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Living in a rural area is not actually either cheap or easy. You need the skills to either profit off the land, which is not a trivial thing, or you to have a j

Living in a rural area is not actually either cheap or easy. You need the skills to either profit off the land, which is not a trivial thing, or you to have a job that will allow you to afford to commute. What incentives are you imagining, relative to reducing the housing cost burden in areas that already have many of those incentives (for instance, access to easy irregular work or income sources)?

cyberax 1y ago
> Living in a rural area is not actually either cheap or easy. Who's talking about rural areas? There are plenty of small cities with ~100k population. With the WFH, it's entirely feasible to live there. But no, we're spiraling into an ever more toxic housing density/cost pit.
- kyralis 1y ago
  The parent is talking about rural areas: > You can buy houses in rural New York for $100k-$150k. But for your comment, what percentage of the population do you believe qualifies for WFH? Do you think the population at risk of homelessness does? Are we going to see WFH hotel check in desks, restaurant servers, and other manual work soon? Certainly if you have a well-paying WFH job you can work from nearly anywhere. I'm an example! I live in a rural area, precisely because I have a WFH job that enables it. But I still acknowledge that I'm that exception, not the rule.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    1. These cities with ~100k population _are_ basically in rural areas. My prototypical example: Bend, OR. 2. You can live in real rural areas without doing agriculture just fine. > But for your comment, what percentage of the population do you believe qualifies for WFH? There are estimates that go as high as 60% of the working population in the US. During COVID, it went up to 72% but that clearly was not optimal. > Do you think the population at risk of homelessness does? Are we going to see WFH hotel check in desks, restaurant servers, and other manual work soon? These service jobs can also work in smaller cities. The _only_ way to solve the housing problem is by creating _more_ of these smaller cities or by increasing the size of existing cities by a bit. There's no harm if a 50k city becomes 100k by adding a couple of suburbs. And this provides plenty of population to need baristas, waiters, hair stylists, etc. I'm very anti-urbanist and I'd like to see abominations like NYC to be demolished, just like we did with polluting factories. But there's always going to be a need for central places for services and businesses, and it's fine as long as they do not start growing uncontrollably.

cyberax 1y ago

> Living in a rural area is not actually either cheap or easy. Who's talking about rural areas? There are plenty of small cities with ~100k population. With the WFH, it's entirely feasible to live there. But no, we're spiraling into an ever more toxic housing density/cost pit.

kyralis 1y ago
The parent is talking about rural areas: > You can buy houses in rural New York for $100k-$150k. But for your comment, what percentage of the population do you believe qualifies for WFH? Do you think the population at risk of homelessness does? Are we going to see WFH hotel check in desks, restaurant servers, and other manual work soon? Certainly if you have a well-paying WFH job you can work from nearly anywhere. I'm an example! I live in a rural area, precisely because I have a WFH job that enables it. But I still acknowledge that I'm that exception, not the rule.
- cyberax 1y ago
  1. These cities with ~100k population _are_ basically in rural areas. My prototypical example: Bend, OR. 2. You can live in real rural areas without doing agriculture just fine. > But for your comment, what percentage of the population do you believe qualifies for WFH? There are estimates that go as high as 60% of the working population in the US. During COVID, it went up to 72% but that clearly was not optimal. > Do you think the population at risk of homelessness does? Are we going to see WFH hotel check in desks, restaurant servers, and other manual work soon? These service jobs can also work in smaller cities. The _only_ way to solve the housing problem is by creating _more_ of these smaller cities or by increasing the size of existing cities by a bit. There's no harm if a 50k city becomes 100k by adding a couple of suburbs. And this provides plenty of population to need baristas, waiters, hair stylists, etc. I'm very anti-urbanist and I'd like to see abominations like NYC to be demolished, just like we did with polluting factories. But there's always going to be a need for central places for services and businesses, and it's fine as long as they do not start growing uncontrollably.