Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
I’m an engineering manager at a fully remote US company with long-term plans to stay (and even if not, no desire to return to the office regularly). I don’t drive but like to walk to the supermarket and restaurants. My wife doesn’t like living in a big city, so we’re in the burbs within walking distance of a little “downtown” area.
It’s a bit of an unhappy medium because the homes we want still cost $1M, yet it’s a long and limited walk. Plus we’re ready for something new. We’d likely both be happier in a town, living just off some Main Street with 20 or so shops. The city is great but honestly I don’t need more than a good diner, a supermarket, and a friendly bar. Nice to haves are a pleasant climate (not too cold), an airport within an hour or so, and decent public schools.
I’m asking here because I hear so much about NYC/SF tech workers being set loose by remote work and leaving. I’ve experienced this with colleagues relocating to SC, Lancaster PA, small towns in Maryland… etc.
Any ideas on whether this mid-sized town dream exists, ideas for cities, and/or how we’d go about finding it?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 331 ms ] threadhttps://www.makemymove.com/
I think this site will even contact cities for you that don't have incentive programs.
Another advantage of these city programs is you're part of a cohort of relocaters - so you always have people sharing the newcomer experience with you.
For example check out Geneva Illinois
Geneva, IL and its neighbor to the north (St Charles) are really, really nice. But they're not a cheap places unless you are comparing them to coastal towns. Try this: make a list of all the counties in all the eastern states. Find the county seat of each one. Look at a satellite photo of the downtown area and if it seems solid, check out the street view. If that is also promising, look at real estate prices. Narrow it down to a list of 25-30 towns. And go visit them.
The average temperature barely gets below freezing and rarely get more than a couple inches of snow.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/urbana/climate
The story behind the estate is very interesting, iirc Fabyan was obsesesd with finding hidden codes in Shakespeare, thinking he could prove Francis Bacon was the real author. By the time World War I broke out, he had gathered a library of historical cyphers and had a team of codebreakers working for him, who quickly changed course from Shakespeare to the War Department.
It's a frank lloyd wright house with a well done japanese garden right on the fox river, worth taking the tour :)
The one town you mention, Lancaster, PA, is a model of the type.
Not sure that the real estate is going to be all that cheap, though.
However, a lot of people move to college towns and don't realize/remember what college kids are like... they will be noisy at night, sometimes destroy property, throw parties, do stupid pranks... it isn't for everybody
I live in a college town -- mid sized city in the shadow of a major university in the Midwest. It has everything the OP wants, walking distance to supermarket and shops, easy to get around by bike, enough of an economy thanks to the university and hospitals.
It's true that housing isn't cheap. The difference is what you get for the cost. What I paid for my house in Ann Arbor would buy a house in Austin—but it would be a run-down, dated, small house without much in walking distance and a "who knows?" school assignment. Here in a "nicer college town," we live on more than an acre just outside town, still have top notch schools, and my wife's commute to her job at the hospital is only 10 minutes. (Far from the partying students mentioned earlier.)
Housing values are also a little more stable—a sudden tech downturn could strand you underwater in that Austin house. It takes a lot more to sap demand for housing in a university community, especially one with a big teaching hospital system. Add to that the value of a town having a demonstrated track record of caring about its schools. That doesn't grow on trees.
I guess, yes: housing prices are high. Certainly when you compare to towns like the one where I grew up. But if you compare to urban areas and high-end suburbs, then the value-for-money trade is way better, even in really nice college towns.
FWIW, I loved Iowa City when we were looking, and that probably would have been an even better money-for-value trade. Wife is a medical resident, so we were picking based on more than just lifestyle, and landed in Michigan.
Another college town I like is Eugene, or Ellensberg. Flagstaff maybe? Depends on your climate, look for colleges with maybe 10k-ish students? Another one that I can't stand because of the weather is Champagne Urbana. 10 minute drive out from town, and you're in farmland.
But yeah, what poor college students trying to get a start on life and grad students making pocket change really need is some 400k/year tech workers to flood into their town, say “wow! Only 2500 a month!” and make it impossible to live anywhere.
Also, dorms are insanely expensive. And wanting to be near noisy, drunk, high college kids as an unaffiliated adult is honestly just weird.
Moving somewhere because you like the scenery, the food, whatever is fine. Moving there because there’s a college while you’re 15 years out of college is just strange.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, on average, students living on campus have higher GPAs, are less likely to drop out, are more likely to finish on time, feel a greater sense of social belonging, and are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities. Those benefits need to be factored in as well. There have been a number of studies about this, here's a summary of one of them: https://studentlife.uoregon.edu/student-success-and-housing-....
When it comes to meal plans, if you have your own kitchen then yes, you definitely CAN eat cheaper, but I don't know many college students who actually spend much time planning their meals, buying in bulk, and actually cooking the majority of their meals from scratch. Realistically they end up eating a lot of frozen dinners and eating out - especially for lunch when they're on campus anyway. When I look at the school I went to, their unlimited meal plan ends up costing about $9/meal on average, which is a lot, but that's 3 hot meals a day, all you can eat, and you don't have to spend time buying the ingredients, cooking the food, and cleaning up after yourself.
