I'm wondering why that is. I would think that with the growing movement against NIMBYism that there would be enough people fed up with those sorts of policies to start moving out of the areas they don't agree with.

* people find the stability of the known more compelling than the danger of the hypothetical. Employers want to be where their clients and employees will be, residents want to be in a place with decent shops and services. This kind of chicken/egg problem is usually the failure of most planned towns, and the only successful ones are usually a new capital or something because the government doesn‘t care as much. And even then that isn‘t guaranteed; Sejong is supposed to be the capital of South Korea but employees still hate it because even with cost of living issues and long commutes Seoul is more compelling.

* cheap land is usually cheap for a reason. Land in the middle of the desert West probably doesn‘t have the required water rights to support habitation. Land in the middle of nowhere in general has few services and high logistics costs. Former industrial land requires environmental remediation. Foreclosed land may require paying outstanding tax bills. And those are the relatively straightforward problems, to say nothing of places with high crime, bad schools or other complex societal issues.

* a lot of these places are going to turn NIMBY if a bunch of outsiders come, buy up housing and export their cost of living crisis to their community. It doesn‘t take that many people to tighten up the housing market in a town of 10,000.

"And those are the relatively straightforward problems, to say nothing of places with high crime, bad schools or other complex societal issues."

It seems every city has areas within it with these issues. So this shouldn't affect the possibility of moving to areas that have decent schools. And there are solutions to many, like private schools can be a good option especially if the yearly cost is less than the property tax in a HCOL area.

"It doesn‘t take that many people to tighten up the housing market in a town of 10,000."

It doesn't have to be a huge influx, nor all at once. The point is that zoning is less restrictive and land is cheaper, so people can build. The depressed areas have relatively high vacancies anyways.

"Employers want to be where their clients and employees will be, residents want to be in a place with decent shops and services."

Some people want nature. Shops aren't as much of a concern today with internet delivery. I find it highly suspect that people all want exactly the same thing. It might be more likely that the people in one group are just being left behind.

> So this shouldn't affect the possibility of moving to areas that have decent schools.

It doesn't, but how much cheap land in Goldilocks-type areas really exists? The housing price problem is already becoming national in scale.

> It doesn't have to be a huge influx, nor all at once.

That ship sailed a long time ago. It already is. It turns out 1% of Californians leaving annually is still half a million people swarming other places. You cannot run into a town in the Mountain West or PNW where locals aren't complaining about Californians driving up prices. Encouraging more people to do this is going to exacerbate the problem.

> Shops aren't as much of a concern today with internet delivery.

There's still a baseline. To use your example of Appalachia in a different comment chain, consider that people in 40 counties in West Virginia today are food deserts without easy access to fresh food. Instacart is more expensive and not available everywhere.

https://www.wvpublic.org/podcast/inside-appalachia/2015-10-0...

"It doesn't, but how much cheap land in Goldilocks-type areas really exists?"

That's my point - it doesn't have to be perfect. Otherwise nothing will solve it.

"Encouraging more people to do this is going to exacerbate the problem."

They should be moving to places that are shrinking. That's what I'm suggesting.

That food desert thing is a joke. They're talking about supermarkets, yet there are other sources like farm stands. 10 rural miles is nothing. That might be a 10-15 minute trip if you've ever driven in WV and seen the speeds people drive.

As someone who has wanted to desperately build on "goldilocks" land for a long time, the thing that has held me up is not zoning but the uniform building code. I simply only have enough money to build a shack. There are plenty of these out in the West, but at some point someone said "nah fuck them kids" and decided great-grandaddies shack is fine for somebodies grandkid to live in but if I build new property of literally the same thing I've committed a cardinal sin of safety. This means even though a shack would still be cheap to build, their supply is artificially limited (indeed irreplaceable) to the point a shack is practically as expensive to buy "used" as a fully up to code newer construction. And thus again I am cast aside, doomed to rent some overbuilt up-to-code construction.

