Audible Employees Move to Newark, Catalyzing Change

Audible’s new program to encourage employees to move to Newark—an element of the company’s mission to work, live, serve and play in the city and contribute to its turnaround—was covered in The New York Times.

Would you live in Newark if your boss paid your rent for a year?

That was the question that Audible.com, the audiobook company, posed to its workers when it announced a housing lottery in January. The 20 winning employees would get $2,000 a month in free rent for a year if they signed a two-year lease at the newly restored Hahne & Company building in downtown Newark, a 10-minute walk from Audible’s headquarters.

Of about 1,000 employees in the company’s Newark and Jersey City offices, 64 applied. In March, the company, which has 16 global locations, expanded the offer, pledging a $250 monthly rent stipend for a year to any employee who lives in, or moves to, Newark. More than two dozen employees have taken advantage of that offer.

The rental program was also featured in NPR’s All Things Considered, with host Robert Siegel saying, “Katz started the revolution in modern mobile listening and then did something equally radical. He moved his company from a leafy New Jersey suburb to Newark.”