You're right about cooking, at least in my experience, but you have to take a first step sometime. I grew up in the 90s with two working parents who kept different hours, and didn't learn to cook until my late 20s. But I think people's priorities are shifting, especially now that wfh is more normal.
The ones that don't kill themselves, sure. There's also a higher rate of suicide, alcoholism, reported sexual assaults by both sexes, drug use, etc. but those statistics don't make it to pamphlets for obvious reasons. Living on-campus is more of an amplifier of opportunities and failures. It expands the range of scenarios; it doesn't raise the floor for everyone. If you're already successful and can handle yourself, you'll benefit from the proximity of those opportunities while residing on or close too a college campus. If you're an emotional wreck or don't know your own values (which describes many people in college), then anything aside from sheer force of will would won't be of much help and living on campus may interfere with that.
That's news to me. The university charged me three times as much as I ended up paying off campus later (in a much better location).
15 years ago, dorm costs were >$1100/mo, and rent was $550 where I lived, 10 minutes from the university.
Another benefit is access to cultural benefits that wouldn’t normally be available, like great libraries and concerts and orchestras (often free). Check out Pullman, WA as another example.
College towns often have plenty of live music coming through with regularity, art, people with more open minds? (I don't mean to start a debate with the last point, just my preference perhaps.)
Lawrence works too because you're 30 or 45 minutes from a big city (Kansas City) so you can get your REI or IKEA on if you need to.
Lincoln, Nebraska is another near me (although I have not lived there) that is within 45 minutes of Omaha.
Had lunch in Iowa City and it looked comparable. An afternoon in Columbia, Missouri and it looked appealing as well.
Columbia is also nice, but a little more spread out. Ames IA, Tulsa, Champaign-Urbana, Ann Arbor…
Living ~1hr from ATL was also a luxury - you fly direct everywhere on Delta.
State College PA is a college town.
Lancaster is just a nice small city with a few colleges in it.
So even if there are schools there the feel is more young adult than college student.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania#Econom...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_College,_Pennsylvania#Ec...
In contrast: Lancaster City has ~60,000 population, F&M employs ~1100 [0] and F&M has 2400 students. That accounts for 5% of the population during the school year and <2% of the population permanently.
[0] https://www.linkedin.com/school/franklin-&-marshall-college/
Lancaster is much larger than either, though different cities have varying land areas they count. Lancaster is also the seat of its same named county.
I look at 'college town' as defining somewhere where school(s) are located, and the population count of 18-24 makes up almost 50% of the population. Newark, DE (University of Delaware) and Bloomsburg, PA (Bloomsburg U) seem to fit that better.
This is pretty much the only answer for the US. Small independent towns have ceased to exist because they have no reason to. But the legacy of land grant universities across the US has left plenty of towns like Gainesville, Ames, Athens, Boulder, Asheville, Chattanooga, Eugene, Laramie, College Station, etc. etc. that are fantastic places to live and have strong real estate markets.
Not a college town but also in California are Sacramento, Ventura, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly but I wouldn’t say college town), and San Diego (UCSD but not a college town). The latter three are beach towns if you like temperate climate. Sac doesn’t get too cold but it does get very hot. All have nice downtowns (depending on what you want) and don’t require a car.
You’ll have CA high taxes and real estate probably cost double or triple what it would in the mid-West but a fraction of LA or Bay Area.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32465482
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32464502
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32459965
That's seriously not ok. We ban accounts that do this, and in fact have had to ask you many times in the past to stop doing this. I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good things and it doesn't seem like you've been breaking the rules consistently. But if you don't fix this, we're going to have to.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
The poster would be bringing money into the community. They would be paying taxes; if they buy a house, there will probably be property taxes, which typically support local utilities, schools, libraries, etc. They'd be shopping at local stores. The poster asked about schools, so they probably have or will have at least one kid - so purchasing things for at least 3 people. That doesn't sound parasitic to me, it sounds more like investment.
What people are afraid of is not "parasites," it's growth changing the size and character of their community. Which I'm afraid is just the way of things, especially if the area you live in becomes desirable.
And I'd also argue that talking about someone paying taxes to support local services is not "only concerned with money," but whatever makes you feel enlightened, I guess.
On a similar note, many states would like Californians to stay in California and stop trying to Cailifornify everywhere else.
Some small towns might have a stifling, backward local community. Better to let those communities just wallow in their pettiness.
As for judging where people get to live, I understand that sentiment. We certainly don't give governments that power because we love freedom. Laws also exist that try to limit discriminatory practices when people try to find housing. Unfortunately, it is near impossible to regulate how a community will respond to others.
Just something to think about, particularly if one's approaching a new town with only their personal desires in mind.
EDIT: word choice, for clarity.
Ohio University is a pretty cool place, though slightly secluded.
I imagine you have other factors like distance from family, area of the country, weather, proximity to mountains/beach/parks/major metro for things to do, etc. so those should narrow down what states. Then go on a mini vacation and explore or work remotely from where you’re exploring.
