Are employers required to provide housing for H-2B workers?
Unlike H-2A, the H-2B program does not carry a mandatory employer-provided housing obligation. In practice most H-2B employers provide or arrange housing anyway, because in a supply constrained market the workers cannot find it themselves and roles go unfilled.
What are the H-2A housing requirements?
H-2A carries a mandatory employer-provided housing obligation with inspection standards attached. We build and operate to the standard your certification requires, and we run inspection readiness as an operating routine rather than an annual scramble. We are not your compliance advisor, so your own counsel should confirm what applies to your filing.
Can our workers pay for their own housing?
Commonly they contribute through payroll deduction. What your employee pays and what you can defend internally are two different numbers, and closing that gap is one of the first things we work through with you.
We only need the beds for part of the year.
On a lease there are several ways to handle it: you subsidize the shoulder months, we pair a counter-seasonal employer into the same building, or you sublease in the off season. If none of those work, sourced housing for the months you actually need is the better answer.
How far from the worksite will the housing be?
We target a commutable radius and we price proximity deliberately, because it reduces the transportation cost you are carrying separately through shuttles and vans.
What if we do not get our allocation?
You will still need the workers, whoever they turn out to be. On a lease we allow subleasing if headcount contracts, and on sourced housing the term is short enough that it is not the same exposure.
