Anything can be abused, but I don't know the history; I have heard of robber barons, but not in the context of housing and Google doesn't seem to give me more than just their own enormous mansions. It would depend on if it's abused or not, wouldn't it?
The TL;DR of why this is bad is that when employees are paying, or are indebted to, their employers, even in a roundabout way, it's really easy for that relationship to become very abusive.
The company towns also often payed in scrip, which was basically credit at the company store, and, gee, wouldn't you know it, the company owns all the land to the horizon, so there are no other stores in reasonable travel distance! And if you need a little credit because your pay's terrible after your rent (to the company) comes out, and the prices at the store are marked way up, why, they'll be happy to extend some....
That's the extreme version, but it's bad enough that even inching that direction is something worthy of concern. One ought be wary any time money's flowing from an employee to an employer.
The robber-baron version is basically the thing you see in capitalist-dystopia sci fi like The Outer Worlds, but it actually happened.
>The robber-baron version is basically the thing you see in capitalist-dystopia sci fi like The Outer Worlds, but it actually happened.
Also a significant portion of the country seems to be actively attempting to let it happen again. High school made them read The Great Gatsby and they all imagine themselves as Gatsby and the other obscenely wealthy people instead of the 99% of awful and perpetually dying lives most people experienced.