Why? This sounds (especially given the two specific states named) more like an impression from partisan media than practical advice. Those two states do indeed happen to have comparatively high tax burden and metro areas with high real estate costs. But the relationship isn't well correlated. Maine and Minnesota are "high tax" states with cheap housing, and Alaska has (IIRC) the lowest tax burden but wildly higher cost of living. Similarly Miami has low tax and outrageous real estate, etc...
(Also recognize that state and local taxes make up a comparatively small share of an individual's tax burden in the US, anyway. The difference in total tax between NY and TN is something like 20% if I'm doing the math right)
I said “like” I didn’t do an analysis of 50 states and tax rates. I think it would be common sense if someone was looking to move anywhere in the US to consider taxes and avoid places that were high. Similarly consider 0 income tax states like TX, NV or FL too (I’m sure there are others, those I know off top of my noggin), all things being equal if you net an extra 5-8% per year of a Tech company Eng Mgr salary that could be $10-15k more per year.
You can find data on states by total tax burden (which, sure, is going to depend on your particular assets and flows being taxed). It's not nearly as big a differentiator as you seem to think it is (especially, again, since it's quite minor compared with your federal liabilities), and I worry about the sources that might have informed your opinion.
Nonsense. The difference can easily be 10% of gross income.
Tax burden estimates are also really bad for tech workers making mid-six figures.
Texas may take an extra $10,000 in property taxes on a million dollar house. But New York State + City will take an extra 10% of your gross income.
Sales tax varies by state and city. But if you’re a tech employee you should be both saving a significant portion of your income and living in home that costs a smaller portion of your income than most people.
The use of "easily" is maybe a bit spun, that's at the outer edge of the distribution (e.g. moving from NY to TN, Seattle to Cleveland might net you quite a bit less). But sure, that's about right. A 10% change in income is really worth an unqualified "avoid these states" recommendation to you? That seems unjustified to me.
(Especially since employers already know this. 10% is in fact more than the penalty I already "pay" simply for living outside the Bay Area myself!)
10% of a Tech company Eng Mgr salary could be 20-30k gross or more. All other factors being equal, this could be a deciding factor. Its one thing to look into, but I'm not the one looking so if I were, I would do more research than my anecdotal data and things I know currently. The other end of this is to find out from their employer if they will force a pay reduction because SF might get a "location bump" in salary.
I don't think anyone is qualified to know the tax laws of 50 states inclusive of the county/city/school taxes. Its a suggestion to the OP to factor in the tax burden of wherever they have narrowed their search. My main point was they could pick nearly anywhere in the US to get what they want, there are lots of small towns outside mid-sized cities that give you a main street feel.
What you said upthread was "Avoid high tax states like NY and CA", which is quite different advice, and I think pretty questionable.
Is CA distorted by its funky property tax cap system? If so its position in that list may not matter for anyone looking at a new purchase.
what relationship are you inferring? Some states simply have higher tax burdens than others.
Is approximately equal to
> the political party of local politicians
Also agree with the 'college towns' comment.
I’ve lived in more than one small town, and the airports within an hour or two drive were not decent.
Agree about defining small town — for me, that’s under 10k pop, which is extremely limiting. Places others might consider “small towns” (40k pop) I would consider cities.
Home of a small college and a few large obscure athletic events (Unbound Gravel and disc golf nationals). Kansas is also a very reasonable state, politically, compared to much of the midwest. Less than two hours from decent sized airports (MCI and Wichita).
Eastern Kansas in general wouldn't be a bad place for a remote worker. Many of these towns have fiber. Homes are incredibly cheap. I picked up a 120 yr old farmhouse with broadband, a few acres and several 100 yr old trees for well under 100k. There's a deep calm here I really enjoy.
One interesting choice in Kansas is the town of Humboldt. Locals got tired of seeing their town decline as many others in the state. They've taken some impressive steps towards reversing that. Revitalizing their downtown with a string of new businesses. Here's a (paywall free) Kansas City Star article on the town and their newfound success.
https://archive.ph/Bhntu
I mean look at this gorgeous house for the same price you'd pay for a porta potty in a lot of places: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/515-W-Broa...
I also enjoyed Cloudcroft. Between all the biker bars there we found an excellent book store to peruse.
Taos/El Prado/Arroyo Hondo is a beautiful area along the Rio Grande (lookup "black rock hot spring"). There's a pub out there, off the grid, with a patio looking out to the mountains and live music broadcast from the solar powered radio station, "KTAOS"
We were looking at possibly relocating to a friendlier state than Texas if gay marriage were to be overturned. Thankfully, that's looking less likely, but it's still on the back of my mind a bit. We have some family in El Paso, so that would be convenient.
Main consideration would be quality of public schools. Some semblance of a social life for folks in their early 30s/parents would be nice but we could deal with that being not as great with El Paso close by. Availability of decent groceries, especially for cooking Mexican dishes, and fast internet would be pluses as well. I imagine the real estate market there is quite cheap. We'd love the climate if it's the same as El Paso.
