πŸ‘€Anon84πŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό64πŸ—¨οΈ189

(Replying to PARENT post)

> In the mid-1800s, the United States had thousands of miles of open land in the middle of the country and almost nobody who wanted to live there.

> Then, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln pulled the ultimate Manifest Destiny power move with the Homestead Act.

That's… not how my history book says it happened. Wikipedia seems to agree, though it doesn't go into much detail:

> The act depleted the Native Americans in the United States of much of their land and natural resources as a result of it being allocated and sold to settlers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts#Homestead_Act_o...

I'm no history buff, but I'm pretty sure the Homestead Act of 1862 violated some treaties in a major way, and soldiers were involved.

πŸ‘€wizzwizz4πŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I wouldn't. I've looked into it. There are lots of places where you can get a free place in the US. They're nice places, pretty, if you like being outside like me it's got a lot going for it. Still, I don't want to move to a place with nothing going on and bet on a town that may just get worse. And Kansas in particular, I wouldn't want to pay those taxes.

I did abandon cities though. Cities are sirens. They attract you with the promise of lots of economic and social activity, then you wind up locked on a treadmill full of people navigating around you like an obstacle. You wind up isolated, having to wait in traffic for extended periods to go anywhere, paying outrageous sums to live. The natural world is mostly dead in them. I can get Netflix and tinder and all that other virtual stuff anywhere, which seems to be all there is in cities anyway, plus when I go outside there are butterflies and fire flies and weird birds everywhere and people leave me alone about my business, they're not used to being packed like sardines so they don't navigate around you like an obstacle, they are usually eager to be friendly. And you can make a decent life happen with very little money.

πŸ‘€betwixthewiresπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

One thing I didn't see mentioned are taxes. Kansas has both relatively high side income and property taxes. Building a modest house(200k) on a good income (150k) would yield something around 12k a year in taxes, if my mental heavily rounding math is right.

That may not sound like much to many of us, but compare that with say, TN, where you'd pay closer to 2k in taxes AND have much better weather, amenities, and scenery.

πŸ‘€silisiliπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Small towns mortgaged their future on big box stores out by the freeway. Now they have half the tax revenue to support their infrastructure (roads, power, sewer, water). Expect decay followed by large property tax hikes.
πŸ‘€JoeAltmaierπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Just as the article notes, free lots in out-of-the-way towns aren't too attractive because you still have to spend many dozens of thousands of dollars to put on a house on it, and then you live in an out-of-the-way town with few ways to resell. At that point, you could move to the rural fringe of a populous area, and be a lot closer to amenities, entertainment, good schools, healthcare, childcare, shopping, etc.

In dense and popular areas, it's the land prices that contribute to high housing prices. In less popular areas, it's construction prices that dominate the cost.

πŸ‘€temp-dude-87844πŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

No, I couldn't do it. Even apart from local family connections it would be difficult professionally. If I wanted to switch jobs or was let go for some reason then I would be limited to jobs that were completely remote, or I'd have to relocate again. 100% remote is more common these days, but not enough for me to limit myself to those options. And in some cases those 100% remote jobs will/are going away as COVID becomes more normalized as the status quo. (That has happened where I work. Partial remote yes. Full remote no.)
πŸ‘€ineedasernameπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Even a completely free piece of land and free housing isn't a substitution for basic infrastructure and diverse local culture. Maybe if you have a growing family or are retirement age, but with the childless 35 and under crowd growing I can't imagine wanting to move to the middle of nowhere.
πŸ‘€blackearlπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I used to live in a rural farming town for a few years. I'll be blunt. The people in the town were racist. Not everyone, but enough to make life extremely uncomfortable. And not the 'burn a cross on your lawn' kind of racist (well, mostly, some of the youth were precisely that kind of overt racist - I was called various racial slurs by drunk teenagers, and one time had them swerve their car to almost hit me), but the 'it takes five times as long to take my order at the diner as anyone else' or 'postal clerk keeps insisting on multiple forms of ID to hand over a package, despite not asking for any ID from anyone else who came up to the window' kind of racism. That's not pleasant to put up with daily nonstop.

This throwaway factoid in the article is supremely important: > small towns in north central and northwest Kansas are usually 90%+ white.

This kind of extreme homogeneity breeds racism and xenophobia.

πŸ‘€Ansil849πŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

My hometown is large enough to be considered a city, and is just somewhat rural. You couldn't pay me to live there because it's very depressing. You've got one main highway with a walmart and a couple chain restaurants (Applebees and Olive Garden).

