I just got back from a visit with family in Cumberland. It's the epitome of rust belt. What used to be a thriving manufacturing area has become an abandoned service-sector economy with low-wage jobs. Property values are dirt cheap, even for nice houses. There isn't much nearby, you have to travel hours from Pittsburgh to even get there by plane. Tales of theft of items like power tools from relatively remote farms are common. It doesn't look quite as bad as videos I've seen of poorer parts of Appalachia, but it's pretty close. I don't know how they will be able to afford this as the tax base has all but left and Cumberland is trying to pinch every penny they can to afford their over-compensated government staff. It's a pretty sad state of affairs, this seems more like a last-ditch marketing effort.
Sounds like a place I wouldn't mind working if I can find a remote position again. I'm a big introvert, and I would like to move somewhere more greener (getting tired of living in the middle of a bland hot dessert)
At some point, many people start thinking about things like access to good healthcare, various types of trades, ability to travel without it being a huge hassle, etc. Doesn't mean you need to live right around a big city but I doubt I would want every task or appointment to be a big undertaking.
Healthcare is huge. It's amazing how terrible access to good care is in many rural areas. It's something people often overlook but it's just so important.
The problem is a mix of people leaving rural areas which increases per patient overhead at facilities, plus mergers and private equity takeovers.
Hospital chains and healthcare systems have been consolidating like crazy for decades and it's still going strong - 80 or so hospitals merge every year. PE has also been snapping up private practices like crazy, too.
Though the consolidation is something of a mixed bag. My community hospital network had some pretty good docs but lab work, appointments, and so forth was pretty much faxes and phone calls which sometimes worked. Now they're on Mass General Brigham's electronic records system and it's a lot better.
It's not quite that bad. For example, the Boston area is arguably as good or better than those two cities. And some higher-income relatively small town/rural areas are pretty decent. But it definitely becomes a bigger consideration as you get older--although you can of course get unlucky at any time.
It’s a problem in the medium sized cities too? Because many of the smaller rural facilities are being closed down (often in the wake of for-profit buyouts), and then all those displaced patients overrun the remaining facilities in surrounding towns.
Here in Australia people retire ‘down the coast’. For us that’s the stunning south of NSW. Look up Eden (yes, really, Eden).
And then … they come back to the city. Because the older you are the more medical care you need, and there just aren’t enough doctors down there, or in any other regional area.
This is actually a very good point. The family I visited travel 1hr+ to get healthcare services because the local ones are pretty bad. They're not elderly per se, only a few years into retirement but they definitely have health issues that come with old age. They're relatively well-off and live in the nicer section of Cumberland where doctors and lawyers lived. I can't imagine how bad it is for people who are just getting by.
I doubt it. Physicians (and nurse practitioners, etc. at urgent care clinics) could arguably do more remotely but I'm not convinced that reducing the involvement of trained humans would be a positive move.
I think a lot of people actually believe that kind of thing.
I was rather impressed with the nurse practitioner at a CVS Instant Clinic a couple of months back. I could have tried to get an appointment with my primary care when I got home. But when I actually saw her a few weeks later for a scheduled appointment, she basically shrugged and said she'd have done exactly the same thing the nurse practitioner did. (Keep taking Tussin and there's a prescription for an inhaler at the pharmacy counter.)
Pre-COVID (and the test I took was negative for what little that was worth), it would have been eh you have a virus. Which ended up basically the diagnosis.
Don't fall for it. I had family in Cumberland for 20 years and I know it well. It's a very dark place, most people there barely finished high school and drug abuse is really bad.
The area around Cumberland, mostly to the south towards Moorefield and Petersburg, WV, has a somewhat similar climate to the Tokaj region of Hungary, known for growing rare botrytized wines that sell for a fortune. I found this one day when I looked at the map of precipitation activity the US and saw an unexpected dry(ish) spot in northeastern West Virginia.
