Dive Brief:
- Facebook recently announced it will offer employees $10,000 or more to move within 10 miles of the company’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, according to a report from Reuters.
- The idea is it could entice workers to ease their stress caused by increasingly long commutes and the Bay area’s extremely high housing prices, according to Bloomberg Business.
- Why are more employers not helping with housing costs as a benefit? Because that type of benefit is taxable for both the employer and employee, according to a report this summer from Bloomberg BNA.
Dive Insight:
Historically, many employers pay relocation costs, but only 3% of companies offer to help their employees with down payments on a home, according to a survey this year from the Society for Human Resource Management. By comparison, 32% offered lump sums for relocation.
There are rare cases where employers help with local housing, Bloomberg reports. For example, local governments have sometimes created incentives to help municipal workers live in the neighborhoods they work. Academic institutions, like Washington University in St. Louis, and hospital centers have also "dabbled in housing," the article says.
“Instead of giving a full sign-on bonus to doctors, we’ve looked at things like stipulating that some of the bonus has to be used on housing,” Dawn Lane, executive director of Las Vegas-based Hope Home Foundation, a nonprofit that helps companies design housing benefits, told Bloomberg. The idea holds particular appeal for medical institutions, who want staff on hand to respond to emergencies, according to Lane, who added that "without tax credits, it's going to be hard for a lot of employers to get involved,"
