A lot of times, when people discuss the phenomenon of employers ending work-from-home and try to make their employees come back to the office, people say that the motivation is to raise real estate prices.

I don’t follow the logic at all. How would doing this benefit an employer in any way?

  • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    What you’re seeing is the incestuous relationship between government and private enterprise that is characteristic of late stage american capitalism. Everything depends on people spending money, so businesses get tax breaks and other incentives from metropolitan areas for operating in those metropolitan areas. Imagine you have a company that employs 400 people in an office building downtown. Those 400 people will need to park their cars, they’ll buy coffees in the morning, they’ll buy lunch, they’ll go out to happy hour with their coworkers on fridays. Every one of those transactions benefits business owners in the city, and for every one of those transactions the city takes a cut. Now imagine that company goes full, permanent WFH. The office is vacant. The diner down the street closes. That parking garage that was built to meet a demand that simply isn’t there anymore is simply useless. Tax income drops for the city. Everyone whose livelihood depended on the manufactured demand created by colocation is in a lot of trouble now. The only people who aren’t getting smashed are employees, who now no longer have to pay to park, can make their own coffee the way that everyone has been telling them to for years now, can eat their own food at home or order delivery from the places closest to them rather than the place closest to the office, zoom happy hours mean they’re not spending money at the bar after work, this entire microeconomy that popped up to serve the needs of employees who had no choice but to all be in one place at one time starts to collapse. So you’re right to be suspicious that companies that pay rent are invested in keeping the rent high, but there are a lot of knock-on costs associated with a business district collapsing and there’s also a lot of carrot-and-stick from local/state governments in an effort to keep people in the office and keep them spending money near the office.

    • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In my city a few old office buildings got turned into condos and apartments and those areas are flourishing but with slightly different businesses. Vacuums tend to get filled. If you pivot correctly you can even take advantage of it. The times they are a-changin’.

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Oh thats the thing, yeah. There’s definitely something to transition to and given the way demand and prices have skyrocketed that thing is probably housing. The problem is that capitalism handles transitions as gracefully as evolution does. That is to say, the things that are wrong die screaming and make room for something that fits better.

      • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think something like that requires some kind of decent leadership in the community rather than someone trying to stick to the same old plan. That’s awesome to hear it’s working there. I hope it catches on. I’d love to go downtown for fun instead of work. I love the architecture