Edit: speak up, annoyant... "Distance" is "standing apart". It is not confined to space - in fact, the original meaning is that of "diverging in stances" (i.e. a quarrel), and the geometric one comes one century later. And there exist languages where speaking of "distance in time" is language in use - so, if in your neighborhood they don't speak this way, it is a problem of your neighborhood.
2 hours from a central hub I'd actually consider a plus. If you travel for work it's bad, but for any personal trip, skipping a connection is pretty valuable. Not just in time, but generally international / longer flights are higher priority, and are less likely to be randomly delayed or canceled.
I was on the far edge of relatively convenient airport access when I was working and traveling a lot (and, at some point, decided my employer was just going to pay for a private car whether they complained or not, which they didn't). Now I travel somewhat less but take fewer discrete trips so just pay my own transportation out of pocket.
Yeah I’m about 2 hours from the nearest real airport and it’s pretty miserable. Anything I can drive in 8 hours or less is faster to drive.
What you don’t appreciate is that it’s not just the added distance, it’s all the extra uncertainty. Losing an extra hour due to getting stuck on the highway behind an accident is a thing you have to account for.
So in the end you end up having to leave like 4 hours or more before your flight.
I live 400 miles in a straight line and I can drive to downtown Atlanta faster than I can fly to the Atlanta airport.
And, as I say, I get a private car and they do not want to cut things close (understandably). So my not uncommon 6am or 7am flights to either get to Europe without a redeye or to get to the West Coast with the afternoon free end up being 3am pickups.
Not quite true for Dulles. You're looking at 3 hours in good traffic, and it's not a relaxing drive. BWI could be done in 2.5 hours and you don't have to deal with the two way road from Frederick to Leesburg.
If you're in cumberland proper, your main option is cable, which is fine, fast and stable. since the culture is blue collar, their lineman due a perfectionist tier type guys who pride themselves in their craft. they have a guy there who does fibre and is pretty chill but ironically he only runs line rurally (not in the main urban core of cumberland). they have a startup-ish grass roots wireless based internet which is cool but kind of hard to plug into.
They also have various speakeasies fully in the classic unlicensed since but for obvious reasons I won't say where. I would call it a "deregulated" region. Whereas in most of MD you have vehicle emissions and all that redtape, none of it in cumberland.
there are methheads about but police force and community are hand in hand and highly functional
if you're in cumberland proper all you could want is walkable, including an amtrak station that links you directly to DC and chicago, walking distance
there is an aspect of xenophobia but generally if you live there a while, well, if you're willing to live in cumberland that's good enough for most people to welcome you. it does have a small town vibe as far as saying hello to everyone on the sidewalk as such
the other point people who visit may miss about appalachian culture (it is appalachian culture very much so, not maryland culture) is everyone dresses like a methhead, even people who aren't methheads, so take appearences softly.
That generally means most properties will have decent broadband/>25mbps internet, some will have ADSL <25mbps, and a few won't have internet or you'll have to run it to the property (costs a few thousand USD generally).
First, if you aren't already, look into what the FCC is doing with BEAD funding, and consequently what all the states are doing with mapping broadband provision to try and capture some of that money. Tennesee for example.
More generally, there is a little funkiness with the exoroad site. I guess this project is still in the assembly stage?
- When I search for a US county, say Culpeper or Fairfax in Virginia, I get the map and then some very stock images. The images are on things that don't exist in the specific county. E.g. Fairfax doesn't have a cathedral and a giant stately home.
- The crime stats are also a bit weirdly presented. If a county is "9 of 10" for crime that makes it sound terrible...but I think you render it in green to show that it's good? And what does the statistic actually mean? "out of 10 equivalently populated counties?" say, or something else?
Images have quality problems, like you described, as I haven't got accuracy figured out across the 3k+ counties.
Crime stat is awkward because everything else 9/10 (schools / snow) sounds like good or a lot. But with crime, it's a feature that people want less of. Since there's so many features I went with 10/10 is consistently good, but I do keep getting feedback about this that maybe I should change it.
