[raitom]

There was something like that in North of France last century. The coal mining companies constructed a lot of houses for their employees (wikipedia page, in french https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coron_(urbanisme)).

It's definitely not bad. It provided poor miners with a decent place to live. Today a lot of them are still here, renovated and retired miners still live in them, most of them for free (my grandparents for example).

[radlad]

I may be wrong, but I believe in the US, the coal mining companies constructed these as well. This led to the workers essentially becoming indentured servants. [citation needed]

[aphextron]

>I may be wrong, but I believe in the US, the coal mining companies constructed these as well. This led to the workers essentially becoming indentured servants. [citation needed]

Yep. It also led to one of the bloodiest government orchestrated massacres in US history when striking miners were cleared from their homes in Ludlow, Colorado by the national guard [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre