Originally published at: This Deep South town will pay you $6,000 to move there | Boing Boing
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[Checks if weed is legal]
NOPE!
It does look like medical is and that weed has been decriminalized. Better but not good enough.
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There are only 30 spots in the program
Why so keen to merely to attract 30 more residents? I guess the numbers say anyone buying a house of that value will pay more in local taxes and more in the local economy. So why only 30? Trial programme?
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I guess that’s cheaper than spending money to make it a nice place to live.
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I’ve been on a paddle boat named the Natchez.
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I’m sure that there’s some questionable trickle-down theory for how this works out and is super glorious for everyone; but does anyone else have some…niggling doubts…about the wisdom of this other-than-prosperous municipality dedicating resources to subsidizing comparatively wealthy telecommuters to encourage them to come and buy stuff from amazon there rather than elsewhere?
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@fuzzyfungus from the Wikipedia:
Adams County Correctional Center, a private prison operated by the Corrections Corporation of America on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Prisons
The prison is evidently the sole large employer in Natchez. The city may be expecting a huge downturn in their economy and jobs market since the Biden Admin is phasing out private prisons.
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“Damn! Here comes the neighborhood.”
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Natchez appears still to suffer from segregation. Its demographics are 54% African-American and 44% white. The two public high schools have 96% and 94% minority enrollment. The two private high schools have 7% and 16%.
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I feel like I would be checking the voting results from this area before I considered something like this…
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Natchez is a beautiful town, but there isn’t much there as far as business. There are fewer people and jobs there now than 60 years ago. Not sure why they would be doing this as 30 people won’t make a difference and $6k is not a big incentive considering it requires moving and buying a $150k+ home. Natchez also isn’t friendly to yankees. Seriously
That said. I’m looking at this offer and thinking hard. I’d love to move to a quiet spot of land near Natchez.
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Like you really had to check if weed is fully legal in Mississippi! 
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I would think that’s more of a KPI for the program itself, than necessarily being tied to what they think interest will be.
If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if they made the public number (30) maybe two to three times as high as they think real interest might be, in order to present the look like all sorts of people might be reaching out to them.
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Take this little gem, now just find the humans to occupy it.
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I would think they have considered the balance of what they might get out of this vs. what they are putting in, right?
“30” as a stated limit might well be tied to a notion of the maximum investment they are willing to make, and what they think their community gets out of that. There are probably different “ratios of worthiness” of the program itself, based on how much interest and followthrough is generated.
I’m sure they’ve made some assumptions about capacity for kids in the local schools (one of the major cost centers) and any costs associated with maintaining those residents from other perspectives.
People still have to buy groceries, so there is some revenue generation from that perspective. There may be a cost-of-unoccupation, perhaps empty properties cause other sorts of problems that bring other cost centers, yada yada. Maybe people taking care of those unoccupied properties brings up property value elsewhere, thus tax revenue.
So, is their model right? Who the heck knows. shrug It’s always a bit of a roll of the dice, whether it’s this, or giving major tax cuts to a company like Amazon to build a major center in, say, the NYC area. I think there are arguments to be made that that was a missed opportunity for NY. But you never know, maybe it’s good leverage to have in the bank for the next conversation. Bidniss…
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Who’s in? 
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My family has been trying to find a house in the San Francisco Bay Area for months (years really, but just got serious recently), so every time I see prices for real estate listings for other parts of the country it feels like a cruel joke. That building would easily go for 10 times as much here.
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That’s why Dear Wife and I split for Joshua Tree / Yucca Valley. The same house in San Diego would have been 2 - 3 million dollars, yes that US dollars, we got ours for pennies on the dollars, that’s Southern Cali. Market dollars. We played the search & destroy for a home to take us into out twilight years, the stress / bullshit / out bid 7 times… The greater San Diego area was tied up long ago for us, thusly we looked else wheres.
I do not envy anyone looking in the California market, it’s a f’ing nightmare.
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As someone who lives in Vancouver I feel you. When I watch some HGTV shows and people talk about the "expensive " option, and the whole house is less than a minimum down-payment it stings a little. It is interesting listening to people complain about finishing/material quality in a house far nicer than your own and a fraction of the cost.
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