Out of 10 is a percentile: 10/10 = top 10%, 9/10 = top 20%, 1/10 = bottom 10%. I'm trying to figure out the right granularity between showing the most important info for quickly figuring out the stat, vs. showing all the details about it, because there's 50 features, with another potential 50, and many have multiple ways of thinking about it. So it can quickly become a deluge of info without the right UI to surface <-> deep.
I really appreciate the feedback and my email is eric@exoroad.com in case this is off topic.
For someone who relies on a internet connection for their professional work I'd say 100 Mbps is the floor of "good" in 2024. I think that's what the FCC updated their definition of broadband to earlier this year.
When I looked at the claimed coverage map from providers it was a joke - they just played "color inside the lines" for our region. Ask anyone who has spent more than a couple days here and they can tick off all the areas you don't get any coverage.
Sure, if you don't mind regular drops while you're handed off between satellites, and many areas being oversubscribed so badly that people are getting performance worse than DSL.
My brother had it for a while in fairly rural Maine. Eventually got fiber but the Starlink was pretty good if not 100%. I used Starlink on an Atlantic crossing a few months back and it was pretty solid. It's not perfect--or probably as good as my Comcast is these days--but it's pretty good in my experience. But then I'm old enough to remember both pre-broadband and really unreliable broadband.
I only know one person with Starlink, but they seem happy with it. With the previous local provider they paid for 30Mbps, but were getting 15. With Starlink it’s around 230Mbps.
While that’s slower than my cable service in the city, for him, it’s a significant improvement and a big quality of life upgrade.
With Starlink, this question is getting less important. Loads of my family in N. Georgia have started using it and it's crazy how much better it is than the local competition
I've been using Starlink while RVing around all of North America for four months every summer. This is my third summer doing so. Historically, I've bashed on it a fair bit, because it's not the panacea people think it is for on-the-go Internet.
It's gotten way better, though. The main problem with using it on the go is that campgrounds have trees and Starlink hates trees. If you're in one place, that problem doesn't exist, so long as you have a clear northern sky view.
The disconnection thing is a non-issue. I use it for video meetings every day at work. It never disconnects for more than a second or two, and I almost never notice it. Connections always recover on their own and almost instantly.
I've got a couple people on my team in remote parts of Canada and Chile and they both use Starlink to work remotely with my teams every day (zoom, slack, github, etc.). It's been great for the past year or so. Haven't seen any issues with our Zoom meetings.
I wonder if it's geographically variable. How often do satellites switches happen?
I've been on Starlink since it was first commercially available (I got lucky) so I've seen a lot of changes over the years, and this did used to happen pretty regularly, but it has improved quite a bit. I don't know if Starlink fixed it or if Zoom did, but it's much better. Google Meet has handled these hiccups like a champ for a while and has gotten so good it seems like magic.
Yes, it one of the best thing that has happened in many, many years, excluding the birth of kids. It made living where we live viable in an age of remote meetings.
I had been thinking about looking at history from the lens of information technology.
China is an interesting example, in that it was so well ahead of the curve until around 1700s. In the 1800s, when telegraphs were connecting the Western world together, the Qing dynasty China would not have been able to participate unless pictographs could be encoded as easily as letters (let alone the century of uprisings, rebellions, and civil war).
But look at Tang Dynasty China. The Silk Road was a part of a global trade network reaching through the Middle East, and into Africa, along with maritime routes from India.
It wasn’t just trade goods that travelled. Ideas — religious, cultural, technological, flowed along the network. But they travelled only as fast as trade goods.
I think it is when information is able to flow faster than the physical items that, we might find some insights about what is going on now.
Maybe youre not familiar with Qwest Communications?
Man does SV have stories to tell that will be lost to us old BOFH ilk:
Qwest communications came about when the railroad realized they had rights to the easement lanes on either side of ALL their train tracks, that allowed them to basically do anything they wanted with that strip of land.
So Qwest Communications was born to run fiber along all the tracks and built a huge fiber infra.
There was a huge scandal with the telecom giants, and Qwest's CEO was convicted:
---
Dossier: Qwest Communications
Creation and Early Years
- Qwest Communications was formed in 1996 as a spin-off from the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The railroad company had been granted easement rights to lay fiber-optic cables along their tracks, which Qwest leveraged to build a massive fiber-optic network.
