Big expensive cities have a lot going for them.
But if you live in one, you've probably noticed
that these big expensive cities
keep getting more, well, expensive.
You could always move away.
You might have just started working remotely.
So there's really nothing keeping you there.
But then again, moving is a hassle.
Well, what if someone paid you 10 grand to do it?
What if they threw in free office space,
a bicycle or a gym membership?
Programs and cities and states around the US
are doing exactly that,
and they're getting a lot of interest.
We've had over 50,000 applications.
About 90,000 applications.
We've had over 1800 applicants
from all over North America.
So are these nascent programs
actually beneficial to their communities
and the workers joining them,
or are they little more than flashy advertising campaigns
for places looking for an injection of fresh talent?
Millions of Americans migrate every year,
but the coronavirus pandemic saw many more people
move out from urban areas into smaller cities
as remote work allowed them to do their jobs from home.
In fact, more than 7 million households
moved to a different county in 2020.
That's half a million more than the year before.
Smaller cities across the US are seeing this
as an opportunity to attract lifelong residents.
The remote incentive programs
that we're seeing pop up around the country
all go a little bit like this.
A city that's looking to lure new workers from other cities
offers a monetary incentive or a cultural incentive
for people to move.
Programs like this have exploded in popularity
around the US over the last few years,
and their offerings are getting more diverse
and headline-grabbing as the pandemic prolongs.
The richest cash offer comes out of West Virginia.
So there's a little over $20,000 that they're offering,
12,000 in cash and 8,000 in all kinds of amenities.
So park membership, equipment rental.
They're really trying to connect people
to the outdoor wonders of West Virginia
and they're using the incentive to do that.
Offers like Greensburg, Indiana,
they're offering $5,000 of cash
but really the richness comes in their ability
to sort of connect you to the community.
They offer things like a "Grandparents On Demand"
where a local couple will babysit your kids for date night
or stand in for them at Grandparents Day at school.
That's Evan Hock.
He co-founded MakeMyMove.com at the end of 2020
to help those curious about moving,
just as the recent uptick in remote work was taking off.
We rolled it out nationally about a year ago
where we've had over 40,000 people register
and are sort of actively planning their moves
on the platform.
As cities promote their best attributes,
their incentive offerings are also getting more creative.
How does $1,000 at Jimmy John's sound?
Or some free plots of land, or are free whitewater rafting
or lift tickets more your speed?
Now for the first time in the country's history,
there are tens of millions of people
that are geographical free agents.
They're looking for new homes,
and that just means it's open season
for communities that are trying to grow.
Before digging into these programs,
let's step back and ask
what problem are they trying to solve?
For the most part, they want highly paid,
highly skilled workers to join their ranks.
It's a bit of a different model
than cities used to be using
where they were incentivizing with tax breaks or kickbacks
to hold companies to move.
People would want an Amazon to move into their town
so they could employ a lot of local workers.
Well, it makes sense.
They have the west coast Washington
and the east coast Washington.
Alexa, why should Amazon build HQ2 in Frisco?
Frisco, Texas thinks big.
We have blown up our regulatory process
over the last couple years
so that people who've come to do business with us
know that we are open for business.
And this is a kind of a twist on that model
where cities are looking at individual workers
that aren't necessarily gonna be employed
in the local economy,
but are going to be ticking their salaries,
spending at local restaurants, buying homes,
paying taxes, and bringing their kids and their partners
and maybe their family members.
You can find the nation's busiest program
in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Tulsa started in 2018 before the pandemic,
before the remote work way of life became so widespread.
So they started with about 75 people.
They've grown exponentially over the past few years.
But what they realized is there's a big problem
with brain drain in Tulsa.
A lot of people go to universities in the region and leave.
So what Tulsa was trying to do is stem that brain drain.
There's over 1300 people in Tulsa remote now.
And we really are looking for people
that don't necessarily have a mentality
of I'm coming to change a city.
More so, they wanna be a part of something awesome
that's already happening.
We have a weekly newsletter that goes out to our members
that highlights all the different social events
and gatherings that we have.
We've got a slack community that we post updates in there.
Oftentimes things are happening organically
as well with members, 90% of the folks that are done
with their one year commitment stay in Tulsa
beyond that year.
Some programs like Northwest Arkansas's
Bitcoin and a bike incentive
are designed not for pulling in thousands of new residents,
but to deliberately select those
with a set of specific qualities.
Today, we've got about 50 people on the ground
that have taken advantage of the incentive program.
How to tell your spouse you're considering a move
to Northwest Arkansas?
Step one, remind them of your vows.
