Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

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Curious to hear the community’s perspective on where our next move should be.

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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College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them. They'll have restaurants and groceries, and those faculty kids have to go to school somewhere. Internet should be passable, too. They won't be the cheapest small town option, but houses should come in well below a million bucks.

The one town you mention, Lancaster, PA, is a model of the type.

This is a great answer. The two college towns near me also happen to be home to all the best restaurants, and are both far more walkable than the nearest city's downtown area.

Not sure that the real estate is going to be all that cheap, though.

It really depends on the atmosphere you want. College towns are great in many ways, with lots of interesting things to do and a lot of cultural events.

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

Most of that kind of thing is often limited to a fairly limited area. Worth learning where those areas are, though.

Yeah, the student ghetto. Regular folks live in the college-town-burbs.

You can always organize with the other homeowners to curtail the college's operations! Seems to be a popular strategy.

Slowly suffocate the golden goose! Ever popular indeed.

Another option is those towns that are formed around some activity like skiing, hiking or surfing(Never surfed but I think it applies here also). They might be not cheap as some random rural towns but atmosphere and services are very good.

I have a relative who lived in Lancaster. She liked it. I visited there once and it seemed nice but I was only there for a few days. Also her house was huge.

It's easy to recognize and avoid the student neighborhoods. Find out where the professors and doctors live. Or even the graduate students -- not as wealthy but tend to be quite well behaved. Many are raising families while in grad school.

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.

Home prices are pretty high in most nicer college towns.

This is true, but it's on a sliding scale. I grew up in a town in Idaho, 100 miles from an interstate. I've lived in tech cities (SF, Austin) and now live in Ann Arbor. (Which, along with Chapel Hill, is basically the definition of "nicer college town.") So I've seen all sides of this.

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.

Totally agree on college towns. Just need to make sure you don’t buy a house next door to a fraternity or established party house.

This is where it's at. College towns are the best. They are the gems. Smaller, but with a large group of people from all over, you get that diversity you probably want. With people from all over, you get great food from all over, languages, neat people, art, etc.

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.

Like Eugene, Corvallis is very nice. There’s decent food, and houses are a lot cheaper than Portland. It’s a lot closer to Portland on days you want to drive up, which is a plus.

Yeah, that's about the best. There's a lot of college towns that are within driving distance of a major city (like <2hrs), and that really opens it up. If you want the culture of a big city but small town living, college town! Concerts will go to Portland, and sometimes Eugene, but not always, so you can just go up and see them in Portland for example.

Agree, Corvallis rocks. Beautiful weather, decent food, close to cities, mountains, the coast. Not sure where the down votes are coming from, maybe to stop you from letting the secret out?

Yeah I agree. I honestly love central Oregon. Grants Pass in particular is wonderful. And then down in that Medford Ashland Rogue River Valley area too. US 199 from Grant's Pass to Crescent City CA is possibly the most gorgeous drive in the US IMHO. And Crescent City CA has the redwoods all over, and you can continue to Eureka, which is also nice, and fairly cheap compared to the rest of california. It smells like green and wet there, but not in a bad way. Very little snow. Central oregon literally looks like the shire with the rolling hills and mountains. I'd buy there.

please don't price students out of college towns...

Doesn’t US students mostly live in dorms…?

The first year, yeah. After that, people start moving out. I don’t know anybody who lived in a dorm from the third year onward.

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.

Not really sure what to respond. Should people in the US not be free to move to any town they want? Seems like an odd take IMO.

You can move wherever you want. But on a forum where people frequently talk about the harm humans do, I think advising people to move to an area that exists basically for people who are just struggling to start their adult life seems like a bad move.

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.

I guess that's how they managed to screw up Creste Butte, CO. Pandemic + WFH, opportunities to move somewhere with nice scenery and not enough infrastructure to support a whole score of newcomers.

Residence halls are generally competitively priced, and is often cheaper than comparable housing off campus. Residence halls are more expensive than they used to be, but a lot of that is due to the type of housing that students are demanding. University-owned housing isn't a profit center, it's only priced to cover the costs of providing it.

Is that really true in college towns? My experience (at an urban university campus that required a year in the dorms) was that the dorms and meal plans were staggeringly expensive, but the cheaper off-campus housing tended to be in older homes that had seen some very hard use as students came and went. So maybe the dorm price would be comparable with a brand-new high-rise apartment, but students didn't really need that.

Off-campus housing often looks cheaper, but that's because you're often comparing apples to oranges. As you mention, the age of the property and how well it's been maintained often varies significantly. But most places you rent off-campus don't include utilities. --That old house in the Midwest or Northeast might look cheap compared to on-campus housing in August, but your electricity and gas bills in the fall and winter will quickly change your calculations.

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.

Those eight guys I knew who split the rickety house with the two ovens whose pilot lights kept going out had plenty of social belonging. There's a huge racket in convincing freshmen to spend money they don't have, in order to live someplace just as nice as their parents had after they spent 20 or more years improving it.

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.

> 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.

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.

My friends were generally emotional wrecks and hugely into alcohol, but they survived and have productive lives now. They weren't made of fine Waterford crystal.

> University-owned housing isn't a profit center, it's only priced to cover the costs of providing it.

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).

No? In the “college towns” described, rent is far cheaper than dorm costs.

15 years ago, dorm costs were >$1100/mo, and rent was $550 where I lived, 10 minutes from the university.

Varies widely. Size of school, public/private, urban vs rural location, cost and availability of surrounding housing.

You'll hear the opposite refrain where I live, as the expansion of the university prices locals out of rented accommodation.

College students tend to live in apartments or housing focused on college students where few other people want to live because of noise problems. Other people living in other areas of a college town are critically important for the health of a town, or else basically everything cannot exist while the student population is away.

It's the opposite where I am: landlords raising rates to capture more of those sweet student loan dollars. The policy of making access to credit cheap and ubiquitous for students has led to drastic growth in rents (in addition to a large expansion in college amenities and administration). That's what's pricing out locals: students paying for housing with borrowed money.

College towns could - crazy thought - build more housing for everyone who wants to live there. We even have the technology to stack dwelling units vertically to take advantage of scarce land!

I grew up in a college town and I can highly recommend. I grew up with kids of professors and because of that (and, of course, my own parents) had a great academic environment. Schools in college towns often punch above their weight.

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.

Agree. Still in love with Lawrence, KS (University of Kansas). If you can deal with the weather. :-(

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.

Lawrence is nice, I lived near downtown for cheap, was able to walk most of the time. There was a very active music scene- I was an in-house engineer at one of the recording studios there.

Columbia is also nice, but a little more spread out. Ames IA, Tulsa, Champaign-Urbana, Ann Arbor…

Columbia's not bad. But it's 2 hours from KC or St Louis, which is a haul for an Apple Store. The airport's not bad actually, but you always are connecting through DFW or ORD, so the layover is just a thing. Flying into STL is still followed by a two hour drive, so never worth it.

Athens, GA was an amazing town to live in. Amazing live music scene. Great food. And big enough to have neighborhoods for the undergrads that you could avoid.

Living ~1hr from ATL was also a luxury - you fly direct everywhere on Delta.

I'm from Lancaster and I don't really consider the city a college town.

State College PA is a college town.

Lancaster is just a nice small city with a few colleges in it.

I agree it isn't a true "college town" but I think with the gentrification and the art college it feels more like a college town than say Carlisle that also has one main college. I think it also has a lot of the cultural diversity that you'd expect from a bigger college town. But in either case, it is great!

Yeah specifically what I mean is that the median age in Lancaster is 33 and the median age in State College is 21.

So even if there are schools there the feel is more young adult than college student.

Lancaster would be a different place without F&M. I've always thought college town meant the college supported most if not all of the local population, something like West Chester, the town would still exist without WCU but it would be just like Downingtown then, nothing super special. I think lancaster would be in a very similar spot.

F&M is not actually among the top employers [0]. Whereas in State College, Penn State is the top employer by a ridiculous margin [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania#Econom...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_College,_Pennsylvania#Ec...

Put another way: State College has a permanent population of 40,000. Penn State at State College employs 27,000 people (already over half of the population). And during the school year there are 46,000 undergraduates in the main campus. So over 100% of the permanent population are associated with the school during the school year.

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/

You're forgetting that West Chester is the county seat of Chester County PA, the fastest growing and richest county in the entire state (and usually somewhere in the top 25-40 of the US.) So, you have the county courthouse and all the typical government stuff, which Downingtown lacks.

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.

>College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them.

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.

I second this. Close to the Bay Area you have UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis… very different vibes but both will have areas with homes <$1M.

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.

We recently did the same, though in our case opportunity drove our decision and not careful consideration. We got quite lucky under the circumstances.

My observation, fwiw, is that the American small town, self-sufficient and independent from a neighboring city, is a dying breed.

Not all small towns will die the same way or on the same schedule. But here are some things to think about.

- Is there a tourist draw? Do short-term rentals address this opportunity? Every vacation rental is a unit unavailable to the local salaried population and where we live this cannibalizes the fabric of the small town.

- Is the local industry durable? That could be a university, it could be timber, it could be a BMW factory 90 minutes away, it could be a fishing fleet. Where we live the local industry will be eradicated in our lifetime due to climate change. And the state university system is retracting, not growing.

- Do the local schools suffer under-enrollment? Where we live they do not, but neighboring towns have so many retirees and houses turned into short-term rentals that the schools are threatened.

In short, the internet means there are no undiscovered places, and the economics can undermine what makes a place special in the first place. Add to that some places are going to be significantly impacted by global warming.

Today we live in a sort of paradise but we are aware that it may not be our forever home, if such a thing exists.

> My observation, fwiw, is that the American small town, self-sufficient and independent from a neighboring city, is a dying breed.

Some are, some aren't. I'm more than willing to share my story but I did my research before I left Austin for the Hill Country and couldn't be happier.

Please share

After living in Austin for 24 years and working at Samsung Austin Semiconductor for a decade, I decided that I wanted to work remotely. I learned new skillsets and started working for smaller startups where remote work was a possibility. This was pre-COVID.

I researched every town and county between Brenham and Junction for about 18 months, studying publicly available data as well as traveling to the towns to see them for myself. I tried to introduce myself to the locals, asking them about the town and their businesses. Sometimes I would call the sheriff's office or school district to ask them questions about the community. I would walk into rural hospitals and start talking to staff about their facility and services they offered.

I moved to San Saba in 2018 and then bought a second house in Lampasas in 2021. These towns are northwest of Austin, at the northern tip of what's known as the Texas Hill Country.

San Saba is more remote, more pristine. The population density is three people per square mile and there are two traffic lights in the entire county. The downtown has been revitalized over the past decade and the local ISP is very forward-thinking, offering gigabit fiber.

Lampasas is closer to Austin (an hour away), has a hospital and definitely has bit more bustle than San Saba, but nothing like the congestion one experiences in Austin.

The people out here are incredibly neighborly and hospitable, with a live-and-let-live ethos. They do not like to be preached at or lectured by outsiders, so respecting their way of doing things is of paramount importance. I've been very successful by attending city council meetings, joining volunteer organizations, teaching classes myself in the library on weekends, things like that. Figuring out how things work and contributing as best I can without being too loud about it. People will appreciate you if you can do that.

It's important that one be fairly self-sufficient when moving to an area like where I live. For example, I had to tear my house apart in San Saba to fix some structural issues caused by water penetration leading to rotten wood in the structure. Working with the contractors was definitely a learning experience and something I never want to do again. But you have to be able to figure out things like that if you live out here.

The peace and quiet, the pristine environment, the quality of life, the low crime and great community, these are all things I wouldn't trade for a spotted hog. It's not for everyone, but after living in Austin for 24 years, I much prefer it here now.

I'm sure you can get better tex-mex food within 3 miles than I could find driving for 3 days. My concern in that region would be drought and aquifer health, and yet my lawn is also dead here in New England.

Great Tex-Mex is something we take for granted here. It's everywhere.

The water situation is important, but that's part of one's research responsibilities. That's why I struck Llano from my list, for example. Their municipal water supply is the Llano River, which did dry up during the 2011 drought.

However, San Saba has the San Saba-Ellenburger aquifer underfoot which will never be stressed at current draw rates from the 6000 people who live in San Saba County. And the Hickory Water Conservation District which covers 55% of the county prevents that water from being removed from the district. San Saba is like the Garden of Eden in Texas due to the abundant and secure water resources. Drought literally doesn't affect us.

These are all things which are discoverable using publicly available data.

I live in the outskirts of a poor rural town in NY. We have 2 bars, some restaurants, a coffee shop, a fast food chain, some dollar stores, a grocery store, hardware store, antiques, gas stations, etc, Library and a little theater, farmers market on weekends. River runs nearby with a put-in for kayaks and fishing. Biggest town/city nearby with big box stores is about 45 minutes. They have fiber internet here but it's very expensive and the 300/20 Mbps is fine for me. 5G varies by region & provider.

Honestly... It's kind of great. The people are nice, the scenery is gorgeous, it's pretty quiet, and most everything you need is right in town. Since the community is so poor, all the housing is cheap. Nearby towns are all bought up as second homes for expats. Everything outside town is an old farm.

The worst thing about the place is it's a minimum 2 hour drive to anywhere, and having a car is mandatory to get here. But if you have everything you need, there's no need to leave. There is no Uber/Lyft/Instacart/GrubHub, don't expect any startups here. Cell service outside of towns is mostly nonexistent. Also know that none of your old friends will ever visit because it's way too inconvenient.

The only things I miss are "big city" things and more people around into the same things I'm into. And an international airport would be nice, but it's not like I was flying around the world every weekend before.

