These communities want to make a profit as rising housing costs and high interest rates drive people further out of the city centre.
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When David Gaffney’s lease in Oakland, California ended last spring, she was “come in the moment of Jesus.”
The 42-year-old loved living near his sister in town, but struggled to find a place along with the creature comforts she and her 13-year-old daughter wanted. An apartment with outdoor space and unit laundry costs over $3,000 a month.
Disappointed by the real estate market and ready for a change, Gaffney Googled “towns that pay you to move.” She came across the program in Lukes County, Kansas, where she moved with $5,000 in cash, and offered numerous other benefits, including income tax exemptions, a pass to state parks and lunch with the local economic development director.
“For me, working from home, I have the quality of life, raising my own kids, and having the space to develop this house, this garden, this garden. “I couldn’t afford to do many other places.”
Over 100 programs that provide economic incentives to move to cities and states across the country have driven my move on online sites over the past decade. Some existed before the Covid-19 pandemic, but most of them came at the rise of remote work. They are surged as housing costs rise and high interest rates push people even further from the city centre.
People like Gaffney who use these offers say the extra cash and incentives have made them more comfortable with their quality of life.
The community that implements many of the programs of the original rusty manufacturing hub says people firstly say that the economic development approach has helped increase tax revenue, organic growth and the long-standing revitalization of the local downtown.
For every $100,000 in the revenues of the relocated workers, the local community enjoys a new economic output of $83,000 each year.
“As opposed to trying to attract businesses, these cities are relocating or hiring individuals, and retrieving is huge,” said Evan Hock, founder of Makemymove. Even if workers start to be called back to their offices, the site has registered over 150,000 remote workers since its launch in 2020, and has grown every year since its launch in 2020.
Mover wants to “buy life”
Gaffney moved to Stockton, Kansas, in place of other towns near the Nebraska family, for the benefit the county provided. The $5,000 temporary incentive covers travel expenses primarily, and gym, golf and state park memberships were fantastic, Gaffney said.
However, the biggest advantage had nothing to do with the offers she sought. When Gaffney lost her job in November, she didn’t have to scramble to understand how to pay bills as long as she needed elsewhere.
“I don’t live on my salary because my mortgage, including insurance and taxes, is one third of what I paid in California and half of what I paid when I lived in Missouri,” Gaffney said.
Matthew Mekek, 27, moved from Huntington Beach, California to Bloomington, Indiana, as well as his boyfriend.
Mekech was considering several different communities in the Midwest, but was persuaded to choose Bloomington, where his partner’s parents live, for the “new resident” package. The giveaways include three years of membership to the town’s coworking space, access to entrepreneurial programming, season tickets to local theatres, and other perks totaling $8,000.
The benefits of networking have been a “huge plus” for Mekek, creative marketing manager at Juicy Chain Earth Bar. He works on photography and design projects and has a self-proclaimed “entrepreneurship.”
Another perk: cheap home costs. In California, Mekek said he and his partner qualify for low-income housing because he and his partner earned less than $115,000. They paid $2,400 for a small apartment. Now they are building a three-bedroom, 3,000 square foot home overlooking his partner’s family farm for $380,000.
Avid climber, Mekek said he still has access to cliffs and trails, and his dog could “run around and chase squirrels” in his backyard. Bloomington, home to Indiana University, also has a small LGBTQ+ community, Mekek said.
One drawback: He misses urban culture.
“We had a Broadway show that will be in town for two days in October and we had an alarm set on our phones, so we got tickets,” Mekek joked.
“It’s just that I’m not like before. It takes a slow pace in life. I’m going to walk and hike just outside my back door, although I had in California. For at least a while,” Mekek said.
Cities see “what to promote”
It’s not just about movers who benefit from the program. Cities and towns that offer incentives also say they are seeing big returns.
For more than a century, Newton Iowa’s economy has not revolved around Maytag washer and dryer factories. When the company closed its facility in 2010, the city lost an estimated 2,000 jobs.
Newton’s lifelong resident, Bruce Shaw, remembers the massive volumes of Exodus and the dilapidated empty houses they left behind. He said the city was a “double attack” due to the 2008 housing crisis.
A survey conducted in the early 2010s depicted harsh paintings for the future of the city. The population was older, young families were separated, and there were no jobs.
“A lot of people thought that after Maytag (Newton) was basically a black hole and almost dying,” Showalter said.
So in 2014, the city began purchasing dangerous and dilapidated properties and began selling land to developers at a low cost. They then began offering $10,000 in cash incentives to those who bought new homes worth more than $240,000.
Above all, the program gave Newton “what to promote” and “what to promote.” Today, he considers it an important reason why the city avoided disastrous predictions after Maytag left.
Over the past decade, the city has issued 132 building permits for single-family homes, leading to an estimated tax increase of $37 million, Showalter said. Newton’s population hit a record high at the 2020 census, and Showalter said about half of those incentived to housing were new to the city.
Tulsa payment template
One of the biggest programs to provide incentives to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2019 is funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, providing $10,000 to selected remote workers and travelling to and staying in Tulsa for at least a year.
The goal was to reduce brain drainage and reinforce the city’s knowledge-based workforce when the programme began.
“We made $10,000 in cash, access to coworking spaces, community promises and participant offers to remote workers. As a result, our hope was to attract knowledge workers to the city and diversify the workforce of workers.”
However, the city has also seen the effects of the spill. An independent study published earlier this year by the We Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that each dollar spent on the program brought $4 benefits to existing Tulsa residents.
So far, the program has welcomed over 3,500 people into the city.
Research author Timothy Baltic writes that the program is “a more benefit ratio than many business tax incentives” and is “a relatively inexpensive way to create local employment.”
Organizers like Harlan see Tulsa’s success as a blueprint for how Midwest cities can begin to grow and reduce population decline.
“It can change the notion that talent belongs to the coast,” Harlan said. “We can show you that you can make an impact here in the middle of here, and there are ways cities like Tulsa can improve your quality of life without sacrificing tons.”
