Perhaps the cruelest inflictions associated with being poor in the United States today is having to face housing instability or even homelessness. This is naturally driven by systemic issues in the lack of decent and affordable housing, spurred on by the nationwide housing shortage.[1] In fact, recent estimates suggest a deficit of anywhere between 1.5 to 5.5 million units, with 653,104 people experiencing homelessness across the United States on a single night in 2023.[2] This does not include those facing housing instability, which includes the individuals doubling up in a unit and those at risk of being evicted.[3] In fact, one in ten residents in Washington, DC are experiencing this type of instability.[4] And unfortunately, government attempts to alleviate such crises have come with underwhelming results.[5]

As such, any private endeavor that may address the housing shortage ought to be seriously considered as a positive development. A recent trend in housing development may provide a worthy, despite worrisome, means of mitigating the housing affordability crisis: corporate involvement in housing development.

Amazon is the largest and perhaps first company to take part in this phenomenon. As part of the e-commerce giant’s move into cities like Seattle, Arlington, and Nashville, Amazon is directly investing in affordable housing, parks, and even schools in addition to their offices, calling these areas their “community towns”.[6] Google and Facebook have similarly pledged millions of dollars in affordable housing investments in California.[7] Beyond this, Google, Facebook, and Apple have rolled out plans to build housing around their California offices, despite these initiatives being slow to materialize.[8]

Representing even more of this involvement, corporate initiatives mirroring traditional company towns of the past have gone into full swing. In May of 2025, employees of SpaceX incorporated the company town StarBase in Texas to support the company’s rocket launchpad.[9] Furthermore, serious government encouragement of experimental data mining towns, most notably Nevada’s 2018 Innovation Zone plan, a proposal that would allow companies to build their own towns in the Nevada desert, and Wyoming’s recognition of CityDAO, a “smart city” to support crypto mining, as a “decentralized unincorporated nonprofit association[].”[10] However, the Nevada Innovation Zone plan was shelved in 2021 and CityDAO is still in its early stages of development.[11] But the fact that governments and startups are so eager to build towns is a noteworthy trend that is likely to materialize in the future, especially with data mining on the rise.

While there are drawbacks, these developments may signal an effective means of increasing housing development and thus alleviating the housing affordability crisis. First, companies creating or preserving housing, especially on their own initiative, can help alleviate the housing affordability crisis by its very nature. While an increase in supply has not always equated to a decrease in rent (and sometimes yields the opposite), studies have found that increases in supply generally do decrease rent.[12]

Concerns arise in the fact that companies moving into established cities have been found to increase rents overall in that city (which may explain one of the reasons Amazon has decided to build affordable housing).[13] However, if we are to take companies moving into cities as a given, especially since city and state officials have generally been the drivers of corporate presence in their state,[14] corporate investment into housing is a desirable silver lining.

Furthermore, company housing may lower the inherent risks associated with investing in housing development.[15] If a company has its name and power behind its housing, it’s far more likely that both private and public investors will put their money behind this development.

Of course, the dark history of corporate involvement in housing, including the paternalistic practices of the Pullman company in the nineteenth century and suppression of wages, cannot be ignored.[16] This is especially true as fears of corporate oligopoly power and influence over politics loom larger today than any time in the past hundred years.

However, there are many reasons to believe that company housing and even towns today would not mirror the dystopian towns of the industrial era. First, it’s important to find solace in the reason company towns were destroyed in the first place: modern transportation.[17] Largely due to the invention of cars and commuter trains, the ability for company towns to trap workers is significantly diminished. Second, today’s labor and antitrust laws are far stronger than they were during the industrial era.[18] In fact, many of the labor struggles associated with company towns were endemic in the labor industry of the time.[19] And third, constitutional protections have expanded considerably since the 19th century, diminishing the concerns of Pullman’s censorship.[20]

And finally, there are multiple things governments can do today to ensure that corporate involvement in housing is not abused, like enforcing laws and ensuring that companies are creating towns not only to gain power in the labor market, but also for efficiency’s sake. In addition, government leaders should use their bargaining power of granting tax breaks and contracts to ensure that the companies are offsetting the housing crisis they exacerbate and treating workers living under their roofs humanely.

It’s important to note that company housing will only provide a drop in the bucket in fixingtheaffordablehousingcrisis.Thesecorporateinitiativesaremeasuredinthousands,butthe shortage is measured in millions. But every additional unit may mean a home for someone or a family struggling to get by. While we should be cautious about any corporate development in everyday life, this one should probably be responsibly encouraged.

[1] U.S. Gov’t Accountability Off., The Affordable Housing Crisis Grows While Efforts to Increase the Supply Fall Short (May 9, 2023), https://www.gao.gov/blog/affordable-housing-crisis-grows-while-efforts-increase-supply-fall-short.

[2] Jenny Schuetz, Make It Count: Measuring Our Housing Supply Shortage, Brookings (Dec. 7, 2021), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/make-it-count-measuring-our-housing-supply-shortage/; U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev., The 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress: Part 1 – Point-in-Time Estimates (2023), https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/PA/documents/2023_PIT_Count_By_the_Numbers.pdf.

[3] Hidden Housing Instability: 37 Million People Live in Doubled-Up Households, Ctr. on Budget & Pol’y Priorities (May 9, 2024), https://www.cbpp.org/blog/hidden-housing-instability-37-million-people-live-in-doubled-up-households.