I'm curious, how do you people deal with medical emergencies? I live in a city and I have 3 24x7 hospitals within walking distance. I have gone dozens of times on foot at 3 in the morning to get medicine.

Lots of America just deals with them poorly. The nearest hospital might be an hour away. Or more. Usually better than that in New York state, at least.

Something to think hard about before you embark on your small town life journey.

> I live in a city and I have 3 24x7 hospitals within walking distance.

Where is that, just curious? I can't think of any place with three major hospitals within a mile or less?

In San Francisco if you start from St. Mary's: UCSF is 1.1 miles away by car, CPMC Davies is 1.5. If you start at Kaiser's Geary campus: UCSF Mt. Zion is 0.4 miles away, St. Mary's is 1.1 miles away. If you start at SF General: St Luke's and UCSF Children's Hospital are 1.5 miles away – although UCSF only takes pediatric patients and I think Sutter closed the ER at St Luke's because focusing on specialists is more profitable.

In Oakland: Kaiser and Summit ERs are about half a mile from each other and UCSF Children's Hospital is about 1.5 miles away.

Lower Manhattan: Mt Sinai Beth Israel and Bellevue are about a mile away and there's a VA hospital with an ER next to Bellevue.

In Chicago: UI and county are 0.6 miles away by car and Rush is on the other side about 0.4 miles away. UI actually calls this the "Illinois Medical District".

In Seattle: Swedish First Hill and Virginia Mason are 0.4 miles apart. Kindred's right there too but doesn't have an emergency department. UW Harborview does have an ED and is 0.4 miles in the other direction.

This is amazing analysis. Hat tip!

Did you just happen to know all of these hospitals... then you used Google Maps to show distance? You are like the Ken Jennings of hospitals!

He probably knew that there around a bunch of hospitals around the geographic center of SF (if you live in that part of town it’s hard to miss), and then did a Google search for the numbers. I used to work at UCSF and this matches my sense that there are a lot of medical facilities in town.

Yeah I know where the hospitals are in San Francisco because I lived there. Centrally located isn't as great as it may seem. For the others I just plugged "emergency room" into Apple maps and picked some points that seemed close enough together.

Houston?

Ah, yes, a quaint, small town. :)

Philly has 4+ hospitals in center city (Jefferson, Penn), 7+ in university city (Drexel, Penn, CHOP), and a smattering more all over. Baltimore had 3+ hospitals near downtown but I think most got absorbed into UMMS, so it's Hopkins and UMMS, but lots of different facilities around.

oh, i didn't mention this isn't america, but instead a third world backwater country

Boston's Longwood Medical area is a great example of a place you can stand and be within a mile of 4 hospitals. Brigham and Women's, Boston Children's, Beth Israel and New England Baptist.

3 of the 4 are Harvard Medical School affiliated and our outstanding hospitals.

Atlanta, Boston, Houston, and Philadelphia all have medical center areas with 3+ hospitals within walking distance of each other.

Houston has the largest medical center in the world with ~10 including Texas Children's Hospital, the largest children's hospital in the world (or at least it was a couple of years ago).

"It depends."

My town actually has an E.R. and urgent care. We have a CVS in town too (my town has a lot of stuff!!). There are also medical taxis (there are no regular taxis here) and private hire ambulances that'll take you if you need a different hospital.

Typically you get the number of the closest general doc to you, and make good friends with your neighbors, so somebody can drive you to a hospital right away if you cut your leg off in the middle of the night. Could be a long way off or right around the corner, it depends.

The biggest thing I never anticipated? Car parts. My brakes went and rather than bring it to the local mechanics I tried to fix it myself. Walk into town takes about 40 minutes, getting the right parts took weeks.

Power also went in the spring due to freezing rain bringing down trees. Cell signal went, along with power and internet, and my water well's pump is electric; heat is propane but the damn heater's thermostat went, probably electric too. So being prepared to be off-grid once a year is useful.

Why did you struggle to get car parts shipped?

Stripped a bolt. Luckily our town also has an auto parts store (we have a lot of stuff!!) and they had those giant stripped bolt extracting sockets, but no replacement bolt.

Have you ever tried to find the rear brake caliper housing assembly bolt for a 2nd gen Scion xB? Not the slide pins or bracket bolts, the housing assembly that holds the whole caliper onto the wheel. Nobody sells it, you have to get it from a dealership, who's 2 hours away and ships via USPS (there is no way to get there without a car). They then screw up which part it is because nobody ever orders this bolt and the parts diagrams don't label it well. So you wait for a different part to be shipped again. All after getting the normal brake parts shipped and trying to install them which took a week on its own. So about 3+ weeks.

(If you have a second car you could maybe go around hardware stores looking for an identical bolt, but even then the steel and threads may be different, as different bolts have different torque specs due to whether that bolt's threads are supposed to stretch or not in order to bind. These bolts are very low torque even though they are for a caliper assembly)

Why would someone go DOZENS of times on foot at 3am to get medicine?

And if so, why not get it from a pharmacy?

multiple times is over many years

> I'm curious, how do you people deal with medical emergencies?

Be healthy. Also be able to survive a 60 minute wait and ambulance ride to the nearest hospital. I'm totally serious, unfortunately. Locals tend to look healthier for a reason.

In northern MN often times they use helicopters for transport for major emergencies.

I have gone dozens of times on foot at 3 in the morning to get medicine.

For starters, the number of times that myself or either of my former or current spouses has felt the need to seek out a vendor of medications at 0300 has been...zero. That said, and I don't mean to be trite, you deal with it by living like you live 2 hours from an ER. Know your first aid, make doubly sure to keep those fingers away from that table saw (and even that won't likely kill you before you get to the ER). That, and just don't obsess over it. People have lived far away from emergency medical care for many years. Sometimes they die as a result. Sometimes people die driving to the ER that's right down the street. But me and my house, just because a hospital could be close to home doesn't mean it has to be.

(Says the guy smack in the middle of Redmond, WA within a long walk to the ER...or a five minute drive. That hasn't always been the case, however.)

He is in Srinagar, Kashmir. Probably the vendors live above their shops and will open up in an emergency.

nope. unlike your "idea", the picture you're painting must've been 20-30 years ago and definitely not now.

we have SMHS hospital which is a superspeciality/emergency, around 3 Km away is JVC hospital which also has an emergency and another 5 Km away is soura hospital which is the biggest hospital in the area, again, has emergency wards.

then we have some smaller, privately owned hospitals in the city itself so that is where people get treated.

Well my mistake then.

I'm not sure where you are, but maybe the medical system is set up a little differently?

I say that because I know when I met my wife (who was used to the Chinese medical system) she was used to a hospital being the be-all end-all of medical care and very frustrated with the level of service she received... until I introduced her to the clinics and other places she should have been going to have most things treated.

If you're taking yourself to a hospital here without some sort of referral from a doctor you're generally entering through the emergency department which is set up to treat emergencies. Things that will kill you in short order. If I go in for "medication" and it isn't a situation like "I've run out of my life-saving medication and I need a dose to get me through to morning." I'm probably just gonna spend the night sitting in the waiting room. Likely longer. It'd be like putting a P5 ticket in for a team whose responsibility is dealing with P1/P2 tickets. You're gonna be waiting a while for the other higher priority issues to slow down long enough for them to catch up and run out of things to do. If you're lucky they might sneak you in sooner just to avoid blowing the P5 SLA, but even that will only happen if they're _mostly_ caught up on P1/P2 issues.

If it's immediately life-threatening, I call an ambulance. They're about 5-10 minutes away. Not the best, but that means I can get someone with a moderate amount of medical training focused on "keeping you alive" to me in about 10 minutes. If it can't wait until morning but isn't going to kill me in the next hour, I can drive or be driven the 45 minutes to the hospital.

Anything else (like getting medication to treat a condition) I'd just wait until morning and see a normal doctor at the closer clinic. They can provide basic diagnosis and treatment, and there's a pharmacy nearby that can dispense any medications they prescribe.

Sounds like Hancock. Beautiful setting but the town seems like a constant reminder of what it used to be.

Are you in "upstate ny" by chance? I was going to suggest that area but read your post potentially covering that suggestion.

Central.

There are 10 regions of NY State. According to NYCers, literally the entire state outside of the Hudson Valley is "upstate" - you could live an hour from Cleveland,OH or an hour from Montreal,BC , and both are "upstate". So it helps to be more specific when suggesting a place in NY.

Let me give you the scoop on the Carolina's. I'm a developer living in the upstate of SC. I am an agnostic liberal which makes me a rarity but I was born here so I can go under the radar thanks to my deep melodious southern accent.

Pros

  - Great climate 10 out of 12 months
  - Friendly people
  - Lots of outdoor activities
  - Beautiful beaches (Fripp Island and Kiawah especially)
  - Low cost housing (altho going up rapidly)
  - Greenville and Charleston are very nice

Cons

  - Heart of MAGA land (this may be a pro depending on your politics)
  - First question is about what church you go to
  - Can still be shockingly racist at times (altho getting much better)
  - Weak zoning so sprawling construction and walkable areas limited
  - Food choices can be limited for vegans/vegetarians
  - July/August - the heat and humidity are rough

Curious, do you actively hide your agnostic liberal views?

I don't lie if directly asked but I don't volunteer unless I know the person. Have definitely been told I'm going to hell, etc

My parents are retired in SC. Other than "no guns at our house" they hide their liberal views and end up finding left wing friends through weird whisper networks. The huge majority of their friends and neighbors are red (they live in a very white and quite wealthy area).

I mean, you change them. A big part of politics is contextual to where you live, and rural people have different problems than people in cities and suburbs.

You might still be a liberal but the type of liberal that lives in, say rural New England is vastly different than a California liberal. They are going to be much more practical. Demonizing cars like you might in a big city makes no sense in a place that will never get public transportation. Social services, especially things like public housing aren’t high on list of needs or wants. Public (K-12) education is a majority of tax dollars, for cultural reasons and a stigma against people who are uneducated. And so on. Different parts of the USA will have totally different value systems.

Pretty standard answer. "It's great except for those Leftover-Americans."

Well I was born here and have lived here almost my entire life of 50+ years. So I feel pretty qualified to have an opinion on the South.

Nothing has changed in 50+ years?

"friendly people" but also "hateful racist trumpers"? Well which is it?

I imagine they are referring to different people, not one single person who is both.

More like 'friendly to perceived in-group, not friendly to perceived outsiders'

I mean, by large most people in most places in USA are friendly/neutral, since most of the people in SC are conservative, the brand of hate you get from the crazies is of the trump/maga/racist flavor. Where as in liberal areas, you'd probably get a different sort of hate.

Live in Minnesota. Plenty of liberals, but 'friendly' Minnesotans are not. I vacation every year on Hilton Head in South Carolina--although, with many transplants and vacationers from what I assume are wealthy liberal areas, it's not anywhere near a haven for political cultists. That said, the people are GENUINELY more friendly and will strike up active conversation, want to hang out again, etc; whereas, in Minnesota, it's incredibly difficult to talk with someone more than about the weather.

That's what they mean, I'd assume.

I looked up the stats of SC and noticed that more than one person lives there.

Why can't it be both?

> "friendly people" but also "hateful racist trumpers"? Well which is it?

Another native Carolinian chiming in here (from NC, but similar).

These people are friendly if you "pass" as one of them. Be white, wear a trucker cap, don't dress up too fancy, use a southern accent (or at least, don't talk too pretty), don't be gay, don't say a damn thing about politics or religion. Don't drive a Prius or something. You're good to go. If you are careful enough they might even occasionally start confiding in you, and expect you to agree with them, about their casually racist views. If you reach this point, you can get by with just not saying anything, and the conversation will usually evolve to other less difficult matters.

You can violate these rules, of course, but you need to be able to "pass" by compensating in other ways. So if you do wear a suit and drive a Tesla, you could make up for it if you have a good southern accent or go to church or proudly espouse your conservative values in some other way (carry a sidearm, maybe).

Also, my people will sometimes act nice to you even if they hate you. If you're here a while you will learn to recognize it. Southern "hospitality" is incredibly superficial - there's a thin veneer. If you don't look too closely, and you don't care too much about what they really think of you (because really, they're mostly harmless - unless you need something from them), you will be OK.

... unless you have kids. Please don't send kids to public schools in the rural white south if you or they are even vaguely progressive.

You could've been describing Texas, too.

You do have similar folks in rural Oregon or rural Idaho too . Have you been to Klamath Falls, OR ? If you do have to compare you would probably make a direct comparison to say Athens, GA or Research Triangle, NC . IMO this country already has a huge divide between rural and urban populations no matter which state you are in. Educated college towns are the hidden gems for anyone looking to escape 1m dollar Bay Area houses.

OP's rules of thumb are pretty broadly applicable in a great many rural, small-town regions of the USA. If you're politically progressive, you can still pass as a local and blend in if you adopt a few mannerisms and if you're willing to ignore/dodge a lot of questionable conversation material. The only thing you can't really fake is your skin color.

>"if you 'pass' as one them.."

From my point of view you just described the left.

Dressing in a suit and tie is not a rarity in the south or rural areas. Being gay isn't some attribute that qualifies for special treatment just because of your sexual preference. Politics also isn't some defining feature, and is WAY too publicized in today's culture. Why does it matter what someone's political view points are? Does that make them less than you, and are they really racist or is it because you don't agree? Because conservatives think democrats are racist for implying POCs aren't capable of doing things themselves. Maybe southern hospitality is superficial in some southerners but at least its some kind of hospitality, have you been to any major city? They'll let you bleed out before calling for help.