Fiber-Optic Network Expansion
- Qwest used the easement rights to lay fiber-optic cables along the railroad tracks, expanding their network across the western United States. This strategic move allowed Qwest to:
- Reduce costs: By utilizing existing railroad easements, Qwest avoided the need to purchase or lease land for their fiber-optic cables.
- Increase efficiency: The railroad tracks provided a direct route for fiber-optic cables, reducing the need for detours and minimizing signal degradation.
Scandal and Conviction of CEO Joseph Nacchio
- In 2005, Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was convicted of insider trading and sentenced to six years in prison. The scandal involved Nacchio selling millions of dollars' worth of Qwest stock while aware of the company's financial struggles.
Scale of Fiber Plant
- Qwest built an extensive fiber-optic network, spanning over 190,000 miles across the United States. This massive infrastructure enabled Qwest to offer high-speed data and voice services to customers.
This sounds a lot like the story of Sprint (Southern Pacific Railroad INTernet?). If I were less lazy I bet I could find the story where this part of Sprint morphed into Qwest.
A rural community based on a single industry is always high risk for economic sustainability.
Silicon Valley is has cities older than the USA, was grown by the gold rush, the early movie studios, the defense industry (plus some world class universities), NASA contractors, microelectronics, etc. The most recent iteration is software startups.
Cities are always more resilient than isolated rural communities because they are inherently more diversified in both economy and workforce.
Another example, from a longnow podcast, is the tendency of people to think of themselves as citizens of a particular city (I’m from San Francisco, I’m from Venice, I’m from Helsinki), perhaps even more so than a state/province or a nationality in some cases.
As a native Marylander I always find myself forgetting about Cumberland, which is a shame. As someone who has mostly lived in and around Baltimore, you head west to Frederick (aka Fredneck) for the small city in the middle of rural farmland. If you keep heading west you get to Hagerstown which feels way out there in farm country. And if you keep heading west you eventually move from farms to mountains and you hit Cumberland, which looks like a city that time forgot.
As other folks have commented, there’s some beautiful architecture and the old part of the city seems like it could be a bustling place. There’s a train station and easy access to the great outdoors. But the jobs have long gone and drug addiction has taken root for so many there. I don’t know the best way to revive a place like that but I hope something eventually works.
And if you travel farther west on 70, you'll eventually reach Wheeling, WVA. At one time its position on the Ohio river and near railroads made it a transportation hub, it made money in iron, textile, and logging - they used to float logs down the river. The vestige of wealth is still visible in its architecture, beautiful brick homes, ornate porches, windows and roofs. It's this glimmer into this past, not so far in the distance, that is so sad to witness. A lot of the town has fallen into disrepair, not slum exactly, but heading there. There is a central market building with some kitschy arts and crafts, and food stalls that supply tour buses. The buses come for Wheeling Island Casino, which has one of the last two remaining greyhound racetracks in the US. There's some attempt at preserving the historic buildings and downtown. People keep leaving, and the tourist attractions are more of a detour stop than a destination point. There used to be a pie stall - best pies in the US, handmade, fresh ingredients, $15, baked to order by a retired teacher. He sold the shop, his kids didn't want it, it was too much work and they made more money doing other things.
I drove by Wheeling on my way to Texas from Maine. Literally looked like a city that was one great but is now dying. Very sad stuff. Apparently they are revitalizing downtown though.
Sure, but problem Cumberland has same problem as rest of Appalachia, it's geography isn't very good. Mountain areas make everything 10x times harder to build.
Let's say some big software company wanted to build second HQ. Even if Cumberland was attractive in workforce, education options and so forth, the architects would say "Building your HQ2 is going to be rough. There isn't enough flat land, flooding could be problematic, fiber companies are screaming about the trenching" Not to mention, where are you going to put all your workers since housing will run into same problem. So if you wanted to stay in MD, somewhere like Hagerstown or Salisbury would be a better choice since usable land is plentiful.
