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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?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @07:28PM (3 children)
Reviving small-town America is important. We shouldn't let the middle of our country become a wasteland full of collapsing old buildings.
An extra benefit would be reduced housing costs in places like San Francisco. Well, maybe not a benefit to current landlords.
We could do this by providing tax advantages to companies for each job which is above the median income in a troubled location. Consider a location to be troubled if the population density is below both the 80-year historical maximum and 500 people per square mile. Population density ought to be calculated with a weighted average that accounts for commute distance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @12:35AM
Companies will claim the townies lack skills and import the usual Indians and Pakkies to get the tax break. Meanwhile, Main Street smells like urine and curry. As usual, only the corps win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @03:07AM
Most corporations don't pay income taxes to begin with. (Which is why the news talks about corporate tax rates so much, instead of actual economic indicators like inflation) The only ones that pay much in the way of property taxes are either in real estate or heavy industry, and that is not who these incentives apply to.
There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical. But the best I've seen was a case where a guy moved to a small midwest "all american town", and decided to build a small vacation getaway. The town tried to fuck him out of tens of thousands of dollars on a zoning permit, all while basically photocopying his plans and using them in a marketing campaign declaring that they were going to build a great new "city vacation center" or some such... with HIS zoning fees.
It is an old game called "fleece the foreigner". The moral of this story is: If your going to do business with whores, negotiate up front and never follow one into a dark alley. The "bush" in "bushwhack" does not refer to foliage.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Sunday November 12 2017, @11:58PM
Its frustrating that we haven't yet solve the transport problem in the modern world. Even here in Australia, we have so much land and yet the rat race has everyone congregating in the big cities creating over inflated prices due to lack of supply yet there's plenty of beautiful prime real-estate in the rest of the country but the lack of efficient transport in-out of the city is compounding the concentration of the urban sprawl.
Maybe AR/VR will solve the physical presence requirement one day as an alternate means to the solution rather than solving it by efficient transport.