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

bloomberg.com

81–90 of 195 posts

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

#81
post #69

TL;DR — Fishing villages [...] sent into a tailspin by a fishery collapse, oil-price slump and mounting debt that left it with Canada’s most severe fiscal and demographic crisis. The provincial government now is pushing to close places like Little Bay Islands altogether rather than service them, offering [...] at least C$250,000 ($189,000) each to leave—and spurring a bitter, three-year fight over whether to cash out…

> some people with houses near the coast are retired, they just want to live a peaceful life near the sea, they don't want to relocate, What about social services? We have public health care in Canada and seniors are the most expensive. Plus, with no industry where are they going to get medication and food? And it's not all seniors, the person in the article isn't leaving because he scared he won't be able to find wo…

Believe it or not, not everyone wants to participate in society once they've done their fair share (retired)

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

#82
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can't have a tech company that's as isolated from the rest of the world as an old school kibbutz. No fiber, no life. If there were a massive government-funded effort to get fiber to every last bit of the country then it might work.

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

#83

> While she’s optimistic that the country can build a new economic base, she said it’ll happen only if Canadians “stop over-relying on the extraction of resources or, even worse, selling off our land.” This Canadian seems to believe that, in some real or legal sense, the land belongs to her and Canadians in general. But "Canadian land" truly belongs to anyone in the global real estate market with sufficient cash. Thi…

Government is the guarantor of property rights. If the current government was overthrown do you think the new government would necessarily need to honor your deed?

Government guarantees property rights, full stop. It doesn't matter what the nationality of the owner is.

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

#84
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.

That's the tricky part though, it would be the provincial government that's cutting all services and leaving them to the wolves. The federal government has nothing to do with this and thus will still expect the federal taxes to be paid in full.

From the viewpoint of the residents it will be a 25% tax cut (ballpark estimate) in exchange for the stoppage of all essential services, hardly a fair deal.

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

#85
post #2

What's with the GIGANTIC title and header fonts on this page. The one on the bottom even has some bouncing animation associated with it.

The page probably needed to "pop" more, so the designers added a little more zazz to it.

It's an unfortunate side effect of us humans leaning so much on visual stimulus. Huge text and a large image works great at catching peoples attention, which translates into more page views.

If I remove the huge image and use a very "simple" stylesheet for this article, you get a very functional but much less catchy looking page: http://nacr.us/media/pics/screenshots/screenshot--11-20-16-2...

Thankfully, there are plenty of pieces of software for presenting web pages in these greatly simplified forms.

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

#86

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.

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 think the harsh weather must be a big factor - I visited in June and it was still quite cold and windy. Lots of icebergs even. I'm surprised the article didn't mention this.

We saw some other tourists, mostly from nearby Canadian provinces. But from what I heard, there's almost zero tourism in the other seasons.

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

#87

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

I've always been fascinated by these decades-long coal mine fires. Too bad they can't harness that energy somehow.

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

#88
On the opposite end of Canada, in Vancouver, $250K CAD is enough of a down payment to get a parking spot where you can park a portable kids' play house from Home Depot or Rona, without having to pay mortgage loan insurance.

However, in the maritime provinces, with $250K CAD you can actually buy (completely pay for) a fully detached property with a decent house in an urban location.

I'd take the money and run while it's there for the taking. They are probably not going to up the offers for those who stubbornly wait it out.

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

#89
post #58
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other big issue is that there's no local economic boom driving the increase. Which is very confusing to locals -- salaries aren't going up, unemployment is fairly high, but prices are skyrocketing. Apparently low interest rates are a big driver. If they increase then many people won't be able to afford their mortgages.

Statistically more people would be able to afford the mortgages because houses would be cheaper and wealth is on a powerlaw distribution. High interest rates is great for poor people for which their labor dominates their wealth.

High interest rates are great for buying a home. Both for the house prices falling, and for having the option of refinancing at a lower rate later. The big complicating factor is that most people buy and sell a house at the same time, and lower interest rates sound like "lower prices".

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

#90
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well .. then I'm not sure how anyone affords a 2.5 million dollar detached home pretty much from Yonge and Finch to Yonge and Bloor. I mention the subway lines cause working people typically have to get to work :-p
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