If there was an economy worth building for, the geography wouldn't be a blocker. Look at Seattle, Oakland, or the Hollywood hills. They're all built on rugged, mountainous terrain just as difficult as the Appalachians, but they don't suffer the same issues attracting wealth because their economic situation is so different. In fact, each of them has the opposite problem of demand to build vastly outstripping permission to build.
>Look at Seattle, Oakland, or the Hollywood hills. They're all built on rugged, mountainous terrain just as difficult as the Appalachians, but they don't suffer the same issues attracting wealth because their economic situation is so different.
Wrong. Seattle, Oakland and Los Angeles are mostly built on much flatter parts of those areas.
California entire geography is about "Hey, check out these massive valleys or coastal land we can build in." Same thing with Washington State, Seattle is in between Cascades and Olympics where there is all this flat land to build on. Yes, they running out of land and building into mountains now. That problem is like having FAANG scaling problems. It sucks but it's good/manageable problem to have and you have massive checkbooks to help solve it.
Have you been to Appalachia? It's not on the coast and does not have these benefits. If you want to compare it to West Coast areas, it's more like Sierra Nevada. Inland Mountains with only small valleys to build infrastructure in.
I've been to Appalachia. It didn't strike me as notably more rugged than any other reasonably hilly area, and quite a bit less rugged than many places known for it (e.g. the Alpine cities, or the Himalayas). The west coast cities were a reasonable comparison, because they're (1) in the same country and (2) Fairly comparable in elevation and grade, if not a bit worse. The oakland hills (and other bay area communities [1]) rise to comparable heights despite starting at sea level with 25% grades, for example. Queen Anne in Seattle [2] has almost exactly the same elevation gain, but the last 200 feet are basically a cliff. I'm not picking distant suburbs here, but rather historic parts of these areas that have been developed for almost a century. They only maintain the illusion of flatness now because the landscape has been intensively modified over that time to appear less severe.
Instead of just a few pictures showing rich area around a mountain that can afford it because companies like Apple have plenty of flat area, let's use available data provided by government agencies: https://topochange.cr.usgs.gov/topochange_viewer/viewer.htm
Cumberland, MD vs San Francisco. Wow, when I overlay urban areas of Bay Area, it's heavily built up in much flatter areas and gets much less dense as elevation change gets steeper. Not to mention, sea access gives you massive advantage since you are not having to move as much over really tall mountains.
Cumberland, MD has none of these. It's in a valley between two larger ridges of mountains but is heavily constrained. Also, not having sea access means transporting goods there is much more difficult and requires more infrastructure. And since we are one nation, you could just move west to much flatter Ohio and Great Lakes or East to flat parts of Maryland and Chesapeake Bay.
Sure, Bay area built up with creating really excellent schools that created really high paying industries but thinking it was "We lifted ourselves up by our bootstraps" and instead "Our geography and World War with Navy on our coast desperate to win really did help us."
I'm saying nothing about bootstrapping. What I'm saying is that difficult geography is not a blocker if the economics are sufficient. People built and regraded the hills around Oakland, Seattle, and LA because the economy was there first. The geography is an expensive inconvenience no one wants to deal with, not an unmanageable fact of life.
Seattle was MADE flat by literally using fire hoses to flatten hills and mountains [0].
That said, I disagree with the role geography has with developing a tech industry - most of it can be directly related to investment put during WW2 and the 1950s into innovation clusters.
For example, Seattle and aerospace (Boeing), Bay Area and computers+electronics+nukes (HP, IBM Almaden, LLNL, LLBL, Los Alamos managed by UCB), San Diego and Biotech+Defense Tech (Salk Lab, Navy), Portland and electronics (INL, PNNL, Tektronics, Intel), etc
I saw an interactive exhibit at Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle. It showed how different sections were regraded and you could push buttons where that section of hills and lakes would get lifted or dropped down. This wasn't a computer display, this was a real physical model of the city.
The Bay Area really benefits from Stanford and Berkeley being there. You need a steady stream of educated new grads to grow from.