[4] Peter A. Tatian et al., Housing Insecurity in the District of Columbia 1 Urban Inst. (Nov. 2023), https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/Housing%20Insecurity%20in%20the%20District%20of%20Columbia_0.pdf.

[5] Andrew Aurand, et al., The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, Nat’l Low Income Hous. Coal. (Mar. 2020), https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/gap/Gap-Report_2020.pdf.

[6] Paul Roberts, Ten Years Ago, Amazon Changed Seattle, Announcing Its Move to South Lake Union, Seattle Times (Jun. 16 2018), https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/ten-years-ago-amazon-changed-seattle-announcing-its-move-to-south-lake-union/; Ariel Pelaes, Amazon / JBG SMITH HQ2 at Met Park, ZGF Architects, https://www.zgf.com/work/1847-amazon-jbg-smith-hq2-at-met-park (last visited May 6, 2025); Kate Albers, Amazon + ICAT: A New Creative Collaboration Launches with “Expressions”, Virginia Tech News (Mar. 28, 2025), https://news.vt.edu/articles/2025/03/icat-amazon-expressions.html; Amazon Housing Equity Fund, About Amazon, https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/community/amazon-housing-equity-fund (last visited May 1, 2025); Amazon Community Impact 2024, About Amazon, https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/community/amazon-community-impact-2024 (last visited May 6, 2025).

[7] Id.

[8] Daisuke Wakabayashi & Conor Dougherty, Google Pledges $1 Billion to Ease the Bay Area’s Housing Crisis, N.Y. Times (Jun. 18 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/technology/google-1-billion-housing-crisis.html.; Conor Dougherty & Cade Metz, Facebook Pledges $1 Billion to Ease California’s Housing Crisis, N.Y. Times (Oct. 22, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/technology/facebook-1-billion-california-housing.html; Nellie Bowles, Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Build the Facebook of Cities, N.Y. Times (Mar. 21, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/technology/facebook-zucktown-willow-village.html.

[9] Micah Maidenberg & Harriet Torry, Welcome to Starbase, Texas: What’s Next for Elon Musk’s Rocket-Building Company Town, Wall St. J. (Updated May 2, 2025), https://www.wsj.com/us-news/welcome-to-starbase-texas-whats-next-for-elon-musks-rocket-building-company-tow n-400cb53a.

[10] Miles Jennings & David Kerr, The DUNA: An Oasis For DOAs, a16zcrypto (March 8, 2024), https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/duna-for-daos/.

[11] Katya Diaz, Nevada Governor Pulls Controversial Innovation Zone Bill, Gov’t Tech (Apr. 1, 2021), https://www.govtech.com/smart-cities/nevada-governor-pulls-controversial-innovation-zone-bill.

[12] Bethel Cole Smith & Daniel Muhammad, Housing Supply: Trends and Challenges, D.C. Office of the Chief Fin. Officer (Apr. 2020), https://cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publication/attachments/Housing%20Supply%20Bethel%20Cole% 20Smith%20April%202020.pdf (“increases in supply is helping to mitigate the annual appreciation rates of apartment rents”); Brian J. Asquith et al., Supply Shock Versus Demand Shock: The Local Effects of New Housing in Low-Income Areas (2019), National Bureau of Economic Research, https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/316/ (“new buildings lower nearby rents by 5 to 7 percent relative to trend and increase in-migration from low-income areas”); Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, State of the Nation’s Housing 2023, https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/state-nations-housing-2023; Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen & Katherine O’Regan, Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability (Aug. 2019), https://furmancenter.org/files/Supply_Skepticism_-_Final.pdf.

[13] Alperstein et al., Billionaire Blowback: How the Super-Rich Undermine Housing Affordability, Inst. for Pol’y Stud. (May 14, 2024), https://ips-dc.org/release-billionaire-blowback-on-housing/.

[14] “‘I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,’ New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said to reporters on Monday in reference to his determination to land Amazon’s second headquarters, HQ2.” Kate Taylor, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Joked He Would Change His Name to ‘Amazon Cuomo’ to Lure the Company’s HQ2 to New York City, Bus. Insider (Nov. 5, 2018), https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-governor-jokes-amazon-cuomo-name-change-hq2-2018-11.

[15] See Aurand, supra note 6.

[16] See Almont Lindsey, Paternalism and the Pullman Strike, 44 Am. Hist. Rev. 272 (1939), https://doi.org/10.2307/1839019.

[17] Tanya Mohn, The Evolution of Company Towns: From Hershey’s to Facebook, Forbes (Jan. 17, 2013), https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/2013/01/17/the-evolution-of-company-towns-from-hersheys-to-facebook/.

[18] Brian C. Albrecht et al., Labor Monopsony and Antitrust Enforcement: A Cautionary Tale, Int’l Ctr. for L. & Econ. (Mar. 28, 2022), https://laweconcenter.org/resources/labor-monopsony-and-antitrust-enforcement-a-cautionary-tale/.

[19] Mohn, supra note 16.

[20] See Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946) (holding that under the First Amendment, a private company town could not prevent a person from distributing religious literature on a sidewalk open to the public); see also Richard Schragger, The Mobile Metropolis: Housing and How the City Moves, 123 Mich. L. Rev. 101 (1996), https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol123/iss1/4/.