Towns near the Tetons. Jackson of course is crazy expensive, but the towns nearby are amazing.
And the place is more progressive that you might think - for WY
Please don't move somewhere only to introduce the same problems you're fleeing.
Then I'd look for towns that have had the population grow in the last decade, or at least stay level, towns that are dropping in population often have issues (though if everything else about it seems right, check it out).
And then I'd visit - stay at a hotel for a week and see what it's like, if it seems good consider a longer stay. I would visit in the "worst" part of the year, not the best! So if you're looking at Duluth you'd visit in the winter, not in spring or fall.
You'd better be sure about that. Having a favorite diner, grocer and bar and only patronizing those businesses is a world apart from having exactly one option. What do you do when the bartender/regulars decide they don't like you. Or your neighbor, for that matter. The one whose family's been there for generations and is buds with the sherrif.
IMO you should find another suburb that you and your wife like. There are major downsides to small town living you're probably not taking seriously.
Happy to have beers with anyone who comes through to check it out, though!
Great schools, very progressive area (at least for MS). No homeless people leaving needles in the streets or throwing poop at me. Quite humid! 5Gb/s fiber to my house from multiple competing providers. Paid way way way below $1M (way below $500k lol) for 2500sft house with a huge yard, walking distance to the gulf of mexico (and a nice beach area) and about a mile from dozens of downtown restaurants. 10 minute drive to Biloxi and casinos and other nightlife. I have lost count of the number of people who have gone down my street on bikes or jogging (or on golf carts, which are street legal here). Gulf Islands National Seashore's entrance is less than half a mile away.
That being said, I would not have wanted to move to the gulf, and certainly not that part of it. Lake Charles got hit by multiple strong hurricanes in 2020, and I drove through a few weeks ago and they’re still covered in tarps and boarded up windows. Look at all the blue roofs on Google Maps! And then compare the distance of Lake Charles and Ocean Springs from the gulf.
Edit: To clarify, I’m sure you know this already. You can’t live there for long and not know. The above is more for the benefit of others who might read your post and not realize the extreme danger posed by rapidly developing, strong hurricanes in the gulf.
A house is just a bunch of stuff, and I have insurance up to the gills. I won't be in the house when the hurricane hits (hurricanes give you hours or days of warning, a wind driven fire might not give you any, an earthquake doesn't give you any), and I sleep a lot better knowing my kids won't burn in their beds.
I found one that seemed too good to be true. a 220,000 sqft metal warehouse and office complex on 17 acres. I thought the price was a typo at $375k.The agent assured me that the price was correct, and I flew out to see the place.
It was in a little town called Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
I offered about 3/4 what they were asking, and they accepted the offer.
Fast forward 2 1/2 years, and I've had nothing but problems. Break in after break in. Can't work through the red tape with the city so my warehouse sits empty. It feels like they are actively working against myself and other entrepreneurs I talk to. At least 2 others who bought buildings and tried to open businesses left after getting nowhere.
Maybe I'm daft, but I ended up buying about 75 more properties here... all surprisingly cheap.
The town is killing me though. I haven't seen my kids very much lately - I don't think it's safe enough for them. I'm probably going to be moving back to Utah in the next couple of months because it's just too much out here.
How does one do this in such a way that it's welcomed by people who already make their home there?
(I can imagine a lot of ways this could go work out badly, but don't immediately know a good approach.)
If you have the money and influence to "gentrify" somewhere... just build a new planned community in the middle of nowhere. The US has plenty of nowhere.
Not necessarily. You could buy a house that's empty.
What active behavior are we actually talking about? Making the place nicer? I feel like there's got to be actual some breathing room between "savior of the murder capital Pine Bluff" and "big bad real estate investor gentrifying people out of their homes."
So unlike places with very high rents but also where it seems like 3/4 of all buildings are rented out, most people in Pine Bluff would be objectively better off if rents doubled overnight with corresponding increases to the economy and local services.
To be blunt, if you're renting you have no claim to the property or lodging beyond the term of the lease. That's the entire point. I do believe human beings have a right to housing, but you do not have the right to live in someone else's house if they don't want you there.
[0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/pinebluffcityarkansas
Because people are leaving in droves, only old people there are dying off, kids moved to better places, and the economy is dead?
> If you have the money and influence to "gentrify" somewhere... just build a new planned community in the middle of nowhere. The US has plenty of nowhere.
Seems like a waste of resources. The US has had countless migrations within its borders during its existence. Why should we force people not to settle in places with dire economic circumstances and almost no future without outside influx?
Nobody gets removed, they just have to leave. It's a subtle distinction but that's how it happens. Poor people don't own anything. Their furniture is mostly stacks of junk that is so bad that it would be hard or impossible to get someone to accept it for free (this is very nearly a tautology, since the poor person got this furniture for free to begin with, and it's was so bad when they got it that nobody else would give anything for it). They rent. At some point property values are high enough the landlord (or his heir) decides to sell. At the end of the lease, the property is no longer for rent. That's the end of it. However, keep in mind that poor people tend to move every few years regardless. They are right on the edge of falling out of the population of working people who are self sufficient, so it is very common that they end up being evicted, abusing drugs or alcohol (even if just for awhile), or just having too many kids to be able to afford childcare so they can keep working to support themselves. Properties no longer being for rent in some neighborhood has almost no effect on any given poor person who lived in that neighborhood as they are one step above transient anyway.