On the one hand, everybody commenting on this post is touting their newly adopted off-the-beaten-path rural-ish community. On the other hand, everyone who lives there is basically a closet racist and homophobe. Which is it?

If you actually want a more conservative culture - as, I'm sure, many of the HN crowd who intend to flee the Bay Area do - these communities will be especially appealing. One person's negative is another's positive.

I really do want to emphasize how polite rural people can be to your face while shit talking you behind your back, though. The idyllic and friendly "country folk" lifestyle is really bullshit. I grew up in such a community and we would smile and "yes sir" all day long to people's faces then talk total trash about them the second they walk away.

If you don't look too close and you don't care to make friends with them, you won't notice. Some fancy city liberal who moves in and minds their own business is unlikely to have any direct conflict, while still eliciting a massive amount of gossip and vitriol "under the hood."

An introverted HN programmer, working from home and staying out of the way, may only ever notice the good. But if you really want to be "part of" a community like this - as in, having real friends there - you will see a different side of things.

> Also, my people will sometimes act nice to you even if they hate you. If you're here a while you will learn to recognize it.

"Bless your heart"

Imagine if a racist republican texan moved into your neighbourhood because his choices of policies resulted in the decline of his neighbourhood. And he keeps voting for those same policies. Wouldn't you be reserved or even hostile to that person?

In my experience, the south is caricaturized and somewhat overblown, both the good parts and the bad parts.

You fool! I'm moved to Cola from Seattle three years ago and absolutely love it. I see more and more people moving to South Carolina every day. We need to shut the door behind us before too many people come here!

In Seattle there was an attitude called K.B.O. which stands for Keep the Bastards Out. It mostly means when talking to outsiders, you should complain about the rain so they don't get any ideas about moving there.

We need to develop a KBO for the Carolinas. Greenville has an absolutely disgusting downtown, with an ugly gross river going through it and a rickety pedestrian bridge that is bound to kill someone. The tech industry is absolutely drying up and I'm getting ready to become a hog farmer.

Big /s

What you describe is a perfect literal match for my town (Farmville, VA) up to your ask for a "mid-sized town". We're a town of 8000, half of which are the university students. I like it a lot (and you might well consider it, email me if you like) but it's not at all what I'd consider "mid-sized", and I'm not sure you'll get all the other stuff you describe if you aim for "mid-sized".

But yes, right on, 20 or so shops, walkable downtown with houses an easy walk away, a few good restaurants (including a great diner! :) and at least two friendly bars. Good internet connection if you're in town. I don't get in my car for weeks at a time---and that's probably your hardest item, because anywhere between "pretty small town" and "sizeable city with good public transit" living without a car (in the US) is going to be very very difficult. (Even in a place like Farmville, you don't need the car around town but you'll need it to get out of town.)

ETA: I see from your profile you're in DC now. Come visit! We're only 3 hours away ;)

I can confirm that Farmville is great. It has a walkable downtown with cute shops and restaurants. Both my husband and I work as remote programmers 20 minutes outside of town on a 40 acre farm with fiber.

Make an excel spreadsheet, list the things you want in a town. Then start researching towns and list whether they have those things, point by point.

One thing I would suggest is that if you're moving, bear in mind that climate change is making some previously pleasant places much more unpleasant. Look at recent years of fire data, flood data, air quality from smoke, drought, heat, etc.

And finally, make sure the place you're moving to is going to have ample, clean fresh water, and no other environmental problems looming. Don't move to Vegas. Don't move to Salt Lake City. Don't move anywhere that is going to lose power if Lake Mead or Lake Powell dry up.

You can search EWG for your prospective towns. Be aware that many, many towns in the US have way higher PFAS / PFOA / etc. than you probably want. Many have very high levels of other contaminants as well. Some whole-house filters can filter that out but they're expensive.

Here's the EWG report for a sample California town: https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=CA0110009

Search "town name + superfund". Search "town name" + "pollution". Search "town name" + {various natural disasters}. Search "town name" + "smoke". Search "town name" + "smell". Search "town name" + "water."

Go visit everywhere that's on your short list. Ask people about the town.

Good luck!

> this mid-sized town dream exists

Of course, but you should figure out what specifically you're looking for beyond what you've described.

Do you care about tax implications? Are you planning to rent or own a home? Do you have friends or family in any of these areas?

If you haven't traveled much I'd recommend doing it.

This is the most accurate map breaking down regions in the United States in my opinion: https://i.redd.it/q79o3qo8zz991.png

Just for reference, here is a 'cleaner' version that most people like: https://i.redd.it/y4pxyq5eslh51.png

> ... and/or how we’d go about finding it

Others in this thread have some good search ideas but personally I'd start at the top and narrow it down from there.

If you go to https://www.naco.org/ and click on `county explorer` you can filter the map on a county level across a bunch of different dimensions.

I'd definitely limit your choice to places with high internet speeds, good education, growing population, high scoring infrastructure, etc.

Just keep pruning down until you find a few you think you'd like.

> ideas for cities

I could list dozens but maybe check out: Beaver, PA; Mason, MI; Wilson, NC; College Station, TX; Macomb, IL

Assuming your wife is willing to drive some then: Longview, WA; Castle Dale, UT; Wisconsin Rapids, WI;

As someone who grew up near Macomb I’m not sure how close it comes to being desirable. Quincy is a much nicer place and still has huge issues that doesn’t make it stick out as a top choice if you can move anywhere in the country.

“Clarify your requirements” is really good advice here.

How much do you care about: - climate - schools - transportation - proximity to a big city - red state / blue state / purple state - time zone Etc etc etc.

Be more specific in thinking about the details of what you want, along as many dimensions as possible.

One note on small towns: most of the people there aren't transplants, so you get their culture with them. American cities have a reasonably standardized culture, courtesy of hundreds of daily direct flights to each other. Small towns are still highly regional. Not saying there's no difference between Seattle and Miami. But most people on HN could find a social group in both.

Not so for Muleshoe, Texas.

If you're from the east coast, you might find the perfect physical scene in Oregon. But be prepared that west coasters are different from you, potentially in important ways that affect your ability to find a sense of belonging. Ditto if you're from California and looking at Georgia. Northerners and southerners, of course, look sideways at each other for lots of political and cultural reasons, but there are plenty of reasons to feel like you do or don't belong in a culture that aren't historically, culturally, or racially charged.

Most functioning communities consider themselves to have "good schools." Do you share their bar for that? "Good" for what?

Important questions. Climate isn't he only thing that varies by region. If you don't know the regional culture in an area that interests you, go stay a while.

(I've lived in the Pacific Northwest, both urban and rural California, both urban and rural Texas, Chicago, and New England, and spent substantial time in NYC and the Deep South. Trust me. It's not all the same.)

> But be prepared that west coasters are different from you, potentially in important ways that affect your ability to find a sense of belonging.

Can you elaborate on this point?

Values - status is built on the east coast by affiliation—to family, to schools and universities, to political groups, to elite employers. Status is built on the west coast in an anti-establishment way, mostly prizing creativity and individualism. (Though, the lefties of them would consider that a dirty word. If you call them "indie" it's a compliment, though.) That applies to lots of art and music, but I suspect the whole hacker ethos of the Internet and "10x engineer" tropes are related.

Dress and Appearance - follows suit. The west coast has very little sense of "dressing for the occasion." Things like neck tattoos and large earrings are more common. I've been to things like polo matches and crew races on the east coast. Showing those pictures to friends in the west sometimes prompts outright laughter. They can't be _serious_, can they?

Conversation - east coasters name drop constantly. Especially rich ones, who feel they have lots of names to drop. But all of them, really. West coasters are more inclined to discuss land and the environment at length. (Politically, sure. But mostly just... experientially.) Lots of outdoor hobbies, yes. But more than that, too. My wife has a running joke that every time she encounters my family in a new place, at least one conversation ensues about which way is North, and how we know. She can't really play, doesn't see a reason to figure it out, and presumes that naturally all civilized places have their roads on a grid anyway. (Chicago native.)

This is, of course, an exercise in stereotyping. There are exceptions everywhere. But culture is also real and self-reinforcing, so the exceptions are just that—exceptions, not fully-baked countercultures, especially in small towns. There's a sliver of New York in San Francisco. But there isn't a sliver of New York in Bakersfield, just a few random guys wondering why they can't, for the life of them, get a decent bagel.

I totally disagree on your assessment of East coast culture, unless you are only spending time in basically wealthy, old money, blue blood type places. Which considering you mention polo and rowing, that is probably the case. The working class parts and middle class people in the East Coast don't name drop, and believe in more of having made it themselves.

Yes, there's inherently some stereotyping here. Any proposed detail will be subjective and find counter-examples. But for anybody who has crossed these lines, the core point is pretty undeniable: regional cultures are distinctive. Not everyone will feel like they belong in all of them. The differences matter.

I also don't mean to say there's some rank list of better and worse cultures. I've definitely been places I wouldn't want to go back to (howdy, west Texas) but that's subjective, to a point at least.

Totally fair about the selection for east coast blue bloods, though. Here's my subjectivity: I left my home in Idaho at age 15 and went to one of New England's oldest boarding schools. (and I've been hopscotching these regional lines ever since.) I've spent other time on the east coast, too, but that definitely formed my early notions of it.

> most of the people there aren't transplants

While I don't entirely disagree, and this is just my observations, if you pick the neighborhood/town with the best schools within the larger metro area, you tend to get a decent amount of transplants living there. It is the average/below average towns that have the people who have always lived there.

Travel. Just book yourself for two month long stays at a bunch of places and see what you like. I tried that but sucked at it and eneded up staying in the first place I did a stint at... but to be fair there are worse places than Colorado's west slope, especially if you bike and climb and ski.

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.

> but to be fair there are worse places than Colorado's west slope, especially if you bike and climb and ski.

Where exactly did you end up?

If you’re pretty good with QGIS and willing to spend a couple hundred USD for some data sources I bet it wouldn’t be too tough to go and find a bunch of data (a lot of which is already mostly publicly available) to find a suitable location that meets your criteria.

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

Yes. The way my wife and I found ours was that on vacation we'd just drive to somewhere we hadn't been, stopping in small towns along the way. When we found a town we liked, we'd get a hotel room or B&B and wander around and explore the town.

Ended up buying a house in one of those towns that we had passed through on vacation. Within walking distance of everything we need. It's much cheaper than the big city, or even a suburb near a big city.

Generally think college towns around land grant universities are a very underrated option. Outside the immediate area around the campus core they tend to be cheap because of an abundance of land. These towns tend to be very educated and cosmopolitan, with maybe not a ton of cultural options but certainly a few high quality ones.

+1. I currently live in a college town like you describe (land grant public university, surrounded by farmland). The “downtown” is vibrant. The university draws a lot of international students so cuisine and culture are diverse. Housing is cheap.

What is the town?

How do you find these?

I don't know about the culture for this in the US but I live far from any actual shop in the swiss Alps and there are many fridges around that sell all the necessaries for everyday life (milk, cheese, ..). Everything else I order from a farmer shop/supermarket online.

There are restaurants and bars sure, I would ask myself if you actually need 'shopping'

Personally I highly prefer to buy only HQ products which I can look into from my couch other than buying whatever the store has in stock.

I think this is culturally very different in the US, and now I'm curious about your non-urban swiss life. Would you mind elaborating on what you mean by "there are many fridges around that sell..."? I'm having a hard time imagining what you mean.

Literally fridges next to a farming house with a QR code to pay (or cash) that sell some local cheese, milk and usually also some stuff related to the fridge owner. Also cold drinks and ice cream. Most my neighbors are small farmers and there are plenty of wandering tourists around so it makes sense I guess.

From what I know similar concepts are getting more usual in surrounding countries as well. It's honestly my favourite way to shop, I just take my pony mofa and drive to 2-3 fridges.

I spent a month driving around the country last year. Be warned that entire counties have been decimated by meth and fentanyl. Low income doesn't always translate to violent crime and theft, but meth absolutely does. When looking at crime maps, always filter by overdose response and not posession arrests. https://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/meth-lab-map/ Absolutely stay away from Tulsa, OK. Greenville, SC is very nice though.

Yeah, as much as small towns are treated as some panacea to the problem of large cities, in last small town I lived in, half the people I know were selling coke or heroin on top of working shitty minimum wage jobs.

The entire town felt propped up by the existence of a single military base.

I've read in multiple places how most meth in the USA today is Mexican cartel meth. The bans on pseudoephedrine have succeeded in stopping home-brew meth.

So not sure how valid that map is anymore.

Based on my "anecdata" of driving through many of those areas, I would say the problem is much worse than the map shows. Also, it is one of the few maps that showed meth activity by county, in a national context. Recent DEA and CDC reports are all PDFs filled with statistics and not mapped out as well. But, the numbers are only climbing and these areas are still centers of the consumption.

Take a look at the great main street awards: https://www.mainstreet.org/mainstreetamerica/mainstreetaward...

I'm currently living in Carson City, it has some walkable (older) areas of town but not great. You could try Walla Walla, WA or Baker City, OR.

My method sure hasn't worked very well... or has it? I was looking for cheap warehouse space to start a business in, and did a nation-wide search for the largest, cheapest building in the entire continental US.

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.

Promote yourself and your town. I'm looking for a new home in the same way as the OP, and my best hope is that a few dozen like-minded nerds will gentrify a small town, because they have been so undercut by cities of late.

> a few dozen like-minded nerds will gentrify a small town

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.)

You don't. Gentrifying a place pretty inherently means removing at least some of the people who live there. Why would the people of a small town go for that? Unless you're planning on subsidising the existing residents' lives forever as rent goes up.

