Spotlight on Employee Housing
During the recent Urban Land Institute Housing Opportunity 2019 conference, a panel of experts discussed the "increasingly overlapping concerns of employers and the need for affordable housing."
The panel, “New Developers: The Entrance of Employers in the Housing Market,” was led by Jenna Hornstock, executive officer of transit-oriented communities for L.A. Metro, who summed up the key them, “Affordable housing is workforce housing." ULI panelists agreed that improving employee housing has a greater community impact, in addition to improving the company's financial benefit, adding that partnerships with local agencies and access to transportation are central in making a project effective.
Recent moves by companies like tech giant Microsoft and health care provider Kaiser Permanente to invest in housing initiatives represent a form of “enlightened self-interest,” Facebook development manager Lewis Knight said at the conference. “We know it’s absolutely critical to ours and our competitors’ continued growth,” Knight said.