This isn't an apology, it's just a more accurate description of what happens, I've seen it first hand from the low prestige side of things when I was young.
And while an accurate depiction of how this affects the people who were barely hanging on in the first place, there is a later step, where people who /have/ been renting all their lives in one area find themselves unable to continue to pay rent. You're not necessarily a homeowner if you're not at constant risk of homelessness.
I've seen this while squatting; our neighbours were people who had lived in the same community for 70 years, and their option once the landlord had decided to tear the building down and replace it with "luxury apartments" was far away from everyone they had known all their lives. There were several similar stories in the area.
I think if you make renting someone an apartment a lifelong obligation to provide them with housing at approximately that cost then only a fool would ever rent out an apartment. The supply of apartments to rent would go to approximately 0. One strange consequence of this would be that the price of housing would plummet as a result as all the landlords left the market. When you went to buy a condo, instead of competing with landlords and money launderers you would only be bidding against other people who want to live in the apartment. I saw this first hand at the GHI housing co-op in Maryland, buying a unit there was dramatically below market cost because they did not allow anyone to live in units apart from owners.
As for thinking from an economic perspective, I think anything else is doomed to fail. Unless we think about how people will behave to maximize their own outcomes in some system we risk making things much worse (even if we do think it through we still risk making things much worse, but at least we will have more confidence that we are doing the right thing). Socialist states are a great example of this, they plow ahead on the moral high ground (at least in their moral system) and manage to make their citizens poorer.
Directly or not. If you're a rich person moving into a poor town, the only way to not piss off the locals is to make them richer. If you can make the whole town richer, you'll be welcomed. Whatever portion of the locals that you don't make richer will hate you. If you don't want to piss off the locals, and you don't want to employ the locals, this is a very expensive plan.
Small town starts to tax a family for the commercial water line in a general store that closed in the 60's, that happens to be on the property, because, small town. Family has visions of a B&B, vineyard, wedding venue. Everything down the drain in the end, because lawyers are expensive.
Still there to this day: worn out stencil on the window of the 'general store'. "Sorry, we closed in 1968".
The tax was imposed to get the family out of the town, and it worked - the family is not rich. In the end, they had to sell their family home (which had been in the family since the 1930's) and leave (which they did).
They were taxed out because the family is notoriously progressive, and the town is very much the opposite. There was cultural friction. Keep in mind that this was 20 years ago. These were very polite 60's era hippies, all college-edumacated and everything - and the (very small, very tight) town didn't want them in it.
The town hall imposed a (crazy) tax, and they had to leave.
Depending on where you are, some value preserving a local culture over 'getting richer'.
Having grown up in a small idyllic town, there was beauty in the slow struggle to live there.
OP would do well to try and learn the culture before seeking to change it. There’s value beyond “cheaper houses” and “craft beer” in these places.
Coincidentally the novel/film Winter’s Bone author portrayed this area, north Arkansas and southern Missouri.
https://stownpodcast.org/
Sounds like a sure plan to get your tires slashed, if not your head bashed.
Hard pass no matter what the price.
Taken on I62 on the drive into Harrison.
I see nothing wrong with the fact that he's having trouble doing what he wants, he probably isn't coming close to remotely following proper procedure and clearly lacks experience, as he stated that he could barely even afford the first property - a 220k square foot warehouse he bought with apparently no business and no experience owning warehouses.
Given it's a town of 40k people, I doubt there's rampant corruption and more OP just doesn't have any idea how anything works at all. If any of his statements are true, this guy needs to stop what he's doing and learn how to adult.
If you think about this from the perspective of the city council, there was this big warehouse that they thought was perfect for a company like Amazon, which would have given them hundreds of jobs. Instead, a random rich guy buys it and employs nobody.
If you're going to refurb a giant warehouse to be a fireworks storage facility, that's different from building a daycare, which is different from "run an internet company and makerspace", etc.
Given his history includes free-energy crap (his own fusion reactor design) and running for Mayor of Provo, UT on a platform of disincorporating the city, I would guess the problem is that this guy is a libertarian and thus thinks rules don't apply to him.
Clearly something is very wrong with the local government and population.
Is this how local residents feel? I find this sentiment rather confusing. Rural places tend to be distrustful of central government. Meaning, they are happy to be ignored by “the rest of the country” since those outsiders don’t share their values.
It takes a lot of outreach to get anyone to trust the system, if they have a flexible enough situation to go. Most people just don't see education being a solution, so they aren't going to jump out on a shaky limb in the hopes it might catch them. Better the devil you know.
This hasn’t really been true for a while. Much of the quasi-libertarian stuff comes out of the conservative intellectual crowd, think tanks, lobbying groups etc. Some of it was also a holdover from the Reagan era, which was the last big right-wing populist movement, before Trump showed up.
