There was something like that in North of France last century. The coal mining companies constructed a lot of houses for their employees (wikipedia page, in french https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coron_(urbanisme)).

It's definitely not bad. It provided poor miners with a decent place to live. Today a lot of them are still here, renovated and retired miners still live in them, most of them for free (my grandparents for example).

I may be wrong, but I believe in the US, the coal mining companies constructed these as well. This led to the workers essentially becoming indentured servants. [citation needed]

>I may be wrong, but I believe in the US, the coal mining companies constructed these as well. This led to the workers essentially becoming indentured servants. [citation needed]

Yep. It also led to one of the bloodiest government orchestrated massacres in US history when striking miners were cleared from their homes in Ludlow, Colorado by the national guard [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

That's how you end up with the factory-campus style places like the iPhone factories in China where the workers basically never leave.

On a more serious note, though, some employers do want to build housing near their headquarters (such as Google, for example), but are blocked by city councils. From what I read here, it sounds like you can't put up new housing anywhere near SF.

The Mountain View City council approved Google's proposal to build company housing near their HQ.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/12/googles-massive-housi...

... on the Bay side of 101. Only two roads get you over 101, and they are jammed during commute hours.

Ive always suggested that the tech companies need to just start setting up satellite campuses in the central valley. Plenty of cheap housing out there.