own livable units as part of their business. If you’re constructing units for no reason other than providing a place to live, you should give your employees sufficient pay to have the freedom to manage their own living conditions.
Why is this plan more effective than building the houses and then selling or renting them on the open market? I don’t see why you would want to offer them in return for labour rather than offering them in return for money.
No, the jobs are for people that work for the apartment complex. However for people elected to manage the apartment, their rent is also waived. The apartment rent for residents is set for each unit to pay the cost in 30 years, at which point rent will reduce to the cost of maintenance plus some mutual savings.
I asked why, though.
Because single family homes aren’t efficient enough, and by cutting out the profit incentive it lowers the cost of living overall
I’m not sure whether you mean for “single family home” to mean literally a home sized for a single family, or a detached house.
In the either case, whichever institution you’re imagining builds the houses and offers them for its workers could build whatever type of housing it wants no matter how it offers them to people. If you imagine it building apartment blocks and offering them in exchange for labour, it could build apartment blocks and offer them in exchange for money.
If you’re worried about occupancy, the mechanism of offering housing to employees becomes purely a way of forcing more than one family unit to occupy a single dwelling. I don’t see why this would be a good way of achieving that. If people don’t want to live in shared accommodation, you have to make it attractive to them in some other way. Bundling it with a job doesn’t make it more attractive.
For your second point, the institution building the homes can choose not to make a profit regardless.
Single family homes has always referred to detached houses from what I’ve seen, I’ve never heard it to mean all forms of housing units for a single family.
I don’t think a development company, or really any organization other than government, will voluntarily building nonmarket housing in which the rent doesn’t produce profit. I am making the assumption that the person that takes this deal is single, but I imagine that accommodations for individual quarters would have to be figured out
Your state is probably going to tell you that they already fund various halfway houses.
Nah, this is distinct from a halfway house, it’s a government funded nonmarket housing. Social workers are so people have access to basic therapy, not to retrain people. The people that live there need to pay rent, but the apartment complex is managed by a board of residents that are elected
You basically just described the army. Except the pay is probably lower. And labor union lol.
Damn, and here I was going for socialism lmao
The army is socialism kinda. An authoritarian kind.
Is there another kind (in practice)?
The US military is Socialism all the way…
Indentured servitude? Company owned housing? What am I, dumb as fuck? Well, I might be dumb but not as fuck.
But i am convinced the younger gens will be fooled by something like this and sign themselves away into slavery again.
Please read the rest of the thread. This isn’t a company town
I used to work on cruise ships. I worked over 80 hours a week, and was making $1075/mth.
That’s about $13.50/hr.
But, i had room and board paid for (but had a roommate), and actually saved money during that time.
What about food?
Isn’t that “board”?
That’s what “board” means.
I guess I never knew that, TIL
When I first read the title, I assumed the housing wasn’t shared. And even then, I would’ve said no unless utilities and maintenance were covered as well, because $15/hour is still low to actually live comfortably. But with roommates? Even more so no, unfortunately.
Yes, utilities are included
You have 2 other roommate
Absolutely not.
Japan does have some employers who pay for housing. It ends up a nightmare when they are fired or otherwise leave.
The housing is provided independently of the job, the person just has to pay their share of rent if they quit
In that case, this just sounds needlessly complicated. Much like US health insurance, why is the business involved here at all at this point? Just make it socialized, taxpayer-funded housing to ensure all have basic housing. People can opt out and live somewhere else, but they still owe the tax to keep the program going.
Just make it socialized
That is the idea, but the point is that once the construction cost is paid for, then the apartment gets managed by the people who live there
