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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday November 11 2017, @10:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the free-money dept.

They'll pay you upfront, but will you pay for the rest of your life?

While 54% of Americans lived in rural places in 1910, that number fell to 19 percent by 2010, Zillow reported. To revive their communities, these places are hoping that everything from cash grants to paying off student loans and giving away free land will help draw a younger generation to them.

But it's not just small towns that hope to draw more people to them with these programs. Some cities like Baltimore and even entire states like Alaska will pay you to be their newest resident.

Tribune, Kansas will pay off $15,000 of your student loans. Marne, Iowa will give you free land if you build a house that's at least 1,200 ft2 on it. Baltimore, Maryland will give you a $5,000, 5yr forgivable loan and $10,000 down payment toward rehabilitating abandoned homes.

Tempted?


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  • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @03:54PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @03:54PM (#595610)

    Speaking as somebody that was born and raised in Seattle, we sure as hell don't want people moving here. The city is locked in on 2 sides by water and the other 2 sides are already incorporated cities, which means we can't expand outward at all. Expanding upward means that the neighborhoods will lose their character and because of the hourglass shape that the city has there's massive traffic no matter what the SDOT does to manage it. We have an expensive and barely functioning transit system, so you're going to be wasting a ton of time on the commute.

    The people coming here have made a dysfunctional city government more or less incapable of doing anything about any of our problems and they've failed miserably to manage any of the growth. The cost of property is through the roof to the point where fewer and fewer working class stiffs can afford even a basic apartment as those are getting out of hand.

    Please, for the love of god don't come here. If you don't like the city enough to pay your moving expenses do those of us from here a favor and don't come. It's extremely expensive here, the weather sucks, the people don't have any interest in making friends with people not tied to the area and we already have enough people from parts of the country that don't understand how to run a city government.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 11 2017, @05:33PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 11 2017, @05:33PM (#595649) Journal
    Relax. When the Big One hits, Mount Rainier blows its top, or both, then the survivors will have plenty of room. You might still be saddled with that incompetent government though.
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday November 11 2017, @05:54PM (1 child)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday November 11 2017, @05:54PM (#595666) Homepage

    Speaking as somebody that was born and raised in California, my state sucks and anybody considering moving here should go to Portland or Seattle instead.

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @10:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @10:38PM (#595751)

      Being born and raised in California goes a long way to explaining the amount of stupid in you. Doesn't excuse it but explains some of it.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday November 11 2017, @06:01PM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 11 2017, @06:01PM (#595668) Journal

    From your description, you already have an oversupply of people who don't know how to run a city government. For some reason many of them seem to be running the city government.

    So I understand your point of view. But be aware that this is true in a lot of other places, too. The "land locked" thing may be your salvation, sort of, as it keeps the city from growing (well, except up).

    The problem is that city governments always need more money. This seems to be a universal. But when they get it they spend it on the projects most important to those running the city rather than those most important to the citizenry. I don't know what to do about that prior to the Singularity. (And how will *that* solve the problem? Perhaps we'd rather not know.)

    Many people seem to want to return to their idealization of the early 1900's, but the population wouldn't survive in that kind of structure. Even then population pressures were pressing at the edges of what the system could support. With current populations... No, thank you. If that percentage of the population died it would probably include me. And if you read literature current at the time you'll find out it wasn't all that ideal to those living in it.

    --
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    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @06:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @06:35PM (#595680)

      TBH, if we had more room for people to move in and for us to resolve the traffic mess, I don't think it would be as much of an issue.

      We're a rich city, we have plenty of money to cover things that need to be covered. In the '80s before the city government went to crap, they figured out how to diversify our local economy so it was based on logging, shipping, aerospace and technology. Now, it's getting overly top-heavy with overpaid techies that don't give a shit about what they're doing to the city. And why should they care, if there's a bust they'll just move elsewhere. Even if there isn't a bust, they'll get sick of working for one of our companies and retire, taking their money elsewhere. The property that they grossly overpaid for gets sold at the same or more money by the next group moving in and anybody that has been working here can't afford to buy.

      And since we're legally barred from having an income tax, the city doesn't benefit from the ridiculous salaries being paid.

      The other problem is that we're wasting tons of money on idiotic liberal friendly things like bike lanes and street cars. That money would better be directed at fixing our roads and improving our mass transit system. We have an increasingly dysfunctional education and the quality of life is in a bit of a nose dive as traffic gets worse and there's more and more people.

      I personally would rather have a city more like in the past when we were the high end of backwater and people wondered if they could get basic necessities when traveling here. Not every city needs or wants to be world class and that's something that outsiders don't seem to understand or respect.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday November 11 2017, @07:57PM (2 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday November 11 2017, @07:57PM (#595703) Journal

    Please, for the love of god don't come here.

    And yet the city votes time and time again for MORE OF THE SAME.

    Embarrassed by a gay mayor that abused children and was forced to resign? Not Seattle. They elected another gay mayor. Awaiting the inevitable scandal.

    So get use to no less then 1 murder every night leading the news, get use to another war-in-the-streets May Day parade, get use to priced-out homeless living in tents under bridges and driving in with dilapidated junker mobile homes from neighboring states, and being the northern end of a heroin pipeline, because Seattle is living the liberal dream. You get what you elect.

    There are 8 or 12 billionaires in Seattle who could 1) end the city's existence by moving away, or 2) entirely end the city's homelessness problem with modest tract homes served by public transit, all provided free of charge out of their pocket change.

    But It was never the plan to providing affordable housing. It was always about pricing out the riff-raff, and getting them to move away so the rich could erect steel and glass where their modest homes use to be. But it seems the riff-raff doesn't want to leave.

    Seattle isn't one city, its a collection of radical liberal fiefdoms running cheek by jowl like a pack of wild hogs, sucking every dollar out of the rest of the otherwise rather conservative state.

    --
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    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @09:47PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @09:47PM (#595741)

      Have you figured out yet why all the squirrels seem to love you?

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @01:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @01:12AM (#595807)

      This is rather incompetent. First off, being a child molester and being gay have little to do with each other. There's no reason to believe that a former US Attorney has been molesting children and the fact that she had that job indicates that there aren't likely to be any incidents that we don't know about.

      Secondly, property crimes are up, but violent crime is still markedly low for a city of the size with the amount of policing going on. There's not much reason to think either of those facts is going to change much in the near term.

      As far as those billionaires go, fuck them and the horse they rode in on, they pay virtually nothing in taxes compared to what the rest of us pay. Sure, they pay a bit more in property taxes, but the sales tax is something that is the other major source of income and billionaires don't pay that much more of it. Because they pay so little in taxes, I'm curious how you think that them leaving would destroy the city. They're already not paying their fair share of the tax revenue, so, I'm unsure how their leaving would have that kind of an impact.