This is solely designed to make their immigrant workers more reliant on the company than they already are
Tell me you know nothing about the H1-B program without telling me… If Google terminates an H1-B worker, they get at most 60 days to find a new sponsor or they get deported. It’s already an extremely exploitative situation.
Housing precarity is the norm for every renter in that area, unfortunately. This is not moving the needle at all. Hell, I’ll take it a step further: not being stuck in a lease is actually a good thing in this situation. They were living in a furnished hotel room, probably literally out of a suitcase. They have minimal things to pack. They can find a cheap short term rental in the Central Valley. They don’t need to be paying $4k a month for a 1br apartment in Mountain View while job hunting 12 hours a day. All that’s doing is digging them a deeper hole. They also don’t have to pay thousands of dollars (that they might not have) to break a lease if they find an employer to sponsor them in NY or TX.