What if, instead of adding new housing to accommodate the employees in an area, the state helped employees go to where housing is more affordable? Decoupling housing choices from jobs offers an immediate opportunity for workers to reduce their housing costs. In the process, it may also offer the greatest opportunity to reduce the state’s carbon footprint, by reducing daily commuting.
The experience of responding to the coronavirus has caused companies to introduce or expand remote work in their operations. One estimate found that during the pandemic approximately 42 percent of the American labor force was working from home full time. As a consequence, there has been a big impact on many rental markets: Since March 2020, the median rent in San Francisco fell nearly 25 percent, while Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Diego also saw rents drop or at least finally flatten.
In a sense, for the companies affected by stay-at-home orders, the pandemic was a coerced pilot program to evaluate different networking and communications technologies. The result of the experience is that companies, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Morgan Stanley, will expand their earlier program to permanently implement a remote working arrangement for some employees. They are doing it because, in general, the new telecommuting technologies can offer companies opportunities to save money. As such, we can expect to see companies continue an expanded use of remote access work and to decentralize their company structure, even after the pandemic resides and it is safe to fully return to the office.