What we're trying to do is identify
the right types of talent.
And the reason why is we've have
one of the strongest economies in the country
but it's built primarily on Walmart, Tyson,
J.B. Hunt there at 14
hundred companies with presence here that supply Walmart.
Right now, they are probably, they're successful.
They're gonna continue to be successful,
but they're not gonna hire a lot more workers, right?
Every region, they need more tech talent.
They need more expertise in blockchain.
So, this program is to really define those key people
that are gonna help move this region forward.
For Hawaii's program, Movers & Shakas,
the goal isn't necessarily growing the population at all.
We are very focused
on trying to bring back return in Kamaʻāina,
which are people who have lived in Hawaii
typically refers to people who are born and raised here,
which is very different,
which can include native Hawaiians, but not necessarily.
Our program is really about bringing people to Hawaii
to learn, contribute and connect.
A goal of our program isn't necessarily
to have people move to Hawaii or move back to Hawaii,
although that would be awesome,
and we have a couple examples of that,
but it's really to build long lasting personal
and professional ties and relationships to Hawaii.
And what that does is reduce the economic distance
with the continent.
Aside from people taking advantage
of the programs themselves,
their mere existence makes for good advertising.
It's a climb that's been started by so many,
a climb taken by those who seek a life less ordinary.
Maybe you already wanted to move
and maybe already your mom lives in Savannah, Georgia,
but you never thought it would be possible
to make that kind of move.
And then you see Savannah, Georgia
putting together this kind of package
and it gets back on your radar.
And for a lot of the people
that these programs are luring,
the $10,000 or $5,000 or whatever the case may be,
is maybe covering just the moving cost
but isn't enough to make you uproot your entire life
and move somewhere new.
So far, all of these programs
are relatively small compared to the populations
of the places in which they exist.
So while they haven't caused too much fuss with locals...
There's traffic jams now on some of the main arterials.
We're just not used to that.
So our patience level is not quite there.
There is always going to be
a healthy amount of skepticism to the arrival of newcomers.
Tulsa's program is funded with philanthropic dollars.
It's funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation
which is this big philanthropy based in town.
That's the same for Northwest Arkansas,
which is funded by another philanthropy
that's locally based.
It seems like that's the dominant model so far,
but some taxpayers have started to put the bill
in other cities.
It's usually easier to make the sell to the public
that you're giving money to outsiders
when it's not taxpayer money
funding these kinds of programs.
In Northwest Arkansas,
there's a really large urban-rural divide.
There are a lot of hourly workers.
They're paying tech workers, entrepreneurs
$10,000 in Bitcoin to move there.
There is the sense among some
that the money could be better spent
incentivizing other things,
like asking businesses to raise their minimum wage.
I myself was a skeptic.
I actually got this role because of an op-ed
that I wrote in the Star Advertiser,
which is our local daily newspaper
which was largely against the program.
I was like, why are we bringing in tech bros
dripping with COVID to come and drive my rent up
and destroy the aloha spirit?
When it came to Hawaii, I felt very protective.
What I realized is that that us versus them
kind of tribal mentality is very real and it's innate.
And we have to acknowledge that it's there.
And we also have to ask ourselves like,
well, how do we bring in newcomers?
How do we see things as not a zero sum game?
Tulsa Remote's Justin Harlan
admits that the program
had some critics from the local community,
but a recent independent economic impact report
estimates its brought in $62 million
in local earnings into the city, and added 600 jobs.
For many decades, we've seen export of talent
out of a lot of communities
towards these big economic centers.
And so one way to think about this
is a redistribution of a lot of that economic impact.
Of course, moving between cities
can be a huge lifestyle change,
and it's not necessarily for everyone.
For a few weeks ago,
it was literally snowing in the backyard.
Listen, I moved to Las Vegas not to have snow like that.
Why I'm leaving Austin, Texas,
it's really because of the lack of diversity.
I mean, also in a lot of Facebook groups,
and like all through the Facebook groups
who are like the dating here is trash.
As for those big expensive cities
bleeding remote worker talent,
there doesn't seem to be much to worry about.
Between March 2020 and February 2021,
84% of movers in the US stayed in the same metro area.
In New York City, the most popular place
people in Manhattan moved to, Brooklyn.
In the end, even if you personally don't take part in
or have any interest whatsoever in one of these programs,
there is an advantage for these places
to get their names out there.
I think for a lot of cities,
they think there's nothing really to lose
despite some of the questions about its efficacy.
It doesn't really hurt to say we're open to newcomers.
We're a place that we wanna put on the map.