It’s the anti-immigration, pro-manufacturing stuff that really comes out of rural areas. Stuff that creates jobs and cuts down on wage-dilution. If the Trump years were about anything, they were about the right collectively deciding they wanted an industrial policy and pro-labor (not pro-union, mind you) policy, instead of warmed over economic libertarianism.
The absence of data != no activity.
> White (non-Hispanic) 7,284 17.66%
> Black or African American (non-Hispanic) 31,744 76.95%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Bluff,_Arkansas#Demograph...
Pine Bluff had 29 homicides in 2021. Pine Bluff had 23 murders in 2020 - a rate of 56.5 murders per 100,000 people. The national average was 6.5 murders per 100,000 people in 2020.
As of July 29, in 2022 there have been 17 homicides reported in Pine Bluff.
Have you considered selling?
You might try Jonesboro, Fort Smith, or Hot Springs if you're looking for cheap nearby places. North Little Rock or someplace in NW Arkansas too would have more nearby amenities, albeit at higher (though still quite affordable nationally) prices.
I'm guessing the town wants him to do very basic stuff to get the property up to code, and he doesn't want to. Anther person pointed out in a comment that comment chain OPs twitter had posts about about holding somebody at gunpoint in apparent frustration. To me it sounds like OP knew absolutely nothing about commercial real-estate, absolutely nothing about local laws, and plopped down a bunch of money on a property without doing some homework.
It looks like he wants to but the city won't let him. e.g. https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1534754382885052417
Dealing with the government on things like this can be EXTREMELY frustrating especially if you're not used to running in those circles. Its a lot of things to learn and the people involved assume you know everything and when you get difficult they have a million ways to make your life more annoying.
I literally already have a city water connection and it's costing me a hundred bucks a month just to sit there unused because I can't get the permits to fix the plumbing... So what would you do in that situation?
You got a great bargain, now these expenses are the price of doing business.
Im not offering advice... but I see this often.
You do realize between his comments here, and a cursory look at his Twitter, he's told about 57 tall tales too many, right? If it was such a bad experience, why did he go on to buy an alleged SEVENTY-FIVE more properties there for starters?
Because the bulk, if not all, of this is probably entirely made up.
I mean, the guy claims he's developed a fusion reactor, all by himself apparently, for crying out loud. https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1488959967235219458
https://www.actdatascout.com/RealProperty/Arkansas/Jefferson
And see the property I bought and what I paid for it.
You can find out more about my fusion reactor at http://www.DDproFusion.com
My YouTube has tons of videos of my experiences here. http://YouTube.com/pontifier
I even started recording all my interactions with city zoning at https://murfie.com/dist/list.html
You can accuse me of being a lot of things... Oblivious, overoptimistic, naive... maybe even incompetent or delusional. But I am not a liar.
I can back up everything with evidence.
Stranger than fiction
You have the kind of money to casually buy up all this real estate, but you still went bargain-hunting for a warehouse? This reads like some kind of LARP or joke.
(Clay Davis has entered the chat)
Buying the others was honestly WAY, WAY, WAY cheaper than you'd expect. I almost didn't feel like I had a choice it was so cheap. Spent about $130k at a tax auction to get them all.
It almost feels like land is the only thing they can't steal around here.
1. https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1559001472746098693?s=2...
2. https://twitter.com/oriwa_/status/1559042188608405505?s=21&t...
and
https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1538230779658002432?s=2...
3. https://www.bensforbars.com
At the same time, he is trying to build a fusion generator, a science museum, an industrial space, and a few internet businesses that seem to need a secure facility. The planning commission probably has no idea what to do with him, and it doesn't sound like he is employing very many people from the local community. If I were on that city council, I would also be skeptical of the rich guy who bought a warehouse to play around but not actually run any serious business.
Between that and the tweet whining about how hard email is to set up (!) this dude isn't qualified to run a Subway franchise, certainly not multiple internet companies.
- Yup, the free energy fonts and conspiratorial claims about video of his fusion reactor being suppressed
- It looks like he bought a bunch of people's property for pennies on the dollar, then raised funds from those same people to return their goods to them, then had them trucked across the country in shipping containers to be dropped at this derelict 'warehouse'.
- He claims to be solo creating a viable fusion reactor, which appears to be one of the umpteen intended uses of this warehouse
- Wonders why the town council isn't trying to help him, when in one of his own tweets admits that he didn't even bother to attend the meeting that was going to hear his issue.
- Thinks snipers are stealing from him.
- Apparently held a man at gunpoint
- Alleges, openly on the internet, that he's storing all sorts of valuable equipment and music media at this warehouse while admitting he isn't even in the state a good chunk of the time
- Tried to run for mayor of Provo, UT (population 117k) so he could "disincorporate the city"
- the whole benforbars thing
- Complaining about the inability to install minecraft on anything other than a linux machine (?)
- Various email/server complaints
Yeahhhh
It feels like looking at myself in a fun-house mirror. There are probably huge pieces of these events that I'm not communicating well, or at all.
Thank you for your comment. I'll try to be better at communicating the meanings I intend.
