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Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

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Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#71
post #55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the point of the scheme is that the government wants to stop providing services to Nowheresville, then they basically have four options: 1. status quo 2. pay 85 people to relocate, keep paying to provide services for 10 people 3. pay 95 people to relocate; 10 of them really strongly do not want to relocate, but force them to do so anyway 4. pay 85 people to relocate, leave ten people to the wolves None of these ar…

What about stopping the services as well a stop taxing them? Then if it is viable they can stay.

Could the down-voters at least tell me why? Thx

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#73
post #16

What, no Newfie jokes? On a more serious note: there's a tectonic shift going on in the US too, it's just not as stark. Young'uns are moving to the cities enmasse, resulting in skyrocketing rents in places like SF, Seattle. The old American Dream of having a McMansion out in the 'burbs has largely died out. Now people prefer the urban areas.

> Now people prefer the urban areas. That's not new. What also isn't new is that when those same people get married and have kids, they'll be looking to move out of that urban environment. And all of that is completely unrelated to what the article is about.

What also isn't new is that when those same people get married and have kids, they'll be looking to move out of that urban environment.

What is new is that people are getting married and having kids much later, or not at all, and so they're staying in urban areas for much longer.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#74

The US still can't get the last people to leave Centralia, PA. Centralia has been on fire since 1962. So I think the answer is no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

>Its population has dwindled from over 1,000 residents in 1981 to only 10 in 2010

They're probably gonna be dead soon anyway.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#75

You see this on a smaller scale elsewhere in Canada, too. The global economy is changing, and this has a huge effect on small towns across the country. I know of a few towns that are mostly desert now that their main economic engine (either a large manufacturing plant or a mine) has closed down. A few of them are trying to re-center around tourism, but the most successful ones I know are attracting small tech compani…

This has happened across a lot of the US (and is probably one of the reasons for Trump's popularity, given that he's promising those folks good jobs).

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#76
post #6

I actually live in Toronto and I agree real estate here is expensive. What I don't get is WAY more expensive in places like London, Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco but I don't hear as many complaints or alarms going off in those areas. Why? Is this just me being oblivious?

I was considering moving from Toronto to London to pursue a job at DeepMind, and that sure put Toronto prices into perspective!

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#77
post #6

I actually live in Toronto and I agree real estate here is expensive. What I don't get is WAY more expensive in places like London, Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco but I don't hear as many complaints or alarms going off in those areas. Why? Is this just me being oblivious?

I think it has to do with local incomes and land area. The GTA is massive when considering land area. Incomes don't compare to places like SF and NY. Although I might be wrong on the income front. A friend of mine remarked that lawyers and bankers in TO may be making 300K+. So maybe I'm wrong about local incomes being depressed.

Finance and law associates here make $80-100k including incentives. SW devs $60-100k. $300k+ CAD would be for partners, top sales people and consulting/law rainmakers.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, as a young'un I felt the draw to the city and have worked in some of the greatest cities in the world. Now I'm still not old, but I find myself drawn to places like this. I feel like they could turn their slump into a booming tourism trade. There's nothing like the ocean and the large majority of people only ever get to see it on vacation. I grew up next to the ocean and even in a city where we have easy…

I'm surprised somebody hasn't started a software company in a place like this. Maybe not the very out of the way island featured in the article but similar ones. Rent must be dirt cheap. I wonder how big a company (or collective of freelancers?) it would take to save a town like that.

I used to visit relatives in Kenora, Ontario a couple of times a year. On day 1-3 of the visit I'd think of buying property and running a remote software company. By day 5 or so, I'd be homesick.

Really remote communities are quite different. Nature actively tries to kill you and you spend a lot of your time just dealing with that. Also, with respect to kids, everyone's in the same school. So, you can't really segregate based on socie-economic or educational background of the parents.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#79
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised somebody hasn't started a software company in a place like this. Maybe not the very out of the way island featured in the article but similar ones. Rent must be dirt cheap. I wonder how big a company (or collective of freelancers?) it would take to save a town like that.

The problem with software companies is rarely rent. It's attracting talent. You'd have to offer something pretty special as a software company to get people to move to the middle of nowhere like that, especially if such a place has their schools closed.

Combination company and techno-utopian cult? Tech Kibbutz?

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#80
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because Toronto is in a state of transition. No one complains about NY, London, HK real-estate because it's already understood to be expensive in the mainstream. But Toronto real-estate being expensive is relatively new such that you have people who grew up in Toronto not being able to afford it in adulthood. People are slowly realizing that TO is now just another global city out of reach to the middle class unl…

I certainly complain about London, all the time. It's always been expensive compared to the rest of the country, sure, but the current flat-out-insane bubble prices are a comparatively recent (and deliberately induced/maintained) phenomenon.

Totally, 17 years ago a friend of a friend bought a 1 bed flat near Stratford in London for £35k... Nice 2 bed houses in Forest Gate were £65k. They weren't super cheap for the locals, but people could buy them. Now 2 bed house are £450k plus, and people are flocking to East (far east...) London because it's 'cheap' - no one who buys there now was born there.

So it has happened here too, but because the beast of London has always been pricey, then it kind of gets ignored, except by those in it and those not now quids in from the crazy prices.

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