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.

> Gentrifying a place pretty inherently means removing at least some of the people who live there.

Not necessarily. You could buy a house that's empty.

And when the rent for the neighbour gets raised double because you started attracting people willing to pay double to move there...?

> attracting people willing to pay double to move there

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."

I don't know if you've ever lived in a place like Pine Bluff, but most people own. It's 52% in the city[0] and I imagine quite a bit higher (70-80% wouldn't surprise me) in the more rural areas. And keep in mind the way these statistics are calculated, all the vacant buildings count as part of that 48%, so the number of renters is likely ~1/3 or less the number of owners.

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

> Why would the people of a small town go for that?

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?

Yeah but the ones who remain are (voluntarily or involuntarily) the most committed.

Lol, what? Here is how gentrification works:

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.

Ehh. Being kicked out of your home is being removed, even if it's perfectly legal. Fixed-term rental contracts are nearly entirely immoral imo.

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 it's an interesting moral question: How much are you responsible for someone else's failure to plan ahead or foresee consequences? What are the consequences if we make you responsible for other people for their entire life just because you have some economic interaction with them?

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.

If we come at this from a perspective of "people deserve to have a home where they are safe", rather than from an economic perspective, the moral question is why on earth we decided to allow and protect private landlords who have an interest in exactly the opposite.

I completely agree with you that allowing private landlords is against our collective interests as a society. I think there would be details to work out but I would be very interested to see a city or state ban the renting of housing as an experiment.

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.

Give them money.

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.

Why do you think they won't take your money and still hate you out of town? That's what I have seen.

Where have you seen that?

Rural Vermont. The story is worthy of a screenplay.

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".

giving the town tax money isn't going to do it. you need to make the people in the town richer, and most of the people aren't going to see a dollar of that tax money. at least, not directly or in the short term.

The family in this situation had business plans that would have done just that, (B&B and a wedding venue), in a town of 300 where there is only a restaurant (catering) and a general store (everything else). The family sourced and bought everything not just locally, but from the town and surrounding farms (all dairy, meat, and produce)

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'.

I mean, simplest way would be to build a plant that creates hundreds of well-paying jobs. Companies do this all the time.

I’m sure you didn’t intend it this way, but this comment comes across as incredibly arrogant and unfeeling.

Was going to say something similar.

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.

By “the culture” are you referring to the high murder rate?

As someone from a small town in a rural area, can you expand on what values you have in mind? What I saw was grinding poverty, bad schools, bottom tier education, and rampant drug abuse.

Coincidentally the novel/film Winter’s Bone author portrayed this area, north Arkansas and southern Missouri.

The excellent serial podcast S*Town did a great job too, on exploring these themes.

https://stownpodcast.org/

I grew up in a small town, too. Some are better than others. There doesn't seem to be any redeeming quality to Pine Bluff.

To you (and others), but not to everyone.

>a few dozen like-minded nerds will gentrify a small town

Sounds like a sure plan to get your tires slashed, if not your head bashed.

A few months ago my wife and I drove through Arkansas and saw a road side billboard for a white pride website and radio program (“Don’t be ashamed of your race”).

Hard pass no matter what the price.

This feels like a bait, since Pine Bluff is almost 80% black.

https://ibb.co/tPbXWhB

Taken on I62 on the drive into Harrison.

I believe you about the billboard, but man, that is the blurriest picture and I can't make out a single word on that sign.

I zoomed in because the wider shot has my wife in it. The web site is legible.

It says "It's not racist to <3 people" and the website is WhitePrideRadio.com

US 62, but I was going to guess Harrison, from the YouTube videos outside the local Walmart of people yelling at BLM protesters “Don’t our lives matter too?”

It also probably doesn’t help their case that the second photo that comes up on Apple Maps when you search the town is a billboard “Anti-Racist is Anti-White”

Not doubting that you saw a sign like that in the state, but what do racists in the Ozarks have to have to do with parent's business problems. Pretty bait-y.

Wow you’re really obtuse aren’t you. This is a comment more about the OP asking for prod/cons of small towns and me commenting on that. If you don’t have a problem with this kind of thing, by all means move there.

I think most places aren't one of the highest crime cities in the country? I don't think the mistake you made was moving from cities, it was moving to one of the worst towns in the country. Pine Bluff is the #4 highest crime area in the entire country!! https://247wallst.com/city/pine-bluff-ar-is-among-the-most-d...

Nicknames I heard were “Pine Box” or “Crime Bluff” (from a native who proceeded to stiff me of $150 so I should have known better than dealing with him to begin with)

Definitely an AR native but he might have been from the Ozarks rather than PB now that I think of it.

What were you expecting? Did you think about why that warehouse in that location was being sold for so little?

I would expect big money coming into a small town to face serious static from local authorities unless and until you're cozied up to its political scene.

Nobody saying or reading this sees this as a problem?

Governments are just mafias with better PR.

Sure it's a problem, but it's very real. I have experienced an inverse correlation of town size vs. corruption: in my experience, the smaller the town, the more off-the-charts the corruption. YMMV.

I can think of many exceptions to this both on large and small "towns" and depending on what is meant by corruption. E.g., NYC is very large but not exactly friendly to business nor easy to navigate unless you have lots of money to spread around to "permit expeditors"" and oddly interested neighborhood groups and of course lots of lawyers and even then it's a roll of the dice on whether you'll be allowed to operate in an economically viable manner.

This individual claims to have swooped into town and bought SEVENTY-SIX properties with no documented experience doing this sort of thing.

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.

Start hiring people to work for your business and a lot of problems go away. If you are spreading the wealth around, the politicians are more likely to listen.

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.

The town has asked him for plans on how he will be using the building so they can apply the applicable building code. He's refused, citing the cost ($10k by his estimate) but he's since gone and bought 75 properties in town.

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.

Just skimming the Wikipedia page for that place shows red flags all over the place. The population has been sharply declining since 1970 and the homicide rate is 56 per 100,000 vs the national average of 6.5.

Clearly something is very wrong with the local government and population.

It's called poverty. Welcome to rural America. Went down the shitter when industry left and the rest of the country ignored it for decades, so now we have MAGA, drugs and crime, and a whole lotta cheap land.

“The rest of the country ignored it”

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.

Local residents do feel that way. They have no money, no education, no job prospects, and don't feel they get respect. The fact that their cultural values are also at odds with the "haves" (in their view) further cements the view. But in a very real policy and economic sense, they literally were abandoned when industry left. Wall Street and Tech zoomed on while their factories and mines closed with no recourse to be able to recover from the economic vacuum.

Is there not a college there, UAPB? How is it helping them?

How are they gonna go to college? Nobody in their family went. Their friends didn't go. They have family they need to stay home and take care of (no child care, elderly care, limited food assistance) and work for, in whatever way that means. Even if they went, it's not like every millennial with a degree gets a job, even with record low unemployment. Transportation is also problematic, just to get to a school, or a job. Rap sheets keep people from applying or being accepted. There's usually no jobs program to help older people transition from obsolete industries.

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.

they keep them right next to the bootstraps.

They don't get respect because they have a shitty attitude. No one owes you respect

>distrustful of central government

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.

Plenty of poor towns without such homicide rates and robbery. You are taking the agency out of the hands of the people committing the crimes and handing it to the circumstances.

Homicides and crime still occur, they're just not well-documented. There has to be someone collecting that data and then reporting it. That costs money, so many places just don't.

The absence of data != no activity.

Very true. Lots of police departments do their best to avoid reports, which keeps crime rates lower.

The poorest towns in America don’t have the highest crime and the richest towns don’t have the lowest. Attributing violent crime to poverty alone does a disservice to the people living in places with violent crime.

> 2020 census Pine Bluff racial composition[56]

> 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...

One homicide in a town of 1,800 people would give you a homicide rate of 56 per 100,000. I wouldn’t read into that statistic too much.

My thought as well. A homicide happened in this town, is all that statistic shows.

Pine Bluff's population is much larger than 1,800. I'll just quote the full Wikipedia excerpt:

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.

This is easily in the top 5 funniest posts I’ve ever read on the internet in my decades online.

Have you considered selling?

Wow, Pine Bluff is quite a place to move to out the blue. Still, there's good interstate access and a local state U. Curious why the city is so reluctant to support new businesses.

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.

>Curious why the city is so reluctant to support new businesses.

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.

> 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.

It looks like he wants to but the city won't let him. e.g. https://twitter.com/pontifier/status/1534754382885052417

This is a process problem. The correct order to do things is: pull permit to fix plumbing, that permit will allow you to connect to the city water for testing purposes once you've proven the system will hold pressure (initial inspection), then when you're connected to the water an additional inspection will be done to verify working plumbing, if thats the only outstanding issue you can apply for a certificate of occupancy, otherwise you move onto other work.

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.

The city will not issue the permits to do the work. FULL STOP.

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?

Whats the justification for not issuing plumbing repair permits? Or is it an issue of getting it inspected?

Lawyer up, and get some private security preferably armed with tasers at a minimum.

You got a great bargain, now these expenses are the price of doing business.

Lawsuit has already been filed.

I know a lot of businesses that just put up brown paper and do the construction in secret because local governments are such a PITA.

Im not offering advice... but I see this often.

According to the city website, there is a vacancy in the planning commission. Apply for it, you'll probably have a lot more success getting the permits you need if they see an official making the requests.

It took me about 4 minutes to find out that he was robbed for the ~15th time, called the police, and held the criminal at gunpoint for less than ten minutes until the police arrived. Quite a bit different than "holding somebody at gunpoint in apparent frustration," and with how quickly I found out what actually happened I can only assume you're intentionally misrepresenting the facts.

>It took me about 4 minutes to find out that he was robbed for the ~15th time,

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

I'm happy to verify anything. It's easy to type my last name "Fenley" into the county website at:

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.

You have me at fusion reactor.

Stranger than fiction

Seriously, what a ride this thread has been.

>I ended up buying about 75 more properties here

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.

Judging by the content on his Twitter account he seems legitimate

So now he has to buy/build a police station, fire brigade etc for his own little town of 75 properties he created.

Just put the police and fire stations inside a little square of industrial or commercial buildings.

And build one unit of transit next to them, it doesn't matter if the road or rail is connected.

Isn't the bargain hunting mentality what got him to buy so many properties?

Perhaps there’s some logic in thinking that once your stake is big enough the local politicians will start cooperating with you … ?

(Clay Davis has entered the chat)

I bought the warehouse before I really had the money to do it. I was scraping by on ramen for a while.

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.

Pine Bluff's population has declined by 50% over the last few decades, presumably the reason they were so cheap is that there's a huge supply surplus? And given the murder rate is 10x the national average I don't see demand for property increasing. In short, run for the hills!

That place needs to rename into Pine Hoax

130k at tax auction for double digit # of properties, what's the annual property tax for all that?

About $8k per year. Most were bought for just back taxes, so I basically paid 5 years taxes on them. A couple of them were bid up, so the taxes are less than 1/5 what I paid.

Ah I see that is pretty cool then. Wish you the best in your ventures there.

You bought the other ones because they're cheap... but what is the actual gain you expect to get from those properties? $130K is still money, is there a plan to recoup that investment or was this a FOMO purchase?

Do you share a username between HN and Twitter? Because somebody with your username on Twitter has been publicly talking about holding somebody at gunpoint in Pine Bluff, Arkansas earlier today(1), and has in the past advertised (2) a website with the tagline of “Matching vigilantes with victims for justice and profit “ (3)

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

The photo on his Twitter account has one of the websites listed in his HN profile (Crossies) in the background, so I'm assuming that's him.

You make him sound like some sort of violent vigilante kidnapper. Held an intruder at gunpoint after calling police.

Honestly looking into his issues, seems like he's getting dealt some bad cards after investing into a city that is letting him down.

Honestly, it looks like he isn't going about trying to work with the city very well. He also has videos on there of him lecturing public officials about how slow they are.

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.

Yeah seems like it's all over the place, but certainly doesn't seem like the city is doing its job when there are multiple break-ins in short period of time of 1 property.

The "benforbars" site has all the hallmarks of a free-energy nutjob complete with comic sans font and MSpaint images.

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.

I went through 6 months of his tweets and, yeah, he either doesn't have a grip on reality, has some sort of mental health issue, or is just constantly trying to run some angle.

- 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's very interesting to see how the things I've put out there are interpreted.

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.

You still don’t see it?! Stop with the defensive attitude and just listen. There is value in listening to what is going on around you. Put your ego aside and realize that at least some of what is occurring is not just someone else’s fault.

FWIW you don't seem that unhinged to me. Best of luck in that town.

I don't think you're being particularly charitable in this thread - at the very least you're misrepresenting what he's said publicly.

How can I run a serious business if I can't use the warehouse I bought?

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?

I don't know much about this town, but I will say that your approach of yelling at people won't work. It rarely does. My suggestion is that you at least act like you care about their concerns. Go to their meetings. Even a few that are unrelated to your building permits. When their offices are open, go to ask them what they need to hear from you. Be nice. Ask people what they want. Make them feel comfortable. Be prepared to say "sorry" a lot.

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 the best advice and perspective I've seen in this thread.

He made this site... he's offering people $100 per month per person they get sent to jail as long as they remain in jail http://bensforbars.com/

...

So? That's just encouraging people to assist the police when they can, which is what responsible people should be doing anyway. If you don't like criminals going to jail, that's a separate issue entirely.

Yeah, that's me.

You are not having a good time there are you? This is how people turn into Batman.

This is so offensive to Batman.

How does the vigilante business make a profit?

