Company towns existed not because housing were unaffordable but because there were no infrastructure in the place where company needed it to be before they came there. In your own link it says the company rented out and old off the property once built, thus negating the claim ownership or renting this property was not possible.
Not necessarily. Farmworker housing is offered in areas where there are alternatives, but the needs of the worker population often don't match the needs of growers: periodic work, a mobile workforce, and a concentrated area in which work crews can be picked up and dropped off, as well as a generally below-market income for the tenant population. Similarly, modern worker factory housing often exists to support a large migrant population.
The question I was answering wasn't the "why" but the "when", most specifically that it's still happening now.
"It" that is happening now is not "it" we were discussing. Clearly, if you're catering to migrant population, homeownership is not a good solution for them. It's like saying hotels exist in New York because nobody can afford a house in New York. That's not the reason - the reason is that whoever needs to live in New York for two weeks won't buy a house there, unless he's a crazy billionaire. Worker housing exists, but it does not exist because otherwise workers couldn't find a place to live and thus making workers enslaved by the housing owners. It exists because it is a cost-effective solution for providing housing needs of the temporary workers, and it is natural for the employer that needs the workers to take care of their housing in the most efficient manner - thus reducing both their own costs and costs for the workers. It has very little to do with housing affordability and workers somehow being "serfs".
I disagree. The situation describe continues to exist both in the US and (more particularly) outside it. It's not always structured to make the employees utterly dependent and in debt to employers, though (usually for lower-skilled workers) this does remain the case, and is a key argument against "company towns" or other forms of employer-supplied housing in the absence of other competitive housing markets.
And the point you're trying to make about immigrant or periodic labor is precisely the problem that applies to serfs: they lack the means (or legal ability) to make their own discretionary housing arrangements.
For higher-skilled workers, who have other employment options, this typically isn't the case. Also where employees who operate under union or similar collective bargaining arrangements.
