Posted on 07/30/2019 11:05:25 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
Many retail employees are having a hard time making ends meet. Leftists have proposed raising wages to $15/hour, and sometimes have done so, but such wages are unrealistically expensive for most retail employers.
If retail stores had restricted occupancy apartments above their selling floor, retail employees could live in these and not need to pay for a car and liability insurance. Residential restricted occupancy is sometimes found in English agricultural regions to keep housing affordable for people working in agriculture.
Retail store residency would have additional benefits of reducing road congestion and CO2 emissions, increasing employee reliability, the amount of employee free time and the number of people able to live in an metropolitan area without overcrowding its roads.
Employees might get paid $4/hour plus usage of the apartment plus $.01/hour for each square foot of their apartment less than 600.
In some cases there might be sliding wall system in an apartment to make for either one large bedroom or two small bedrooms.
To fund adequate Social Security benefits for the employee, an added $1/hour FICA tax might be levied on the employee.
The apartment might be valued at $700/month for income taxation, welfare and health insurance subsidy purposes.
There might be a 10-day grace period to live in the apartment after quitting or getting fired from a job. There might also be a waiting period of up to 10 days to move into such an apartment.
Whether or not specific apartments are employer furnished and their exact size would be left to employment market forces.
Employees not needing or currently getting an employer apartment would simply work for the usual wages and benefits.
Excess retail store apartments might made available to nearby restaurants and their employees on a similar basis.
And have the entire thing run by fedrl bureaucrats.
This is definitely the California leftist regime plan.
There are thousands of mixed-use commercial development where employees/owners live above there retail shop.
That’s how it worked in Communist countries, the company you worked for was the center of your life, it controlled where you lived, and every other facet of your life.
Agenda 21?
Is this picture a “you’re an old fart if you know who this is” test??
Feudalism was already done in the Middle Ages.
Why not put in a company store for groceries while you’re at it and pay the serfs in company script?
I think his name is Earnie something. Proof that I am definitely too old because I can remember only his first name. :)
My brother worked in a laundry mat when he was going to college in the early 70s. He lived in a nice roomy apartment above, it was an old building and owners had lived upstairs for years before moving into a home.
It used to be a thing, house upstairs in business. No idea why it stopped being a thing. Made great sense, saved money for people that owned the business and as you say no reason why it couldn’t be rental space.
I don’t know if zoning allows it now but is a great idea that was done in the past.
I don’t care for this idea. Hey humblegunner make yourself useful for once.
That’s how it used to be. A shop owner lived above (or behind) his shop
Granted, that was the owner, not just an employee. But it’s not a bad model.
What about the retail worker that has a spouse with a high income?
Many decades ago, in many cities and towns, it was common for the residence to he above or behind a retail storefront. But I think it was normally the owners of the stores who lived there, as opposed to hired help living on the premises.
I can see complaints from employees if this happened. Assuming rent was withheld from paychecks, they would complain they were working for starvation wages etc.
Let’s call it indentured servitude. I’m sure WalMart will be thrilled at the prospect of evicting surly fired employees.
‘Blue Light Special’ at Kmart will take on a whole new meaning.
In practice, it won’t work because the politicians will not let you evict the former employees. I could see co-locating apartment buildings near shopping malls.
If healthcare tethered to the place of employment works so well, why not living spaces. /s
It’s a great idea... if you own it and want that and are free to change the conditions as need be.
Otherwise,
How about people go about cutting out the tentacles of “great ideas” that haved already choked the life out of everything they are wrapped around.
Nobody wants simple.
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