Genuinely curious why you're intentionally misframing things this way. Is it political? Or you just don't like this guy for some reason? He's been robbed (from what I can see a dozen or more times), and in one instance called the police and held the criminal there until they arrived a few minutes later. Everything completely legal, above board, etc.

This is a perfect example of someone telling the truth in such a way to completely mischaracterize what really happened.

Private bounty hunter businesses are harmful to society.

If they are, then they should be illegal. If they are illegal, and this qualifies, then this guy should be punished.

None of this negates anything I said previously.

Our society is not perfect. A large number of antisocial things are legal. It is completely reasonable to criticize somebody for doing a thing that is both legal and also antisocial.

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.

I think it's important to keep the specifics in mind as these things live and die on the specific details.

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.

I'm not talking about him protecting his property. I'm talking about the bensforbars thing. Paying people to track down specific criminals is very different than protecting ones property in the moment.

> Paying people to track down specific criminals is very different than protecting ones property in the moment.

What is the alternative? Paying people to track down criminals is how law enforcement works almost everywhere.

There is a major difference between a state organization with shared ownership and management through democratic processes and private business. The police have enough problems as an institution. Private vigilantes are going to be worse.

There is a major difference between an organization with shared ownership and management through democratic processes and an institution several decision-makers removed from that. It is not clear that private investigators without privileges of monopoly on violence should be worse.

It's not illegal, therefore it's not a bad thing. And since it's not a bad thing, its not illegal.

did i get that right

People who rob businesses are harmful to society. Fixed that for you.

It is also true that people who rob businesses are harmful to society. That is completely independent of the terrible outcomes caused by private vigilanteism.

vigilanteism implies he hunted him down. the trespasser came to his property.

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?

I'm not talking about him protecting his property. I'm talking about the bensforbars thing.

I see, but I don't find a problem with that either though.

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".

This is why I stopped commenting here. HN commenters have schizophrenia it seems like.

On the contrary, their lack is what's harmful to society.

How could anyone asking questions about somebodythat bought a town be framed as being anything but political?

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.

Can you please be more clear with what you're trying to say then?

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 asked if the OP was the same person that was posting on Twitter, as what was posted there was a different tone from what was posted on HN. He answered in the affirmative.

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 :)

You seem far more obnoxious than the person you seem to be publicly drumming up hate for :)

Did you feel hatred for him after reading my post? That was not my intention. As I’ve stated, I was looking for clarity about posts with pretty different tones.

I invite you to not read questions directed at people other than you if you find them to be obnoxious.

> Did you feel hatred for him after reading my post?

No, why would I?

I don’t know either, that’s why I asked. If I were drumming up hate maybe you would’ve experienced it.

No, your attempt failed.

I am glad that we’ve agreed that I did not drum up any hate. Thank you for clarifying this.

I’ll bite - I only care because I think it’s important for others to see what your intentions are here. Now that I’ve answered your question, can you answer mine? :) If I wanted to, I’m sure I could Google some of your online identities and find a post your made in the past and then asked in a public forum if you’re the same person. I wouldn’t do that because I think it’s a bit creepy and impolite, but if I had a very specific reason for doing so, I might consider it. So I’ll ask again - what was your intention in connecting his identities here in such a direct way? You said something about “bought a town” and it being “political”, can you expand on what that means?

I actually misunderstood the wording, I’m now aware that he only bought 17 acres + 75 more properties in the area.

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.

I think I should TM Smooth-BrainGenius and sell it to anyone on twitter I can muster a nickle out of.

> I only care because I think it’s important for others to see what your intentions are here.

Always a losing strategy in my experience.

TBF, there was an SWE on here a few years back and asked a sob story about how he cant find work and needs help, and a bunch of us pored over his request and posts, and it was only after I (and other) did basic DD - we found he was a convicted child sex offender.

:-(

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 :-))

Out of curiosity, what did you use to conduct a nationwide search where you can set price / sf parameters?

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.

It was just a search on loopnet.com. You can do a map search and "remove the boundary" then zoom out.

Pivot to a new twist on escape rooms. Instead of escaping from the warehouse, you have to defend it for one night. A lot of fun, except it's all real.

You just described the life of a a security guard.

Someone should make a documentary about you. Just your Deuterium Deuterium Periodically Returning Orbit Fusion reactor is interesting enough (http://www.ddprofusion.com/), but doing it in Pine Bluff? I'm sold.

If anyone is interested in this, I'm open too the idea. I tried to have a videographer at the auction where I bought all the property, but they didn't show up.

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.

Maybe the cheapest place you can find is that way for a reason? "You get what you pay for" isn't an ironclad law, but it's still a decent hint.

"You don't get what you don't pay for" is an even stronger hint.

Wow what a story so far, I would document more and try and get some media attention to help you.

Or go a level above local government and get some bigger guns?

Congrats on doubling down on a bad decision. I'd suggest to list em all for sale, happily accept 60% of listed price and pray that the buyer doesnt bump into this discussion.

You should find out who is doing security for that brand new huge casino there and hire them...

This January 2021 article provided some useful context: https://captimes.com/news/local/neighborhoods/john-fenley-sh...

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.”

Oh shit it's that guy! I remember reading this story at the time.

Sounds like you thought something was too good to be true, and then found out that it was too good to be true. And then you doubled-down, and now have a bunch of illiquid assets.

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.

After searching for, and looking at many of these types of properties in the last few years this is the conclusion I've come to. There is no free lunch.

There have to be places in Utah with similar property costs/opportunities.

Hey I also took a big chance about a decade ago buying a package of nine buildings that no one wanted. They were fully occupied, no leases, as-is where-is, no FHA, poorest zip code in the state, democrat city. I had boots on the ground on day 1 and it felt hopeless at times. From people setting up lawn chairs in front of the houses to deal drugs, to packs of homeless loitering on the front stoops, to getting fined by the city for things out of my control, etc. I managed to exit 2/3 of the properties by seller financing to the tenants I learned were cash rich, credit poor. Also the values eventually shot up because another investor started renovating the abandoned mill buildings into loft apartments.

I'm not in the US, but last weekend we had a family gathering and were discussing buying a place in a small village a bit further out from all the city action. On paper it checks out: prices are low, the scenery is beyond fantastic, quiet and you can still drive up to a city or some local town fairly easily. But then we started talking negatives: unemployment, poverty, higher crime rates than you'd like it to be,etc. Unless the place is populated by people of similar socioeconomic status, it's likely to be a tough going from day one.

Sorry, but it seems painfully obvious what you were getting yourself into.

> Pine Bluff, Arkansas

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

I want in a linear accelerator way to see what happens if pontifer and Alan of HeavyDSparks [1] all got together and rebuilt Alan’s hacker fortress together. Maybe include Andrew Camarata [2] to increase the chances to Get Things Done.

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

I'm totally open to collaborations. One of the properties I bought at the tax auction is 27 acres with a bunch of tall trees on it. I was thinking about inviting people who weave space webs to come down and build something amazing.

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

Oh yeah, forgot to mention... It was just a search loopnet.com for buildings over 65,000 sqft sorted by price. You can do a map search, then "remove boundary" and zoom out to see everything nation-wide that matches your search.

When you say "a little downtown area" and "homes you want", what exactly would you specify as being the minimum to satisfy these? I ask, because at least one place I know of exists to some definition of having a downtown, with homes in the $200k-400k range.

Because if you really just want a home, a supermarket, a few local restaurants, a bar, a few shops, and an airport within an hour drive, some New Jersey areas come to mind.

But these aren't likely to be dream towns. They will have flaws. Almost certainly will has less walkability than any city you may live in, unless you live on, and never leave, the main strip. There will be less variety in foods, the bar culture you imagine may not be the bar culture that is actually there.

Corvallis OR.

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.

It's got a lot to say for it, and it's not too cold, but that gray weather can be a real downer. Source: grew up in Eugene. I would visit in November or March and see how it goes.

Ashland is a bit sunnier. Southern Oregon university, Shakespeare festival, cute downtown. Oregon is progressive libertarian.

Ashland has dramatically beautiful surroundings and an active arts scene, but it's a long drive from major urban areas and the "university" is a very, very minor outpost of higher education.

It's not super clear what OP wants, but Ashland offers a ton more than just a 'small town with a few stores'. The problem is the cost of housing, and that some years that whole valley fills up with smoke.

Did my engineering undergrad in Corvallis at Oregon State. Lots of good speakers and events free to the public put on by the school.

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.

If I wanted a small town with the facilities of a good university, Corvallis would be my first choice in Oregon. Eugene has I think not aged as well over the past 30 years and the central area has experienced rising property crime and homelessness. If you don't care about a university, the eastern part of the state has sunnier weather.

Corvallis has been able to keep its population and sprawl very much under control. When I first came here in the early 80's the population was in the low 40k range. It's now just hitting 60k. Green space helps control growth, but admittedly it's pushed a lot to the other nearby communities.

> the eastern part of [Oregon] has sunnier weather

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/ .

I just saw an interactive tool for this recently: https://www.movemap.io/explore/us

If you're looking for an incentive program, here's a place to start looking....

https://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.

> I don’t drive but like to walk to the supermarket and restaurants.

This doesn't seem like most small towns would work. Cars become required outside cities in my experience, and small towns mean lots of long drives for basic things.

I think you over estimate the size of most small towns.

Pretty much everything from residentials to main street is 1 mile away.

I can walk across my entire town in 30 minutes, almost fully on sidewalks, the few streets with no side walks have no traffic.

Usually there's one main road through town and it doesn't go far, neighborhoods are on each side.

Personally I've found small towns much more walkable than cities contrary to HN anecdotes.

The problem I'm thinking of is that a town that small is probably missing lots of things many people consider important, so they'd have to drive to a neighbouring town. My sister lives in such a place, and does more driving than I could stand.

Wrong again. We have a Walmart Super Center, ER, quite a few good restaurants, and many other things.

The city with more stuff is 20 minutes away, less time then you'll sit in traffic in the city going a few miles to the same thing.

So less time commuting than in the city and I prefer the privacy of driving over public transportation. I hate people, especially crowds.

> less time then you'll sit in traffic in the city going a few miles to the same thing

Most people aren't going to drive for just a few miles though, surely. I'd just cycle or take one of the busses that arrive every 6 minutes. Although this is purely hypothetical, because I already have access to everything I need within walking distance.

It's a bad faith argument. You've claimed that it takes much longer to get somewhere, but only when you take the inefficient route. Ok sure, you have some special needs that means you must take the car, but this is not a problem you can claim most people would face.

Judging from all the traffic inside cities and my experiences, most people do idle for awhile in traffic just to go a few miles.

The bikes are the minority vs cars sitting in the roads and all the full streets / lots, but the bike riders are generally the worst offenders on the street.

Most city public transportation is sub-par quality and safety wise. I don't mind public transportation in some countries to an extent, but not in US cities.

The bus is super slow with all the stops and you can't exactly load it up with stuff, bikes are inconvenient because I'm most likely getting groceries for the next two weeks, or it's raining, etc.

You don't have to have special needs for a bike to be impractical a lot of the time.

Anyways, your idea of small towns is quite off and generalizing, we'll leave it at that.

> your idea of small towns is quite off

My idea of small towns is based on well designed towns in central Europe. Almost everything you talk about here are problems from poorly planned suburbs, and have nothing to do with actual towns/cities.

> bikes are inconvenient because I'm most likely getting groceries for the next two weeks, or it's raining

If you can't realistically walk to a supermarket to buy groceries and carry them home, then your town is not a functional town. A lightweight rain jacket is very cheap.

> The bus is super slow with all the stops

The bus is faster in busy traffic, because the bus has dedicated lanes and routes that are not legal for cars to drive in. There are no personal cars allowed in our town center, you need to drive around the outside and find parking which is always less convenient than the bus.

> Most city public transportation is sub-par quality and safety wise.

Again, this sounds like a massive failing of infrastructure. I find busses are clean, cheap, and as safe as walking down the street.

I have a car, I understand they are sometimes necessary and that there are things which unfortunately are not possible without them right now. But for making short distance journeys on a day to day basis in your own town or city? That just shouldn't ever make sense.

Your input isn't really helpful because, e.g. "getting groceries for 2 weeks" is not something that somebody who doesn't drive can do. Your experience of your small town (which I'm sure is pretty great with a car), isn't applicable for somebody who doesn't drive.

Sure if you didn't have a car, you'd get less groceries at a time, I don't disagree.

That was one example where it would be less practical than a car, cat litter or anything heavy is not practical for a bike either. Rain or other bad weather, etc.

Either way none of this has anything to do with the small town / city comparison, either can be navigated by bikes.

Towns may even be easier to navigate by bike because there's generally one main road, a bunch of residential, and many less cars.

A number of states are offering grants for remote workers to relocate, offers vary but generally you can get monthly installments of around $1k paid out over one or two years. You have to apply and be accepted, be verifiably employed full time, 100% remote, and if you leave within the first couple years you either lose out on the balance of the grant or you might need to pay a portion back.

The programs are generally designed to bring people into rural areas, you need to pay close attention to make sure there is sufficient internet for you to work remotely. Places like Frontier top out at 1.5mbps, a little further down the road your internet might be line of sight wireless. Then inexplicably the other side of a hill might be top of the line cable internet. You can’t really trust the web sites, they need to come out and confirm an address can be serviced at the speed you need (without you paying them $10,000+ to run cable)

Oh! Your employer might need to be registered with the state so they can submit your withholdings. You should verify with your HR department which states they can support.

