Please read the rest of the thread. This isn't a company town

Oh but…I’m gonna need you to come in more this week and.. if not… you can find another place to live.

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!”

What about being fully enslaved to a fucking corp seems glamorous?!

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 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.

Don't ever let them convince you company towns are the answer to our problems.

We don’t do roommates. To us sharing a house is sharing a room.

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.

And they’ll be single forever with those accommodations.

Apart from company town concerns, I assumed you're not being paid in scrip. This could be a great opportunity if this is something that sounds interesting to you. Do you know what rent is if you lose your job? How much float time can you save up off of $15/hour?

Rough math (double check me, I am bad at math): take average rent, divide by 160, and add that to your $15/hour to get a better idea of what you're getting out of it via free housing.

No, because apartments are awful and diminish our connection to nature.

Yeah i think $20/h with a 30h work week and free housing would be minimum liveable. Realistically, $30/h and free housing should be a comfortable, modest life.

Like the living conditions I saw were pretty good. From housing to the gym they had and everything

Same reason the US doesn’t have universal healthcare.

With roommates? Hell no.

No, the only way I'm living in employer provided housing is if it's either an extremely remote job, or I get some sort of exceptional benefits from it. I would consider going to Antarctica for a job, or some remote oilfield worksite to be examples of the first one. In either case, free housing is kind of the bar to entry for employers when they want you to go spend months at a time in an utterly remote location.

On the other hand, if some super rich person wanted to hire me as live in staff so they have someone to fillet fish or break down a leg of lamb for them at any time of day, for the right salary and conditions, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it, provided I got my own little private apartment on premises somewhere.

I have a few friends who got out of working as chefs in fine dining restaurants and were hired on as private chefs for rich families in the area. While they aren't live in positions, they are the level of job I would need to be offered to consider tying my fortunes to my employer to that extent. The one I seeost often, for example, has a pretty decent deal. He is responsible for preparing 3 meals a day for the family he works for, and if they have any functions requiring food, he gets notified well in advance and will do some extra work to cover that. Other than that, his days are his own, to spend as he sees fit.

From knowing him for years, it's proven incredibly stable and pretty low stress for him. Whenever the family goes on vacation, he gets a vacation too (meaning they deal with their own food in another fashion while they are away), and he was also able to just take off several weeks a year to go bang around Portugal and visit his extended family there. If he had a slight sniffle, he would be given the rest of the week off, with pay, lest their child with some type of immune system issues fell ill.

That said, I think my friend's circumstances are pretty exceptional, and that would be the bare minimum for me to consider such an arrangement.

That makes no sense at all...

oh, for sure - actually fixing problems is absolutely better

I mean, economically speaking, that boils down to if you could earn $15 + the cost of renting those things, with roommate, on your own.

Other variables could effect the answer pretty strongly, but they're not specified in the question. And, I guess, if you just don't care about amenities.

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.

OP specified actual, real currency.

I'm aware. That's why I said this isn't your exact scenario.

Living with strangers? Hell no. Provide me with a studio apartment and then we'll talk.

If I was living on my own in those conditions, I would be fine with it. Although I'd be saving money in case I needed to change jobs/move. If the contract allowed me to pick up the lease after end of employment, that would be especially motivating. I wouldn't want to live with co-workers, though.

No.

We tried that with coal mining. Results were disastrous.

Read history.

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.

Read the thread. It's not a company town.

Nope

State owned company or Walmart?

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

It's entirely exactly a company town.

A company town has all of these things?

1. Provides housing independently of the job
2. Job is paid by the government
3. Apartment complex is managed by the people who live there
4. Has a Labor neutrality agreement
5. Will voluntarily recognize labor and tenant unions

The job providing housing while paying starvaton wages is what makes it a company town.

Sounds lovely, until you and the employer stop being on the same page about the tiniest of things.

Then it starts spiraling into a personal housing security crisis.

And you can forget about thinking of changing jobs any time soon. The moment your 2 weeks end, you're homeless.

The tenant and labour union stuff sounds nice, but they're not a magical fix. They can and often are bought and controled. While better than the alternative, they're not a guarantee of protectedness.

This doesn't mean the model is dead on arrival. It's just not one I'd choose. I'd rather have a seperate boss and landlord, thank you very much.

I'm sort of in that boat. Boarding school provides accommodation for some staff, and I got lucky. Teacher assistant doesnt need any fancy degrees or certificates. (Passed year 12 and a Working with Children clearance).

Not for me.

That's just a company town with more steps.

I was kind of in a similar situation. 3$ a hour, someone said "if it is so bad at home, we can offer you that house over there".

I realized that would be an incredibly perilous position to be in.

Forget the official rules. It will get ugly fast.

are you allowed to have another job? 15/hr isnt really livable, in anything but a LCOL area with no other expensives. but its a useful stepping stone for people who couldn't "launch form the nests"

since its apartment complex, probably a room , bathroom, small kitchen by yourself? if its sharing a whole apartment(unless you are student) then its really not feasible.

agreed, unless its a roomate you trust, like friends/bff.

In some countries, 15€/hr is very livable (around 2,4k€ a month working 40 hours per week), especially if you don't need to pay rent.

So what happens if you quit that job that comes with the house?

You have the option to either remain in the townhouse, or move into an apartment if one is available. In either case, you start paying rent. Staying in the townhouse with your former coworkers is cheaper though, as you'll only be paying 1/3 of the total townhouse rent