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

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

#421

Post by nus07 »

JeremyNT wrote: post #384
12many wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> "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 go…

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.

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

#422

Post by notatoad »

Eupraxias wrote: post #353
pc86 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.…

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.

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

#423

Post by braingenious »

pc86 wrote: post #294
braingenious wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/oriw…

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…

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.

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

#424

Post by subpixel »

jason-phillips wrote: post #419
jamauro wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

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.

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

#425

Post by braingenious »

pontifier wrote: post #193
braingenious wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/oriw…

Yeah, that's me.

How does the vigilante business make a profit?

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

#426

Post by jcpst »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #287
rswerve wrote: post #4

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.

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 ne…

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…

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

#427

Post by notatoad »

strken wrote: post #141
notatoad wrote: post #103

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 frien…

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 mil…

>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.

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

#428

Post by pontifier »

a2tech wrote: post #327
daurnimator wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 occu…

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?

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

#429

Post by cguess »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #287
rswerve wrote: post #4

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.

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 ne…

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.
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