> tying any essential good to employment is not reasonable

If you buy a workforce house, there is obviously no obligation to maintain employment. I’m not sure how it works for rentals.

The alternatives are flying people into company-owned housing, the way they did in Fargo during the oil boom. That seems far less savoury.

So people can get a sham job to get cheap housing?

> people can get a sham job to get cheap housing?

Yes. And then be charged with fraud.

I meant sham job in the sense of "legit job offer you don't plan to keep for a while just to qualify", not "false documents for non-existent job".

> sham job in the sense of "legit job offer you don't plan to keep for a while just to qualify"

Fair enough. I don’t know the text of the law.

Also, the entire county has a population just over 20,000; the city of Jackson, less than half that. This would cause problems for the employer who let it happen as well as the new resident.

It "causes problems" when you "let" an employee quit a job too soon?

Edit: I know HN hates tedious back-and-forths, so let me just jump to the substantive point: any time you have a situation where you have special carve-outs for an essential good, you're not really solving the problem, you're just encouraging people to game it. See the past thread about enrolling in college part time to get health insurance.

> It "causes problems" when you "let" an employee quit a job too soon?

The law isn’t code; mental state matters. If you got a job to buy a subsidised house with a plan to quit, in a small town, that will cause you problems. If you provided that sham job, it will cause you problems.

Maybe they hired a great lawyer and never sent any text messages about their brilliant plan to defraud their neighbours. But most probably they didn’t, and that fact pattern would certainly be enough to warrant scrutiny.