Frontier may offer 1.5Mbps, but from second-hand experience their speeds are basically just made-up numbers. Had a friend working with the NC AG's office because Frontier sold him 1.5Mbps, he never saw more than 0.3Mbps, their solution was to tell him to upgrade to the 3Mbps plan (?!) and the engineer he talked to told him that the node he was on was so oversubscribed he was lucky he was getting 0.3Mbps.

Which kinda leads into my suggestion--find somewhere that has at least two options for internet if you can. Confirm by calling the companies--they can usually see if they've provided service to that address before and have access to more accurate and up-to-date information than any of the web systems. Then sign up for two connections. You won't really know for sure until you use it whether the speeds are what they're selling, whether it's reliable or is going out every time it rains, etc.

Particularly if your plan involves some sort of WISP, coverage is very location dependent and you don't really know for sure until it's installed and operational whether or not they're going to provide you service. If they show up and start setting gear up and the signal's too bad, they may just pack up and yell "sorry!" out the window as they take off down the driveway.

When I moved I had bog-slow DSL and fixed LTE installed the same day to make sure I'd have internet for work the following Monday. I had to fail over from the LTE to the DSL a few times over the next few months, but it was _generally_ reliable. Once my Starlink order came through I ran three connections for another few months and finally dropped the DSL.

Personally the dual connections is a 100% requirement for me. The internet is how I make money. Missing one day of work because I have no internet would set me back enough to pay for something like 10 months of that shitty DSL. It's not the place I'm taking risks, especially when the cost to mitigate it may be spending $10-30k to have someone run a connection out or _having to sell a house and move_.

You should definitely come to Lancaster PA!!!!

There are lots of houses downtown for less than $400K and even new "luxury" condos going up everywhere. There is a convenient train that can have you in Philly in an hour for <$20. (also goes to NY) You can be in Baltimore and DC in a few hours and you can be in the Poconos for skiing in the same time. There is the oldest continuously operating farmer's market downtown. (and tons outside the city) There is a thriving art scene (and college). There are tons of ethnic restaurants (there are a lot of relief and refugee orgs). You can be at the beach in two or three hours (depending which one). There are tons of outlets for shopping east of town if that's your thing. There is very little traffic except for 3 specific bottlenecks that you'll learn to avoid. There is a thriving tech community with several weekly meetups that discuss new tech at a local bar.

Come live with the cool kids.

(Source: I live in Lancaster and there is no place better net net)

Which beaches are within two or three hours? Thanks.

You can get to Lewes, DE or Rehoboth Beach, DE in 2.5 hours during off hours and 3 hours in traffic .. So all the DE beaches, South Jersey beaches and Ocean City MD beach are just a bit more time .. You can also get to the Chesapeake Bay in less than two hours

Just pick any mid sized US city and pick a suburb that has a Main Street type of area and it’s not in high COL area. I would look for ones with fiber internet available. The houses should not be anywhere near $1m when you do this. Avoid high tax states like CA or NY.

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.

> Avoid high tax states like CA or NY.

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 suppose I should have clarified to include property taxes. If someone is looking for an area to move to and possibly settle, when you pay off a house you may not want $800-1000/mo in taxes on that house.

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.

This still sems mixed up. In fact Texas has among the highest property tax rates in the country, above both NY (which it beats by a little bit) and CA (which is way down in the middle of the pack).

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.

> 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)

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.

> Nonsense. The difference can easily be 10% of gross income.

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!)

> A 10% change in income is really worth an unqualified "avoid these states" recommendation

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.

"Could be a deciding factor" is something I'd agree with (though again, it's something many remote workers are paying already, lots of desirable employers are adjusting salary based on remote location now!).

What you said upthread was "Avoid high tax states like NY and CA", which is quite different advice, and I think pretty questionable.

CA (which is way down in the middle of the pack).

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.

>But the relationship isn't well correlated.

what relationship are you inferring? Some states simply have higher tax burdens than others.

Do you enjoy high taxes? It’s no different than saying “pick a state with good weather.”

IMHO, I think Hawaii would be a good place to do this. One issue with Hawaii for people used to living in other latitudes is that the sun basically sets at 6:00 PM every day, all year, so if you worked a nine to five job there you'd be getting off right before the sun went down. However, if you got up at 4:00 AM and worked in sync with people on the mainland until early afternoon, then you could get off and have a few hours of daylight to hit the beach or whatever else.

A lot of people in Hawaii work 7-3 for exactly the reasons you mention. It is generally not cheap, though, and it is very car dependent.

Every state I’ve lived in had great small towns. Most recently, I’ve been in NC and SC (finally settled in the latter). I say buy an old school road atlas, rent a car, and take a long road trip.

The town that inspired Andy Griffith’s Mayberry is in the mountains of NC (or maybe it was VA). Stuff like that is all over the place here.

As for me, I chose a small, walkable town that isn’t too far from Greenville, SC (which is itself considered to be a small, walkable town by some folks).

Curious how your experience has been so far? Where did you come from and why did you decide on this town?

Where did you end up? Simpsonville, Travelers rest?

I'd also check how the place is bound to be impacted by climate change, e.g. https://coastal.climatecentral.org/

You don't want to end up in a coastal city just to find yourself under 1m of water in a few years!

Just a heads up that your apparent definition of "few" may be a bit confusing for others.

I have a feeling that many towns in Rhode Island might fit your criteria here. The state's culture is generally about things being close to each other as any driving more than 30 min will get you out of the state anyway. Having BOS airport an hour drive away is a blessing too. It's cold in winter though. But I'd say you kinda get used to it.

But beware the parking at BOS is upwards of $34/day! Usually it's cheaper to fly out of PVD even if the tickets are a little more expensive, in my experience.

You can also get from Providence to South Station in Boston via MBTA commuter rail or Amtrak (and from there, continue to Logan on the Silver Line).

You should consider Puerto Rico. The entire island has a small town feel, but the west coast is mostly what you describe. There's also great weather and tax benefits.

> There's also great weather

Until a hurricane hits

And they’ve recovered since. Tornadoes can strike most mid west and southern towns

They lost 100% of their power network to Maria. Hurricanes are becoming more common and higher intensity. Humanity's days in the Caribbean are numbered.

That's what they said about Miami until we built appropriate structures and infrastructure.

Florida is actually a good argument about this. They have mangrove forests, highways, and railways. The islands do not. I was there for Irma actually - the amount of out of state resources needed for the cleanup and recovery was not negligible. The islands don't have those luxuries or the port capacity to keep up.

How’s the drinking water holding up?

The dark underbelly of Puerto Rico reveals itself much more frequently than the dark underbelly of mainland cities.

There are many reasons why college towns are great, but particularly this one:

In small towns, people are very nosy, and it gets incredibly tiring after a while. People stare at you and look you up and down. Except, when it's a college town, because they're used to having strangers around.

In 2010 I moved from near a US tech hub to a small town 5 hours away. There are lots of pros and cons, but main thing I'd say is to be honest with yourself about your economic situation and your lifestyle needs, and don't make the jump lightly. Within just a few years I looked around and realized that all the young families our age that we'd met had packed up their bags and left because they couldn't make it work economically + job opportunities were greater elsewhere. Yes a lot has changed especially re: covid and remote work, but it's still way easier to find work if you are in a tech hub or major city.

Especially now being a real estate agent (which in itself is a story of the changes that come with small town life...), I meet lots of people of all demographics moving into our area. Many have never spent any time here, but are drawn to the pictures in the tourist magazine, so to speak. I'm already starting to see people who bought during covid lockdowns who are now having buyers remorse as they realize that maybe small town life isn't for them. All I'm saying is, do more than spend a weekend in a place before you decide to buy a house and shake up your life - I've legit seen people buy houses having basically never been here, and that's not a wise approach.

Frankly, if you really have the means and don't have family ties keeping you in a place, I'd ask: why stay in the US at all? But regardless of where you go, hone your research in quickly. Don't keep looking at every last little burg in all 50 states. Go rent an airbnb for a couple of weeks and live as though you live there - and make yourself a study of the tradeoffs you'd be making with each place.

Emporia, KS.

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).

Nice to see Emporia mentioned on HN. A bit of a surprise but a nice surprise. I've always liked it. I've personally never lived there but do live in the region.

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 think 'decent airport' is perhaps tricky, at least on the west coast. I think you'll need to be more specific about some other things like how small is too small or how big is too big, and what 'cold' means for you. This site seems to have some good search facilities: https://www.bestplaces.net/

Also agree with the 'college towns' comment.

Lots of other places, too. If you’re not near a moderately sized city, it’ll be at least 1-2 hours drive to an airport that has any commercial flights. Even in more populous rural states like Ohio, that means being pretty close to Cleveland or Columbus. Or in Montana, you’ll just have to accept having very few options even if you live in the second largest city (Missoula).

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.

Here in Bend we have an airport that gets you to Seattle, San Francisco, Denver. For some people like me who do not travel much, that kind of thing might be 'good enough'. I think that sort of thing is reasonably common in regional airports. It'd probably be annoying not having more flights if you travel regularly.

I went through this exercise pre-COVID. I started working remotely in 2017 as I had 17 years of experience at that point. I left Austin and moved to a small town in 2018 that's two hours west of Austin.

> Any ideas on whether this mid-sized town dream exists...

Sure it exists.

> ...and/or how we’d go about finding it?

Sure, you need to do your research and figure that out for yourself. I researched on the internet for about 18 months and did a lot of boots-on-the-ground investigation. I eventually moved to a small town in the Texas Hill Country that I adore. Low crime, very clean and beautiful environment, low cost of living, absolutely fantastic community and gigabit fiber internet.

I then bought a second, larger home in a small town a little closer to Austin that is logistically a little more convenient and not so remote. But again, it has low crime, a local hospital, HEB grocery store, fantastic community and gigabit fiber internet.

Just do your research. It's not so hard but it will take a little time.

The peace and quiet combined with the cost of living is priceless. I couldn't be happier. I love it out here.

Find data sources and optimise for your objectives. For me it was:

- travel-time, via connections like airports, train stations, motorways, etc. You will need them when you want to travel, or your spouse needs to get to an office

- weather. Now and predictions of how it will change in the future

- water levels and flood risks and how they are predicted to change over your lifetime (especially important of you like the coast, rivers, etc.)

- forest fires, draught etc might be a factor depending on your climate

- proximity to industrial or academic centers

- general social-economic situation of the place that is interesting to you

Most of this data is likely freely available from public / state sources.

If you don't know the place, rent first, buy when you are happy. Data is unlikely to provide the full picture and you need to live in a place to get a full picture of it's quirks. Make sure to use the facilities you care about to get an idea how they work in practice.

>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.

Study. You can type "Las Cruces NM climate" into Google and get a free graph. You know your interests better than any of us, and you can look at local event listings, restaurants, venues etc to see what's a good fit. Zillow will tell you about schools and crime, and airports are on the map.

When people go by word-of-mouth based on where other people went, you get a situation where everyone moves to Denver^W Austin^W Nashville, and then it isn't fun anymore. Nobody goes there, it's too crowded. Especially when the discussion is on the Internet.

The two major funders for small towns are military bases and colleges. Small college towns are stabilized by a steady stream of federal money from student loans and subsidies. They will often have better services and healthier businesses. The same goes for military towns that get a ton of money from soldiers spending cash and buying/renting housing.

Small towns that are supported by companies and agriculture have been drained dry by corporate greed. Jobs have been off-shored and taxes have been almost completely avoided. Sometimes a town is supported by a major military contractor, but they aren't terribly dependable. Some places are supported by retirees, but they aren't nearly as affordable.

So if you want to look for a stable small town, look for towns near universities, colleges, or military bases.

Check a bandwidth map so you are not frustrated. You probably also want to make sure the politicians in the area are of your preferred party since that will tell you if your family will have people with your beliefs in the area. Being the odd person out from the local folks isn't fun.

I would not rely on bandwidth maps. Even the FCC's official one is very inaccurate. I would put the address in the ISP's website to see what is available, and then call them to double check because even the ISP's website is wrong sometimes.

Who cares about the political party of local politicians? Make sure local government services are delivered on time and on budget (water, power, garbage collection, etc). Make sure the schools are good and aren't run by weirdos. Beyond that, why would you care?

Because there is a culture war and in a lot of places if you aren't deemed to be in the in-group you will suddenly find yourself with problems that were created just for you by the locals.

> Make sure the schools are good and aren't run by weirdos.

Is approximately equal to

> the political party of local politicians

This is completely false. There are lunatics of all stripes.

I agree. Local politics is less about avoiding weirdos, and more about finding which weirdos you agree with.

So you're now disagreeing with yourself.

It depends on your personality type. If you're the type who just must change everything to fit your worldview, it's important to settle in a place with similar values. But many people aren't into trying to impose their view on everyone else and as a result, can settle into areas with people of differing values. The rub can be if your appearance signals values that you might not want to push onto others but your presence makes people wary you might want to. For people like that, it can be difficult, but many do find with some time, people get accustomed to them and relax once they determine they're not there to upset the social order. In a few cases, the negative reaction is great enough that there isn't time for either side to get to know the other's intentions. That's pretty rare if you're lowkey but still happens here and there from time to time.

You have at least some of your requirements already. Pick a few candidate towns and scope them out (home prices, weather, healthcare, public transit, culture, local hangouts, art, whatever appeals to you).

When you think you found a good one, go visit in person and see if it meets expectations.

If you want a specific instance, check out Champaign-Urbana, IL. There's Research Park, the University of Illinois, a bunch of bars and restaurants, fun art sprinkled around town, gigabit fiber and homes are under $200K. We walk to the grocery store with our wagon and just fill it up instead of using a shopping cart. If you come visit, be sure to check out Black Dog (a barbeque joint). https://yourewelcomecu.com/

Try the Midwest around rail commuter routes. Most of them developed small yet thriving downtowns that are quite quaint and affordable

For example check out Geneva Illinois

illinois winters though...

