https://www.the-sentinel-intelligence.com/p/heres-why-they-want-you-back-at-the-office-so-bad
There's an office real estate apocalypse unfolding. Corporate landlords currently hold $1.2 trillion in loans on office towers all over the country
Now that everyone is embracing remote work, they can’t lease that office space to anyone.
Employees working at home also generate income. Doordash, uber eats are some examples. Also can't forget the neighborhood Starbux to get some community.
People working remotely also generate a lot of financial activity in the are they actually live, with the money they save by not commuting...
While the leases are fixed costs, it is not uncommon for a business to get tax breaks from the town/city/state based on the # of employees in the office. The logic is: more business in downtown (employees in the office) means more spending downtown (more businesses in downtown = more money for the local/city/state tax collection).
Employees in the office generate a lot of local-business money/taxes: lunch (food), coffee (life), parking fees, dry cleaning fees, childcare (somewhere), tolls to/from work, etc. A tax break is easy to justify if it means 300 people commuting to become customers every day.
However, the actual tax break dollars "saved" (not charged) is variable and depends on how many people are in the office (as opposed to the fixed-rate cost of leasing office space which stays the same whether there are RTO employees or not). So, it costs WF more money to not have people in the office (because they end up paying more of their fair share of the taxes). To make matters worse, local/city/stare govts are increasing their tax rates to account for the low RTO/local business so WF is getting squeezed from a couple of directions.... all of which are "solved" if they can just point to the high # of RTO employees.
Let’s see how this works. Companies sign a lease to pay X amount per month for Y years.
They have to pay this whether they fully utilize the space or not. Only choice is to default and go to court. How does RTO change anything. Except for WF if they are the landlord for a restaurant and the restaurant needs WF workers to make a buck and pay WF back.
Still what does that have to do with me working onsite .
Elites, yeah let’s use their real names. Time to start saying it.