Why can't I use it? Because the city won't let me.
I'm not the only one. This guy, Garland Trice, had his building demolished by the city because he failed to repair it. Why did he fail to repair it? Because the city would not give him permits.
It's SO RIDICULOUS here!
They've closed down the movie theater because they wanted to bring in their own theater. They drove a crypto mining facility away. They ran a tire recycler out of town...
If I hired 50 people, what would they do with no place to work?
Politics in small towns is about relationships. You need to build them if you want to build anything else. There's a reason you got this building for a deep discount: it's going to cost you a lot of time to get anything done. You didn't pay a lot of money for this building, and that was for a reason: you're going to have to pay in other resources.
Alternatively, if you're going to yell, you need to back it up with some persuasion. In this case, legal threats from actual lawyers (no pulling a C&D letter off the internet and changing a few things - you need your threats to be legit). That is going to get expensive very quickly, but it may work - small towns don't have a lot of legal resources and neither do their residents. The guy whose building got demolished for not doing disallowed repairs probably has a big payout waiting if he sues.
...
This is a perfect example of someone telling the truth in such a way to completely mischaracterize what really happened.
None of this negates anything I said previously.
I feel for this guy. He is getting screwed by a high-violence region. But his approach to solving this problem makes the world worse, not better.
A criminal came to his private property and attempted to steal. He was able to keep the person there - for less than ten minutes - until that person was arrested. Presumably that person is in jail now or at least on probation.
Please explain how just letting this person steal leaves the world better than having him get punished for his actions. When victims of crime shrug their shoulders and just say "aw shucks" it incentivizes more crime, which makes the world objectively worse.
What is the alternative? Paying people to track down criminals is how law enforcement works almost everywhere.
did i get that right
the guy confronted him and held him there until the authorities arrived.
are you implying people should not protect their livelihood and let trespassers loot even if they could stop them?
why should those property owners who are fully in the right morally and legally do that when the trespassers are flagrantly breaking the law?
Seems no different than crime stoppers, it's usually just a reward for information leading to an arrest, it's not an actual bounty. It's not excluding that, but he's most likely hoping someone who knows the person who stole it will rat for the money.
And I think you'll have to provide examples of the "terrible outcomes caused by private vigilanteism".
I’m sorry that you didn’t like my factual summary of events, but I provided direct references that were very easy to click on and read more about and I’m glad that you availed yourself to those resources.
You obviously feel very strongly about pontifier and his past, given the amount of time you spent digging into his background, what is the point you are actually trying to make here? Be as direct as possible, please :)
I did not spend much time “digging into his background”, I clicked a link and read a few posts.
Why do you care? Be as direct as possible, please :)
I invite you to not read questions directed at people other than you if you find them to be obnoxious.
No, why would I?
As for the weird threat of embarrassment… what? I literally just asked if he used the same username on both websites.
As for why I asked, I’ll answer again: his post on HN had a different tone from his posts on the bird site, and I wanted to know if they gave context to his post or were unrelated. For example, I do not own “braingenious” on twitter, and I wouldn’t want someone to mix me up with whoever that is.
I initially found this thread because someone mentioned it on Twitter. Spoiler: I did not go out of my way to gain any information.
As for how this relates to politics, I’ll refer to his own recent post about local politics affecting his project.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32474436
This has been a courtesy post because you have not answered “Why do you care?” and have failed to be direct. I will not engage with you any further.
Always a losing strategy in my experience.
:-(
So, we always want to help - I mean, FFS - people who develop tech/sw/hw/etc are actually looking at giving the fruits of their efforts out to the world, social support is no different...
But at times quick to help without judging the requestor past (HELLO PAC contributions :-))
Is there a tool that can do that, or did you piece together data from multiple sources?
I've heard most of the commercial real estate that's publicly listed is just the deals that the pros have already passed on.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-most-dangerous-cities-i...
Edit: I know it breaks etiquette to complain about downvotes, but this comment is not just material fact, it's my everyday lived reality. It's not safe to walk outside at night anymore on my block thanks to underfunded police and permissive progressive judges. I hear gunshots that I never heard before. The open drug use problem's getting worse, and schools have gotten way more dangerous for kids. Someone got stabbed on my street this weekend. The political cause and effect are clear. If that annoys you, bite me.
We can get a sense of where people like to live based on where they are leaving and where they are going. Of the five fastest-growing cities in America by absolute numbers, one is governed by a Democrat, one by an Independent, and three by Republicans:
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/fastest-...
Of the top 10 fastest-growing states, 7 out of 10 are governed by Republicans:
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/these-are...
http://www.whovotesformayor.org/compare
explain why people think progressive mayors are crazy.
A small percentage of mostly older people vote for most mayors.
If more people vote, younger views get represented.
Seems like one of the best things he could do to improve his town, is to encourage people to vote and be represented.
My biggest fear/hope about that is that my life could suddenly become boring once the cameras started rolling. I'm not sure which one would be worse.
Or go a level above local government and get some bigger guns?