In the recent years winters got very short, only two months - Feb and March

Winter is the best time of the year. It keeps housing prices down from people that can't deal with it.

Ain't that the truth? But seriously, if you want a small town with a functioning downtown that isn't ridiculously priced, you are going to have much better odds of finding something east of the Mississippi River. Because the type of town you are looking for needed to be established before the automobile became big.

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.

High property taxes keeps people out and home prices down in Illinois more than the weather.

I'm guessing that is sarcasm? Or you were serious and just never lived in Illinois?

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

Geneva has a very unique feature: the Fabyan estate with its recently restored dutch windmill, built nearby but looks straight out of the netherlands.

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 :)

Also check out Galesburg, Illinois. College town (knox.edu) and you can walk to most things on Main St. It is however a lot of Corn fields other than the college area but the last I was there was in 2002 so things may have changed a bit. Winters were brutal but lot of friendly people and back then as an immigrant, I always felt welcomed.

Move to The Netherlands and you can suddenly walk everywhere. Also it's rather easy to get into NL with the Dutch American Friendship Treaty. [0]

The only thing you need is a company in NL and keeping $4500 on your bank account. Registering a company in NL is as easy as buying milk. One visit to the Chamber of Commerce [1] and you're good.

[0] https://dutchamericanfriendship.com/

[1] https://www.kvk.nl

Anything near to the Canada border? I'm thinking about climate change, and I have changed drastically the idea of " where my future home" will be. In 10-20 years things will get worse I imagine.

Tangential, but you might benefit from reading the book "How to Prepare for Climate Change" by David Pogue - it has (among much else) a lot of information about how different areas of the US are likely to be affected by climate change, which should inform any sensible person's decision about where to move to or away from. (Protip: don't buy coastal property in Florida.)

I liked the book but the only problem for me is that I don't live in the US, so if anyone can recommend a similarly detailed examination of climate issues for the UK, let me know!

I don't know why you and the parent post are being downvoted. I also live in EU and would be interested in information specific to this region.

The warning I would make about PA is about their road system, which is tremendously, comically, confusing (every road has at least a name and a number) and leads to driving taking so much longer than you would think.

Lancaster PA: drive from Park City Mall to the center of Lancaster City, which is the Greist Building, the tallest in the area (has many telecom antennas there) and is near the Fulton Opera House. On the map, it shows 3.5 miles as you pass by Long's Park. Unless it is in the middle of the night, you will be lucky to make it in less than 20 minutes.

New Mexico has a bunch of nice small towns. I live in Albuquerque (not a small town but there are quite a few others) and I have some shops, restaurants and bars all in walking distance.

I would like to visit Silver City some day. Looks like it has the makings of a place that could take off. Abundant sunshine, national forest, small college.

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...

It's super pretty down there. No idea what it's like to live in the area, but I wouldn't mind finding out.

Silver City was a cool town, used to be a great restaurant there, "Curious Kumquat". The "big ditch" is a very pretty trail to walk, and there seemed to be lots of artists studios and galleries.

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"

How's Las Cruces?

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.

I just moved to Ocean Springs, MS from Los Gatos, CA. We have been looking for about a year, this is the place that checked the most boxes for us. Most places we were looking at either had terrible schools (Alaska, apart from like 3 magnet schools) or were very remote (Islesboro, ME) Very happy I got out of CA before PG&E killed my family (we had a fire break out in June about 100 meters from my front door, if it had been windy we had 0 chance of escape as it would have blocked all the roads to our house. This forces us to bite the bullet and make the move, and Ocean Springs was top of our list).

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.

How often do you go to NOLA?

Well not too much yet, but my kids are begging me to go because they want to go to the mall there. It's about 1.5 hour drive, which seems like a long trip, but my commute to SF was longer than that (each way) via Caltrain so it's not really that bad I guess.

Well happy to recommend things to do. Kids seem to love City Park.

I also moved to a beach town for remote work (albeit one I had deep family ties to). I love it here, and I had to accept higher risk of natural disaster by making this move.

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.

I'm aware of the chances of hurricane. However, I came from the Santa Cruz mountains, where I could have woken up minutes before my death due to wind driven fires, which PG&E loves to start. https://www.businessinsider.com/pge-caused-california-wildfi...

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.

French Lick, Indiana is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere that some billionaire invested his fortune in renovating a historic hotel, building up a resort casino, and fleshing out the downtown into a charming experience. There's even a ski resort nearby.

And it's all at rock bottom prices.

Louisville airport is about an hour away, and since it's a major UPS hub, it's quite nicer than the population of the area would otherwise support.

But be warned that Indiana politics can be a huge turn-off

You also have to remember that the culture is very different in the country. If you've been a city person for a long time, you're probably going to struggle to make any friends until you start acting like the locals.

Not so prevalent in a city where there's enough people to form smaller subcommunities, but in a small town you can't really do that and will need to put in effort to fit in.

The first place that came to mid is Northwest Arkansas, especially Bentonville. It still has a small town feel but has much nicer amenities than a town of its size normally does because of all the money brought in by Walmart being headquartered there. The surrounding towns, Fayetteville especially, are also nice. This place is especially awesome if you are into doing things outdoors, especially mountain biking.

Another place to expand your search are these YouTube channels, From Here to There (https://www.youtube.com/c/FromHeretoThere/videos) and The World According To Briggs (https://www.youtube.com/c/WorldAccordingToBriggs). They might help find places your aren't currently looking at.

I've been fulltime remote for a few years, and just moved to Lancaster, PA. I'm loving it here. Its enough of a city that I'm not missing the amenities or multi-cultural atmosphere. The housing prices are great, and I can get to my NYC office very easily on the train or even driving. I'm very happy to have moved.

College towns I found have been great for this - things to do, access to airports and good schools, top-notch hospitals usually in the middle of "nowhere". Look into Charlottesville, Virginia - went to UVA and loved the town. Have also heard good things about Ithaca NY, Champaign IL, and Ann Arbor MI.

Lived in Ann Arbor for almost a year, can concur it was a nice town.

Charlottesville is indeed an amazing town but it isn't cheap (well, it is cheap compared to the bay area but it isn't cheap compared to other places in central Virginia). The airport also sucks, IMO. You are better off driving the 2.5h to Dulles for most travel.

I currently live in Charlottesville and would recommend against it. Its general infrastructure is crumbling. Sidewalks and bike paths, while they exist (barely), are neglected. The city government just bought a parking lot, for example, when there is already ample parking [1]. And yes, it's very expensive relative to what you get. I'm fortunate that I can bike to work because I live in town, but > 90% of my co-workers have to commute (by car; there's not much of a shuttle/bus system outside of UVA/CVille proper) because they can't afford to live here.

[1] https://www.nbc29.com/2022/06/22/charlottesville-city-counci...

20 or so shops isn't mid-sized, is it?

I just moved to Orcas Island in the PNW after living in cities (Seattle, Anchorage) for most of my adult life. I'm near the one town on the island (which is REALLY quiet outside of the 4 warmest/touristy months). ~4,500 people year round population. Weather is perfect with near zero rain for 4-6 months but a bit gray / drizzly for the rest. It's rarely cold, but decent ski hills are 2h inland.

The population (like a lot of small towns) is pretty old, but I found the small group of newer folks (lots of tech expats) to be really welcoming.

I can walk to the small airport, which has regular $180-$200 flights to Seattle (show up 10min before departure, 45min flight). Ferries are more work but sometimes you want your vehicle on the mainland for a big group of houseguests or whatnot.

I'm 15min away from getting a paddlboard into two mountain lakes-- both are popular swimming destinations for locals. I have friends pulling crabs and prawns out of the water all summer. There are zillions of islands and inlets around-- it's a playground if you're a boater. 4-5 good hikes on the islands with breathtaking views. There's one (never crowded) gym in town with a racquetball court. There's a board game meetup. A few fancy restaurants, one killer cocktail bar, a good locals dive bar. I leave my door unlocked. There's a "village green" with frequent concerts and a Saturday farmer's market. The schools and kids on this island are amazing. Ferries and small planes can get you quickly to Victoria/Vancouver Island, Vancouver (the city), and assorted other cool small/medium towns.

I'm pretty new to this, but am LOVING it. There are downsides-- not a lot of food variety in town, tough to make new friends if you aren't the kind of person who makes the effort. The gray season is long and VERY quiet, so you definitely need to budget time/$ to travel. The schools are pretty understanding about missed days in the winter because of this.

Hit me up if you (or anyone) ever wants to check it out. I'll buy you a drink and talk your ear off about it.

If you want an airliner airport with a wide selection of time and destination options, as opposed to somewhere to base your private airplane, consider starting the search around those. Look in the opposite direction than the big city it serves. And beware of noise issues caused by the airport itself.

One of the main sites many (most?) "digital nomads" go for such information is Nomadlist[1], though this might be a little less US / small town-centric than what you're looking for.

[1] https://nomadlist.com/

West Chester or Kennett Square, PA, especially if you were already considering Lancaster. Both fit the bill.

Check out smallish public research university college towns.

Ohio University is a pretty cool place, though slightly secluded.

I’ve been playing around with some data to try to answer this for myself. It’s still very work-in-progress so I’d love feedback from you and others—you can explore the data at https://myplace.guru

Consider Muffy Aldrich’s list of “New England Preppy Towns”

https://www.saltwaternewengland.com/2022/07/new-england-prep...

There was a map tool that would show you every place within an hour of a major airport - but I would limit myself to airports that are a hub for an airline or otherwise "large" - Burbank would be ok, Santa Barbara not by my theory.

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.

> restaurants > 20 or so shops

Forget eating out. We just moved from a city of 2.5M to a town of 1500, the next biggest town over has 3000. The thing we miss the most is the variety of food, especially Asian food. However that's all we miss and the benefits are many.

I’ll let you in on a little secret in the middle of California, it’s hot, but it’s an affordable little town, with just the amenities you mention. I know because I lived there most of my life. The town is Exeter.

Like I said, it’s hot there over the summer, and it’s the red middle of a blue state, but the people are very kind. They have an absolutely wonderful coffee shop downtown, a tiny brewery and pub across the street, a couple nice super markets (not so walkable), and some gas station/markets that are very walkable. We lived five minutes from downtown in a neighborhood. We paid $215k for our house, in 2015, so I’d imagine that price has gone up quite a bit, but it’s definitely affordable.

Olympia WA. Home to The Evergreen State College, Washington State Capitol, and Sea-Tac International is just under an hour away. Winters are mild, but very wet. Violent crime (20.4) is under the national average, while property crime is nearly twice the national average at 61.2.

I grew up in the Thurston County area in the 80s, and went to school at TESC, a hippie liberal arts college I remember the downtown as being charming, with lots of hip cafes, bars, and restaurants. I've considered moving back there myself. That said, in recent years epidemics of homelessness and drug addiction have taken a bit of a toll on the city, but I still think it's worth checking out.

It is raining 10/12 months.

Seems like a useful app idea. Probably not something that would get much repeat use though.

Just wait a bit and see what happens in the housing market. I'm not saying it's ready for a crash, but sometimes renting for a year means everything will change. You can rent in a small town (cheap) or just stay where you are at for a while.

Everyone is thinking like you during the pandemic when remote work was the norm. That pushed up housing prices in weird places, like Boise, and other places like Sedona. Places that are small, typically tourist places, but very nice and pretty. The lack of housing has pushed up prices to ridiculous levels, but once the market corrects, it'll be a different world.

It's a bit of a fool's errand to follow that advice though, you could have been doing renting in urban Canada for years (decades even?) being told a crash is coming any day now eh has too. And now it's extremely unlikely that one would wipe out the compounded growth from if you'd bought when you first thought of it.

I think if it's to live in, just do it. Save market-timing for a second home/investment/flip - and even then be opportunistic in an observed dip rather than waiting for it to happen.

I think if it's to live in, AND you can afford it AND it makes sense financially on a fixed rate mortgage, go for it. You are absolutely right on market timing, but that doesn't mean it'll go up forever, but over time, it does seem to generally go up a bit. But it's not really an investment, its a place to live, so don't pay so much on a mortgage that you are risking your financial health - think it should be about equal to rent or maybe a little more.

Just remember, turkeys think everything is great, until Halloween, when they get put in the freezers for Thanksgiving. If you look at the graph of their weight from birth to death it's always going up, so it should go up forever. But on Halloween it'll go down a bit, then level out forever. ;)

That’s a funny statement considering parts of Toronto are down 30% in the past 4 months and the Bank of Canada hasn’t finish hiking rates.

I'm not Canadian or particularly familiar, but that's 30% down having done something like 300% since 2009 right? So if you've been renting for the last 13 years waiting this to pounce, you're hardly going to be patting yourself on the back thinking it was such a smart move.

Unless you mean having bought there 4m ago would suck? Well, sure, but this 'advice' is only for a home, where you live, not an investment property. And as for looking right now vs. waiting short-term for prices to drop (and paying rent meanwhile) - that's surely priced in. Suppose it could still make sense to someone personally if it put them in a better mortgage position (at the risk of a worse rate).

People who bought 2 years ago would now end up selling for less than what they bought.

Some places will bottom out at 50% of current price. That means if you bought since 2016 or so your house is worth less than when you bought it.

Honestly -- I think you will be disappointed. The market wrecked everyone who was trying to buy. I live in a town of 70k and I got priced out of my own neighborhood -- and I make good money. Just because it is a small town, doesn't mean you are going to get bottom of the barrel prices. For example, a 3000sqft home in my area goes for $515k and you have to bring extra money to closing to be even competitive. The areas with smaller homes are _less_ than desirable to be in so don't think you will be getting a good deal there because you are just as likely to get robbed in your front yard.

