[dorkitude]

I'd like to clarify a bit here. Inside Keen (I'm the CEO), our name for this (what Michelle's spreadsheet terms "rent subsidy") is the "proximate living bonus". To qualify, you have to be within a short commute of the office.

Our reasoning:

All else being equal, people often choose a longer daily commute, usually to save money. But, as research* has shown time and time again, once basic needs are met by compensation, the factor which correlates most strongly and consistently with unhappiness is commute time.

What we're attempting to do with the proximate living bonus, then, is to incentivize happiness: We're intentionally designing our bonus structure to incentivize the better decision, which employees might otherwise neglect for a number of (irrational) reasons.

*Here's a good intro into the research on this topic: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kirsten-dirksen/happiness-rese...