Love that museum. Paul Allen really made Seattle such a great city - amazing museums, good sports, amazing biotech research, strong entrepreneurship scene. It's like Boston but better.
> Bay Area really benefits from Stanford and Berkeley
Also UCSF (major biotech hub) and SJSU (major electronics hub - imo EE@SJSU makes EE@Stanford look like child's play).
Extrinsic monetary incentives are among the worst ways to stimulate growth. Anyone who would uproot their life for $10k is likely not the right personality to restore prosperity.
Other strategies have worked to gentrify depressed neighborhoods, like attracting bohemians or entrepreneurs with lower rents and tax relief, based on a strict qualification process.
Maryland is full of places like this. Beautiful exterior, super solid construction.
But on the inside, brittle plaster walls (hard to hang anything), lead paint covered by about 1/4 inch of repeated repainting, finicky radiant heating, sparse electrical outlets usually ungrounded, 100 year old plumbing, literally zero central air or proper ventilation anywhere (= upper levels are a sauna… look for a single HVAC grate anywhere), legacy window and door hardware that can’t be replaced… the list goes on. Every improvement project risks disrupting decades of toxic building materials and carefully grandfathered code violations.
It's really not a big deal to strip that all back and redo it all. It's much easier that way round than taking a badly constructed "newer" house actually making it solid.
In the UK houses of that type are the standard and renovated all the time.
I think disrupting "decades of ... carefully grandfathered code violations" is what makes it a big deal, not that there isn't a reasonable path forwards simply from a construction basis.
It's not that simple with inspectors before you pull a permit. They will let you do some things some ways some times. It's not predictable what will be allowed. The more change that is planned, the more total things will be rejected. It's usually an adversarial relationship, which makes what is possible even less predictable.
cumberland is already quite bohemian. 20k for free, and some houses can be had for that amount, is quite appealing to the home-owning bohemian.
the only trick of it - said bohemian probably would need a remote job. not much locally. so the obvious play is to make it a remote paradise and focus the remainder of the economy on supporting both the essentials and the entertainment / night life of said remote worker
This is what I thought of. 10k is nothing. I'd break even or actually come out behind just on their income taxes alone.
But say, 10 acres of land, with utility access/hookups? I may really consider it. By offering free land, with requirement that you build a stick house and live in it, you can ensure whoever is moving there has funds to build a house.
> The package, offering up to $20,000 is comprised of $10,000 in relocation cash, PLUS up to $10,000, dollar for dollar match, for approved renovations on an existing home, OR for a down payment on a newly constructed home within City limits.
Not “A $10k stipend is available for anyone moving to Cumberland, MD” as the submission title says currently , which sounded like a basic income.
Exactly. And they are going to reassess your property because you did renovations and get more than the $20k they gave you over time. Not even talking about the local taxes if you get a job there.
If that's case, I'm sure proper economic modeling will show that the $20k+administrative burden is better spent on reducing taxes for everyone in Cumberland.
Sounds like a gift to current residents who want to leave:
"...receive $10,000.00 (“Program Incentive”) payable at closing of a home or upon proof closing has occurred... "
Meaning that it will help prop up prices for those selling.
AND/OR a gift for their local construction workers:
"... receive up to $10,000, dollar for dollar match, for approved renovations ... on an existing home ... or for a down payment on a newly constructed home ..."
This is pretty important. I suspect the people who are motivated by $2k a year to move there are not the people who are going to be bringing a large influx of capital to a place that very much needs it.
Although actually, it looks like there are two separate programs, which you can be eligible for both of: The relocation credit, and the restoration or down payment credit, which is more of a match, so the actual amount is more like $20k total.
> I suspect the people who are motivated by $2k a year to move there are not the people who are going to be bringing a large influx of capital to a place that very much needs it.
You are correct, they are the people who will be available to be employed by those considering bringing a large influx of capital and taxable revenue. They're the bait.