Where are you from that 70k is a small town?

Warner Robins, GA -- sorry its 80k now apparently

We moved from Berlin to the Baltic Sea last year (after 20+ years) because remote allowed us to do so, and we love it. And the home was much cheaper. So I can't help you with a city, but encourage you to move forward.

We did something similar with a move to Columbus, GA. Cost of living was super-low, but 200k people means you get theater, airport, etc.

One thing to keep in mind as you get older: smaller places may not have all the medical facilities you need. For example, if you get an unusual cancer or need a transplant, your family will be regularly shuttling you 2-3 hours to the nearest large city.

I think that being ~50-60 minutes south of Atlanta would be nice. It's small enough, but you can hop right up to one of the world's busiest airports and get a flight to about anywhere.

If you live near Lancaster, you could start driving a horse and buggy.

I think you'd have to elaborate on what you think a good school is and what a good climate is. It certainly gets cold for part of the year in PA and MD. It can be quite humid in the summers too. I've heard it can be tough to find a "good" public school in parts of SC (I looked at some SC and NC schools when I entertained the idea of moving there a decade ago. The scores were considerably lower than most MD and most PA were).

It definitely exists, but there are so many small towns across the country, we could not possibly list them all. You need to narrow it down - do some road trips, explore regions and states, and pick a target area. Maybe choose a big city you might want to be within a few hours of. Then get a realtor from that city to educate you on the towns in the area and help you narrow down to a few actual potential locations. Then you can start looking at homes.

In the pat seven years I traveled the western part of the US a lot with my camper and if I had to live in the US (I am Dutch and currently live on Curacao) I would probably go for Frisco, Colorado. But I am pretty outdoorsy so that’s a big part of why I would like to live there. Not to big, not to small, year round outdoor activities, an hours drive from Denver and an overall good vibe.

Probably not the answer you want, but the EU is literally filled with towns like this. Cycling and public transport can get you and your kids anywhere.

This is ultimately the conclusion I've come to: if you want walkability, good transit, good weather, and a couple other things, you basically have zero options in the US, and dozens of options in Europe. It's sad, but the US is built around a car-centric lifestyle that just isn't for me.

I'm not sure if it would have small to midsize towns like you are looking for, but Nomadlist might be a good place to start as it is a curation of popular places for nomads (and no by extension remote workers) to relocate to. It uses a LOT of filters to weed out places you don't want and find the places that hit your "must haves" so it might be worth a quick look.

Check out the site Make Me Move[1], which lists towns offering incentives for remote workers to move there. Some offers are nominal (e.g., co-working space memberships), but there are some nice towns actively looking to attract and support folks like you.

[1]: https://www.makemymove.com/

Fairfield, CT -- it's not cheap, but it's got charm and few beaches. Been living here for 6 years and we love it.

Two things I hear about CT are that there are new taxes every year and people are leaving in droves. How has your economic situation Fairfield fared?

I have experimented with a lot of different types of living situations during the pandemic - mountain tourist towns, suburban areas, countryside. At the end of the day, I felt the most fulfilled when I was able to connect with a community. I've had better luck with acceptance when they, themselves, are new to the community.

Anybody have answer to the question but add constraint about diversity? Especially being non Caucasian?

We moved from DC to Camp Hill, PA for similar reasons. Camp Hill has a decent walkable/bikable community (stores, schools, etc.) Harrisburg is the capital so it has just enough going on. I miss DC for sure, but it is nice to have an affordable house and a less complex lifestyle.

Just from what I know anecdotally, you’re going to do best in college towns or vacation spots. And while that doesn’t preclude affordable homes, it means you might not get the pick of the litter.

The economics of supporting a walkable downtown are just real tough in many places.

Now sure what to make of "I live in a ~1000 pop town" yet can be in a bigger town in 10 minutes via car (in the East), and "I live in a ~1000 pop town" and it's 45 min to anything (in N. CA and the west). (Have lived in both.)

Just know that wherever you go, people will probably complain, even if it’s behind your back. I don’t think it’s justified, but I hear lots of problems attributed to “California people” moving in.

I think complaining about any change is just part of small town America.

How about Bozeman, Montana? 50K people small but got pretty much everything you'd need.

"Not too cold" is probably not something that Montana does well, despite all the other attractive things there.

Isn’t Bozeman the poster child for towns negatively impacted by tech workers swooping in, driving out local salaried families, and driving suburban growth? I’ve read a version of that in half a dozen stories since 2020.

Best way to do this is to find a place on your own. Take off a few weeks, or months, from work and drive across the country. Make it to every corner you can. Eventually you’ll stumble across some little town that feels more homely than the rest.

This is where the UK is great. It has lots of well connected by train towns. You can commute for a night out in London but live a generally quiet life in anything from a tiny hamlet to something like Cambridge which is a small city.

Most places close enough for "take the train for a night out in London" will (practically by definition) be "you can commute into London for work from here" places, though, with correspondingly high house prices. Certainly Cambridge is not cheap for housing!

This, but "commutable to London" covers a very large area, and you can still get cheap(ish) housing there. If you're in a town an hour away from London, daily commuting is uncomfortable, but doing it once a fortnight for a night out (especially if you've got somewhere to stay overnight in London) is much more doable. I used to do that when I lived in West Berkshire.

My wife and I just spent a month in the UK to see how we’d like it and if we’d want to move there. If you are willing to commute 40 mins (by train) there are plenty of towns with 2 bed apartments for £400k.

A 2 bed flat for 400K is definitely what I would call expensive housing! It may not be central-London prices but it's certainly high, and unaffordable for many people.

Was going to post a counterexample, but in the time I have been out of the UK ... man the prices have gone up a lot! You can probably get a 1 bed for 200k but that is not cheap. For an American it might be OK (GBP seems to have lost a lot of value)

If you need affordability you would need to move away from the south east. As a digital nomad ... you can!

Pick somewhere:

that you fit in politically or that your values match, otherwise you could be viewed as an outside agitator.

where agriculture is feasible, preferably with as little non-local inputs as possible (i.e. water)

Wyoming! Move to Wyoming lads. Reconnect with nature and quiet.

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

> 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.

I've looked at this in the past, and it seems like if you want to live in a reasonably sane part of Wyoming it's going to cost $800k+ in housing.

The few towns nearby are just as expensive. I own a home in Alpine WY and the market has gone up almost 100% since we bought in 2017. Victor/driggs is even worse (especially when factoring state tax). Only slightly better situation in Pinedale, Dubois and Lander. It's also deep red everywhere but Jackson and Lander... A lot of libertarians though, which makes it seem less oppressive than what I experienced growing up in the south...

I am DN, I follow pensioners, they usually live in boring accessible cities. There was documentary about some town in US, where people mostly use golf carts to get around.

Sounds like Peachtree City, Georgia. Ninety miles of cart paths and about 10,000 of the households have a golf cart they use to get around town. Lots of airline and airport employees live there as it is an easy commute to Atlanta's airport.

South Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iysw5I50Cr0

Try this tool:

https://www.movemap.io/explore/us

In most US places get too rural and your worklifeline (internet service) options thin rapidly

Will be interesting to see if/how starlink changes this

We recently moved to Frederick, MD. Walking distance to the very lively downtown, inexpensive housing, close to an airport, yada, yada...

People like you are destroying other people's ability to live in their small towns..they don't want you.

Got internet? How about healthcare options?

Intersect that data with crime and population.

Sounds like a cool data project.

Asbury Park NJ is on the beach, pretty small, and a train ride away from nyc

Move to New Zealand. We're full of small towns with great life styles.

Small towns, yes, but without a car? Maybe my New Zealand definition of "small town" is smaller than they're thinking.

Yeah, New Plymouth or Napier might be about the right size. You are right about the car but we don't have suburbs far away from the cities like the states so it's possible to get around without a car.

I’m on the mailing list. They just started sending job listings again after 2 year hiatus.

My wife and I are serious about it but there’s a pretty narrow window we’d have to hit to time it well for our kids.

We considered:

Lansing, MI

Chapel Hill, NC

Wilmington, NC

*Ithaca, NY*

Ithaca is interesting but we have two sets of friends there and one of them loves it (grew up and returned from abroad) while the other endures it (university tenure).

Without a symphony/opera, theater, decent concert venue, and some art museums, life is going to get real boring, real fast.

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.

This is very personal, lots of people go their entire lives without going to those venues and aren't bored. You can ride a dirt/mtb bike in the desert or hike in the mountains, surf in the ocean, etc.

It is an odd list to pick but the areas missing those things tend to be devoid of almost all entertainment that isn’t playing in the dirt alone.

It’s always a question of accessibility too. Should those things be truly necessary how long would one be willing to drive to attain them. Then are they still as important compared to a two hour drive or do they not stack up that high? Are they only important because they’re about 25min away and fit into the conveniences that proximity affords? It’s something to think about because that distance pushes the calculus out for doing things spur of the moment that now have to be scheduled and planned. That kind of activation energy and transportation costs I could see nixing many activities by default.

I grew up in a town with all of those things that was under 40k people and in the Midwest.

Just admit you hate “flyover country”.

Then it’s clear I’m not talking about your town.

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).

People do realize that other people might like different things than they do…right?

At least I hope they do.

It’s not just those things; it is the set of people in society that require at least some of those cultural elements.

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.

Yeah I agree with this. I like a good remote vacation and not talk to anyone for two weeks. But you can't live like this forever, esp with kids. A medium sized city has a lot of benefits.

Grafton, New Hampshire

Is there a dedicated website for this somewhere?

Bend, Oregon

It's not very cheap here :-( Sure, less than a million, but not 'cheap' either. It's a small city at this point rather than a small town. And winters are cold. The airport will get you most major destinations on the west coast.

Happy to have beers with anyone who comes through to check it out, though!

Look along old railway lines.

I chose three rivers mi

Johnson City, TN

If you are just looking for a cheaper city, you're going to be disappointed by any small town. "A friendly bar" is kind of a big ask in a small town that might only have a couple bars. There could easily not be one that you like. Same with schools - in a city you have choice, in a small town you are going to end up with whatever the local school is. Maybe it's good. Maybe it isn't. And maybe the town that has a friendly bar doesn't have a good school.

Honestly, it sounds like you belong in a city. A town isn't just a collection of perfect versions of the things you like from your city, and cheaper housing. That isn't going to exist. The bars will be worse. The schools will probably be worse. The stores will be further away, or else the housing "just off main street" will he more expensive. The social opportunities will be fewer. If you want to be happy with small town life, you need to find the advantages that exist only in towns and not cities: Outdoor recreation opportunities, family to be closer to, or non-social things you can do on your own with more space like gardening.

Yeah, agreed with everything you said.

Something to understand about small town life is it's a slower paced way of living than most people are used to. There's not much to do out here if you can't entertain yourself. People will come visit and ask what there is to do around here, and I'll be like well... We can go pick fruits at the farm, or we can go shoot, or we can work on projects with the tools we have. It's a slow paced life that doesn't match everyone. Understand what you're getting into.

As someone who grew up in a very small town with exactly one pub and no other shops, this is a bit melodramatic. You can just walk in, order a meal and a beer, talk to the publican, and work out for yourself whether you like the place. There's something to like about most pubs.

The shops being further away also isn't a big deal. You'd think it would be annoying, but your habits quickly adapt. After running out of milk a couple of times, you learn to keep a can of evaporated milk in the cupboard. If you're out of eggs, you either have porridge for breakfast, defrost some frozen egg whites, or if it's really important you drive into town. It's not practically a problem.

From what I understand, the real things people struggle with are dealing with being alone, and learning how to have a social life with the different rules and constraints. My mum claims that when a new family moves to town, she can tell if they're going to leave by whether they leave the light on out the front of their house: the ones who're uncomfortable with darkness will go back, the others will stay. It's harder to maintain friendships unless you're organised, so clubs and groups are important to keep you socially active. Even your neighbours are further away and you don't have as many of them, so having a good relationship with them becomes more important than with neighbours in the city. In a small enough town you know everyone you see.

I think your experience in the UK(?) may not be very indicative of what to expect. I gather that pubs in small town Britain fill a broader social role than bars in small town America.

Australia, and a town of 200-something people.

I'm not sure what social role bars play in a small US town. When I was over there I went into a few in some smallish west coast towns, but tourists don't get a full understanding of a culture, and the areas I was in are so densely populated that they'd probably be very different from e.g. Idaho or Texas.

>There's something to like about most pubs.

all i'm trying to say is the idea of "this is my local now, i'd better like it" isn't the way you have to think in a city. it's not a big deal to some people, but it is to others. all the trade-offs don't have to be a problem, it's all easy to work around, but if you're used to the convenience of a city then just the whole idea of having to work around inconvenience can be a larger adjustment than you think. for somebody considering moving out of a city it's good to be aware of that.

Go to Montana.

Didn't it snow in June this year?

Ithaca NY

> I don’t need more than a good diner, a supermarket, and a friendly bar.

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.

The sweet spot is probably five or ten options. Go visit first.

I was just telling someone that fallacy of extrapolating known experiences out into the unknown. We caught a bit of this moving out to the town we now reside in. The previous city we came from had a dedicated child urgent care. We assumed every decent sized county had the same such thing. Not so.

Go Away

I’d get a dozen aggressive rottweilers and let them lose in there.

The type of town you want was made illegal to build about a century ago, so your best bet is old towns near water that somehow survived deindustrialization.

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