Larry Ellison spent nearly $10M on luxury houses for his staff. Is employer-provided housing the ultimate job perk?

If you worked for Oracle co-founder and billionaire Larry Ellison’s family, you might already be living in one of eight homes in a gated Florida community that the Oracle co-founder reportedly bought for staff — including his kids’ tutors — for around $10 million.

The Wall Street Journal said the homes are “single-story, ranch-style” with lake views, only a half-hour away from Ellison’s $173 million family compound where the staff work.

If you don’t happen to work for a billionaire with a penchant for real estate, however, some companies across the U.S. offer versions of Employer-Assisted Housing (EAH) programs, which range from down payment or rental assistance to mortgage loans for employees.

And with home prices up 3.7% year-over-year as mortgage rates hit 7.28%, housing assistance as a job perk sure beats free coffee in the break room.

From company towns to companies that help pay for your house

In the 19th century, company towns centered around a primary employer and housing for its workers — an echo from the past reflected today in locales like Elon Musk’s Starbase and Snailbrook, home bases for SpaceX, The Boring Company and assorted employees in Texas.

EAH programs, however, are more common these days. And though no national stats exist for how many employers offer EAH programs, Brittany Webb, Senior Research Director for the National Housing Conference (NHC), told Moneywise they’re mainly used by a few anchor institutions.

“Healthcare systems are still using employer-assisted housing, and universities are still using it,” along with some local governments for their employees,” she explained. “Those three are the big three that have kind of maintained this practice.”

The University of Southern California (USC), for example, offers eligible employees “monthly payments totaling $50,000 or 20% of the home’s purchase price (whichever is less) over a seven-year period” for a home within the school community.

“The feedback is overwhelmingly positive,” Bryan Eck, Executive Director of Land Use and Planning with USC, told Moneywise. “Employees often describe the program as something that made homeownership in Los Angeles possible for them and their families, not simply as an added benefit.”

Meanwhile, the County of San Mateo in California provides “a $100,000 loan (second mortgage)” for a local home purchase and $5,000 for closing costs for non-local employees moving there.

The CHRISTUS St. Vincent medical center in New Mexico offers down payment assistance to employees while, last year, the state of Michigan launched an EAH Fund to help businesses in six communities offer housing to 479 employee households via $10 million in “cash investments, land donation, a below-market interest loan or a combination.”

Eck noted that such programs can shorten commutes “and help employees manage their total housing and transportation costs and make them feel like part of the community. Employees have said that “housing assistance influenced both their decision to join USC and their ability to remain here,” he added.

And that’s a bonus for employers focussed on retention. In fact, a 2024 survey by JW Surety Bonds found that more than one in four employees would jump ship to a new job if it offered housing assistance — with around a third willing to take housing help over a pay bump.

Of course, there’s still the question of what happens if you leave the company. Webb says it depends on the agreement and that, with some employers, if you’re terminated not for cause you won’t owe any loan money back — whereas those terminated with cause might.

She adds that the NHC encourages plans where grants are increasingly bought down the longer an employee stays with a company.

How to get an EAH program off the ground

Resources like an NHC toolkit and NYU’s Housing Solutions Lab offer EAH information and blueprints for how employers can build their own programs — from determining a company’s needs to structuring the assistance and finding funding sources.

Eck recommends the programs especially “for employers in high-cost housing markets” and stresses that it “should be tailored to the employer’s workforce and could include loans, subsidies, down payment assistance or incentives to live near the workplace.”

Webb, meanwhile, noted that the main challenges for companies looking to establish an EAH are real estate costs and expertise.