I mean, is it unreasonable for the city to expect new drawings/specs for a new use of a building that has been unmaintained for at least 15 years? The fact that the property was sold for such a cheap price basically implies that the new owner should expect to invest a substantial amount of money to get everything up to code.
> Fenley said he selected the site because it was “the largest cheapest building in the country.” When he searched the commercial real estate website LoopNet for properties over 65,000 square feet and sorted by price, he thought the price tag of roughly $300,000 was a typo. The 17-acre industrial property was once home to steel manufacturer Varco Pruden but has stood vacant for at least 15 years and “fallen into disrepair,” according to the city’s Planning Commision.
> Pine Bluff City Attorney Althea Scott told the Cap Times by email that the Planning Commission had approved Fenley’s plans for the site in June, contingent on compliance with building and fire codes. But, she wrote, “the applicable codes can only be determined once Mr. Fenley has submitted the requisite engineer/architectural drawing(s) which identifies the anticipated use and occupancy of the structure. To date, required drawings have not been received.”
> Fenley told the Cap Times that such drawings would cost “tens of thousands of dollars,” and his communications with the city have led him to believe that he would need to bring the entire structure into compliance with current building codes before he could use any of it.
Additional context about Murfie; seems like it was sold for a huge discount: nearly a million CDs sold for less than $10,000. No wonder u/pontifier saw an entrepreneurial opportunity:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/21121594/crossies-murfie-m...
> Finally, after about a month, Murfie’s investors agreed to sell. Fenley purchased Murfie for only $6,000 plus $2,000 for Murfie’s attorney’s fees, according to the agreement obtained by The Verge. In total, he says the endeavor has cost him about $25,000 so far.
> Murfie’s 930,000 discs are still sitting in its Wisconsin warehouse. No one’s been inside since the landlord changed the locks some time ago, but Fenley says he’ll have access “shortly.”
Did you buy the warehouse sight unseen? Did you do any research on the local community and crime rates?
Cheap land is cheap for a reason. It sounds like you found out the reason that land was so cheap.
You know this now, but most crime databases have Pine Bluff as one of the most crime-riddles metros in the country. It rates a "1" on a scale of 100, with 100 being best (safest). Bummer.
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ar/pine-bluff/crime
Personally the most interesting question I haven’t seen asked is how he searched for cheap properties.
[1] https://youtu.be/EwievpEnXrE
[2] https://youtube.com/c/AndrewCamarata
Just before I closed on the warehouse, I reached out to the Megabots people to see if they wanted to move Megabots here, but didn't get a reply. The overhead cranes and large open interior spaces give opportunities not available anywhere else.
I literally had living spaces for artist and entrepreneurs on my original proposal, and I was hoping that it would become a destination makerspace where big names could come and access the amazing workshop I was planning to set up.
I was also planning to build a permanent robot combat arena here too, kind of like what they built in Norwalk.
My full proposal is here: https://www.murfie.com/dist/serendipic.pdf
Housing costs are higher, but probably not the $1M you mention unless you really want to go overboard.
Walk to the store, city bus is free, great place to raise kids, bike paths and trails, and you're out of town into the woods or farm fields in 15 minutes of driving. 1 hour to the coast, or 1 hour to the mountains. University as well as HP, NuScale, and other smaller companies.
People that come here can definitely turn into lifers.
The city also has "Da vinici days" in the summer which is great.
Had a friend with parents who lived there and a mentor too.
There is a fair amount of suburb-type housing I didn't really like, but there are also little hippie areas and cool spots in the hills.
OSU also has the Open Source Lab, a notable non-profit.
Go beavs.
Pendleton has an annual round-up that's been running for 100-odd years. Not a reason to live there necessarily, but just in case anybody's in the area and hadn't heard of it.
Pendleton also has cheap housing, fiber internet, and a decent craft brewery http://prodigalsonbrewery.com/ .
You say that you just need a bar and a supermarket, but you've probably never lived in, like, Brady, TX or Cuba, NM. Stuff gets small fast, though those are cheap places to live. You can buy amazing houses in defunct oilfeild towns like Pampa, TX. But really, if you have a heart attack there you're in for about an hour drive to get to definitive care.
Where exactly did you end up?
What you would do is load all of the data as layers in QGIS, then, probably starting with house listings that met your criteria, select all homes that were within X miles/meters to stuff like
- grocery store
- hospital
- lake
- bar
- climbing spot/bike trails/hiking
- etc etc etc what ever you want for criteria
Hardest part would be hunting down all the data and some geocoding would probably be involved (there would probably be several data sources that you would have to convert from list of addresses to lat/long points) but there are enough free geocoding services out there that this wouldn’t be tough at all.
All in all could probably be done in an afternoon or two for someone familiar with tech but a newbie to QGIS
I did a stint in a cheap culture wasteland through covid. It may be economically cheaper but the toll it takes on your soul is real.
Just admit you hate “flyover country”.
I hate places that are devoid of culture, because they generate local societies of people who without exception are fine with it (as evidenced by their not moving away).
At least I hope they do.
If you live in a place without any of them, you can be sure it also doesn’t have any of those kinds of people as full-time residents.