There's the option of a tiny home on wheels. Most states have low sqft requirements for permanent structures, like 650 sqft. If you do the work yourself using professionally created plans, it's possible to do it cheaply and in stages. Once the shell of the house is complete, finishing the inside can be done cheaply by buying discount materials whenever they are available. This is stuff like returned paint and carpet or vinyl remnants (perfect for a small house with small rooms). You can even make a list and ask the local Lowes manager to give you a call if stuff is available. Then there's stuff like Craigslist for free or cheap sinks, counters, furniture, etc.

The biggest issue/cost isn't the actual building codes, as those are easy to meet in most places. It's the sanitation requirements. Those old shacks were allowed to have outhouses, or at least septic systems that would no longer pass. Septic systems are a pain to put in and are quite expensive.

It's a good point. The other idea I had was creating multiple <200 sq ft structures, so that none of them met the minimum area required for a permit and then using an outdoor hallway to join them.

> That's my point - it doesn't have to be perfect. Otherwise nothing will solve it.

> They should be moving to places that are shrinking. That's what I'm suggesting.

And we're back to "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."

> That food desert thing is a joke. They're talking about supermarkets, yet there are other sources like farm stands. 10 rural miles is nothing. That might be a 10-15 minute trip if you've ever driven in WV and seen the speeds people drive.

* Supermarkets in the US provide all kinds of out-of-season produce throughout the year. This is what consumers have come to expect, and is an inherent limitation of farm stands.

* Those most struggling with COL also struggle with the cost of transportation in the US, so driving a dozen miles is a non-starter.

And move where? Most of the cities that are growing have a housing crisis. Most of the cities that are shrinking can have major safety issues - see @pontifier's misadventure in Pine Bluff, AR[1] for a particularly extreme anecdote.

1. https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff...

There can be a vicious cycle driving safety concerns. If people being jobs to the area (pontifier didn’t) then things can get better. There are countless other towns and cities and they don't all have a safety problem. There are plenty of smaller cities in Appalachia that could be good candidates.

I’m curious what cities you have in mind.

I’ve spent time in Western, PA and while it’s definitely a lot safer than Pine Bluff, feels like there’s lots of issues with pollution, blight, and opiates even with fracking jobs and money coming into the area.

Opiates are literally everywhere, even in affluent areas (Chester County's main line area has issues, but they look different since they have money). Blight (assuming this is houses that don't look great) is going to occur anywhere there's a lack of money. The reason jobs don't fully fix the blight is that many of those people are on a fixed income and retired (elderly are an outsized portion of the population since the kids had to move away for work). The people who do have jobs tend to have well kept properties. I'm not sure about the pollution problem aside from some sulfur creeks in the region.

I'm sure there are plenty of candidate cities throughout the overall region, and it would likely depend on what the industry is. Someplace around Indiana PA would be good if you need semi close access to a commercial airport, a larger city, or a college. Erie could be similar. Johnstown PA area is good if you have government contracts, defense work, or need a regional or shipping airport. Bedford or Breezewood PA can be good for warehouses and shipping with the highways. Medium to small companies would be well served to position themselves between two medium/small towns for cheap land and larger workforce pool without being near the larger cities, like Millville and Stillwater as an example.

There's a chicken and egg problem.

Workers don't want to move to sparsely populated areas because there aren't many jobs, and companies don't want to do it because there aren't any workers.

E.g. I wouldn't mind working in a sparsely populated area, but there's a good chance my employer would be the only one I could work for (without giving up and working retail or something). My employer doesn't want to relocate there because good luck convincing people to relocate there given the above.

There are infrastructure problems, too. Good luck getting a business class 40Gbps Internet connection in Nowhere, Wyoming.

It would go a long way if remote work was normalized (or legislated), and the FCC actually forced ISPs to run reasonable Internet connections outside of major metropolitan areas.