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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious about how it plays out... everywhere. I live in what's being called a "Zoom town", with lots of remote workers who seem to want a smaller town with more outdoor access (Bend, Oregon if you're curious). House prices are going through the roof.

But Bend was already hot, and on people's radar. Yesterday I saw an article about housing heating up in Baker City Oregon. This is a small town of 10K people that is certainly in a nice area, but hasn't been known as much of a 'hip' place to be.

https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/realestate/baker-count...

There are quite a few smaller towns here and there throughout the west. It'll be interesting to see if the dispersion to these kinds of places is fairly uniform, if people stick more to already 'hot' places, and of course what happens when the pandemic is mostly played out.

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If I was mayor of a small town I would be rolling out fiber like there is no tomorrow and zoning everything to allow for detached units like these [0].

Interests rates are at their lowest and the rise in property value should more than pay for it.

[0] https://www.dwell.com/article/prefab-home-office-accessory-d...

You also have to be in reasonable distance to an airport, Trader Joes/Costco/REI/restaurants/breweries/etc other stores the higher income crowds like, and outdoor activities. Bend happened to have all of these.

Although Bend's internet offerings are extremely sad, and I'm surprised the political power of the tech crowd hasn't forced municipal fiber to be a thing yet.

For me a bike shop and brewery would be the 'minimum viable amenities'. Even Lakeview has a bike shop. Baker City has both - and the beer is supposed to be pretty good: http://www.barleybrownsbeer.com/ .

I think some people are more comfortable with less of that stuff. I could get by without Costco and REI.

Airport is the toughest one.

The rest is a chicken and egg problem. If you start attracting high income remote workers there should be more stores setting shop.

no idea why but that page is essentially unreadable here on both firefox 83.0 and chrome. I do use ublock origin and 68k lines in /etc/hosts to block stuff, but still ...

Seems like the AdAway hosts list blocks assets.dwell.com for some reason... Not entirely sure why.

Yep, that was it. Thanks for that. I'll remember the next time something like that happens to search for the domain in /etc/hosts

Most towns won't do this because most of its existing tax base will hate it despite it being a good idea. And they vote!

I don't see what they have to lose. Their house and land might be worth more.

Roseburg, Oregon/Douglas County wouldn't even cough up the money to fund their library system. Some places are not very, uh, forward thinking.

Is funding a library forward thinking? Honest question.

The people are all olds who barely want to pay for sheriffs. See also, Damascus in Clackamas County.

I really wish we could choose between libraries and sheriffs...

I'd flip it around: not being able to keep a basic library system open is for barbarians.

New Orleans mayoralty needs to hear this loud and clear...

The sleepy town that they grew up in and love.

The Mom & Pop coffee shop and hardware store.

The ability for their children to live down the street, because they have been priced out of the market.

There are many things that change when your house and land are worth more money.

For some people their house and land aren't a crop to raise and sell, maybe they like their hidden gem for what it already is. See the lamentations on Austin's growing pains in this thread.

If people are looking in smaller-town Oregon, I nearly bought a house in Pendleton and http://prodigalsonbrewery.com/ was contributing to that. They have stouts, porters, and reds on their beer menu instead of just whatever it is Cool Beer People are drinking these days, and their food is really solid pub food.

Good place to stop if you're passing through to Baker City :)

I don't fancy living in either Pendleton or Baker City, but I cannot wait until it's ok to travel around in a carefree way again. I'd love to have a relaxed visit to both places. Being cooped up in Bend is ... not terrible, but it's still 'cooped up'.

Baker City? Wow. I'm rather shocked.

I mean, yes, nice place. Not near anywhere. If you like ranching/farming communities with mountains nearby, it's pretty good. But how are internet speeds? And if you need to come back to "civilization", where's the nearest airport with commercial flights?

Probably not a great location for a travelling salesperson.

But you can buy a lot of house for the same amount of money that would get you a dumpy, nondescript place in an anonymous part of Bend:

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2405-2nd-S...

To say nothing of the Bay Area.

It doesn't take a lot of people moving in to start changing prices in a town that small.

Last Sold$ 35k in 2005

I hope Enterprise gets spared.

That place is so remote that I doubt it'll see many people moving in. I don't have a good handle on their economic situation, but there are a ton of these former mining/logging/ranching towns that could absolutely use an influx of money and people who are excited about living there.

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