There's an old downtown area that's pure blight. Businesses that were just abandoned 10+ years ago and were never filled... and some still-operating businesses that look like they were abandoned 10 years ago. All local jobs are menial. Factory work dried up 50 years ago. 5 people I went to high school with (that I'm aware of) have died from overdoses. The education system is mediocre at best and there are lots of racists and bullies.

If you go more rural it gets better simply because you're living in the woods. At that point you're dealing with well water, septic, satellite internet (maybe starlink?), frequent electricity loss after storms, and general isolation. Maybe I'll retire to a place like this.

πŸ‘€micromacrofootπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I would be curious to see how much you would need to spend to replicate all the services that large cities generally have for a typical upper middle class family.

Local school probably doesn't have AP classes or anyone to meaningfully help with SAT prep. Or a computer science teacher. Got to hire tutors to do all that or send the kids to boarding school.

Probably cannot get childcare. Got to import a nanny if you want full time childcare. And the nanny will need a car as nothing is in walking distance.

Airports. You are going to spend a bunch extra flying out of whatever little regional airport is nearby. No low cost carriers in these small towns.

Then there are the things that cannot be replicated, like ambulances:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/there-s-shortage-...

πŸ‘€MattGaiserπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

As a new Nebraskan, there's just something unnerving about vast flat land, at least for me. After three years the biggest reason I look for jobs is to get off of the big dining room table I live on.
πŸ‘€GeonodeπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I could never do it, but I had a friend who did exactly that. He was from Kansas though.

Went to Boston after college in Kansas, worked for five years moving up in title, came to the Bay Area, started as a staff engineer and quickly moved up to principle, and after working a total of 15 years, retired at 37 back to Kansas. Lived in the smallest studio he could find the whole time he was in the cities and had $1M+ saved up, which was more than enough to sustain his lifestyle in Kansas after spending $100,000 on a house (land + construction).

πŸ‘€jedbergπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Isn't this pretty much a question of how well off the person you ask is? If they can afford better they likely already have, if they can't this question might get a yes, but it will likely trap people isolated and worse off than before. I can't see how this would ever be a good idea.
πŸ‘€Dah00nπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Sure, build a shooting range and watch the money fly in
πŸ‘€yreadπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

In the 90's, there were rural towns in the Dakotas, which were auctioning off land. This permafrost land was left in the hands of the municipalities/banks who were trying to avoid paying taxes on the land.

Any sizable plots north and east of Kansas out to Ohio (not including West Virginia), is pretty easy to sell, since you can lease it out to farmers for the foreseeable future.

πŸ‘€SupermanchoπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

The price of farmland in the USA has more than doubled per acre in the past 18 months. It’s at the point now where without significant price increases for the outputs, farming won’t be worth doing unless you’re a giant ADM style cartel that makes up the difference in ethanol subsidies, regulatory capture, or some other flavor of cronyism.
πŸ‘€User23πŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

In my case, I could and I want to, but I wouldn’t. Unfortunately my experience as someone who would immediately be identified as an β€œoutsider” in rural America has been not that great. Unless it’s a tourist town, or an immigrant one (like those straight to the factory from the boat towns), it’s usually not that great.
πŸ‘€darth_avocadoπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Many countries have offered similar deals. Italy had hundreds of houses for € 1 but you needed to fix them up to a liveable state, often € 10-12K.

Australian country towns offered land for AUD 1 (USD 0.72). It has also occurred in Spain and even Japan. Japan is destroying hundreds of empty houses a year.

πŸ‘€aussiegreenieπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

If I could get a great internet connection either via satellite or otherwise, sure. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to make a living the way I want.
πŸ‘€stjohnswartsπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

There's a good reason it's free.
πŸ‘€lost_soulπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Does it have water security, electricity, access to social services, access to logistics networks, and so on?
πŸ‘€pphyschπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I think you could attract a bunch of well-off remote workers to homestead if you promised them a stable high speed internet connection when they got there.

Free land isn't enough; it shouldn't feel like I'm moving backward in time.

πŸ‘€somehnacct3757πŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

The biggest thing stopping me from doing it would be a lack of quality healthcare. I can't imagine many top doctors hanging around a place like Kansas.
πŸ‘€butwhywhyohπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

You make your money in civilization then when you're retired you can have a nice ranch or villa somewhere quiet, green and sunny.

I used to be somewhat upset at the ECB bailing out Greece but then I realized all that prime real estate coast line for Northern European boomers lol. Who has the last laugh?

πŸ‘€MomoXenosagaπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

no
πŸ‘€lifeplusplusπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0