Offering $10-20k to move somewhere that doesn't have jobs isn't going to build a labor market. Retirees and remote workers can decide to live in a labor nowhere to stretch their house buying power, lower cost of living, etc.
That actually explains a lot. They are trying to expand their tax base. The improvements stipend will allow them to assess the property at a higher value!
...and at the current admin's burn rate of almost 10% GDP deficit / year via printing of money, that 10K gonna be worth more like 5k at the present clip in 5 years. Honestly, reducing gov't spending by 50% to fit within the confines of the tax base simply isn't going to happen. So, with that in mind, that 5k (in future real terms) to move to a state with terrible rental laws for landlords (if that's the long term goal) just simply doesn't make any sense at all.
There is no linear relationship between national debt and inflation. There is no possible way to conclude that because of any particular change in the deficit or debt that $1 today will be worth more or less in 5 years. You don't know, and neither does anybody else.
Known as Maryland's “Queen City,” Cumberland was an early gateway to the West. Today, it is a bustling arts center and popular stopover for cyclists using the trail network between Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.
I suspect these programs are mostly an attempt to claw back some people lost to the brain-drain that the region has been experiencing for decades. $10k over 5 years is not enough to seriously convince most people with no ties to the area to relocate there.
I have family roots in Cumberland and the nearby areas of West Virginia and MD and I still wouldn't consider moving back. But, if you still have a good relationship with family in the city and were already considering the move, this offer might look more compelling.
I believe Vermont also had a similar program for several years - offering a similar amount of money for people to move and work there in VT.
The racial makeup of the city was 89.4% White, 6.4% African American, 0.2% Native American, 0.9% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.3% from other races, and 2.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 1.2% of the population.
There is a dedicated bicycle road connecting Cumberland with the National Mall in D.C. and which promises no cars, no pedestrians. Ten hours of pedaling mostly downhill.
That's the C&O canal towpath which, uh, there's definitely pedestrians there in places (I've done several hikes on portions of it). True about no cars, though.
I've personally enjoyed that kind of offer. My work is remote, my family isn't.
Not living in the US myself, but done similar in EU.
Living outside large cities is a plus factor these days. You can afford a house, commodities tend to be cheaper or you just grow them yourself. Kids go to a local school where you know everyone else, they make strong friendships and grow healthy in nature.
As anything else in life it's an individual balance. Knowing everyone can be as much a disadvantage; commodities can be cheaper but your earning potential can also be lower. The nearest airport could be several hours drive, and the only school around where all kids go sounds great until your kid gets bullied.
Have to live in Cumberland, MD for 5 years though.
Borders West Virginia and a key city in the Appalachian area. Some would say this region was day 0 of the opioid epidemic. As of 2020 census, population is largely (~89%) identified as Caucasian. Diversity is lacking. Median income reported at $45K.
Don’t know much besides what’s on paper, but I highly doubt most people on HN would integrate well here.
Wow, this is fascinating, my family is originally from Cumberland (actually Frostburg, but...). My mom was born and raised there, but left as soon as she could. Everybody did, and I don't think anyone from my family has been back there since my grandmother died decades ago.
It's really the eastern edge of Appalachia, but also very much a rust belt relic that depended on industries that are long, long gone (at least from that region). I think Kelly tires had a plant there when my mom was younger.
I've always wanted to go back and see it, just to compare it with my memories. It was in pretty steep decline already in the 70s and 80s, as even a kid could tell. I remember reading that they built a number of prisons nearby, also some across the border in Pennsylvania, but clearly that has not done enough to revitalize things.
It's a nice place, especially if you are outdoorsy, due to proximity to so much woodland and trail. I was very surprised with the architecture there. I've only stayed a couple nights (Trailhead for the Ragnar relay series)
I honestly do not get such programs, I'm from EU where equivalent programs exists in slightly different form (1€ old and abandoned homes for sale) and that's a total stupid initiative because people face MUCH bigger costs and still have no potential development in place.
Instead of proposing such gifts state a complete development programs: how do you count to augment the population enough to create room for a local bustling economy? A possible timeline and the current state of things? Tell me about local climate, hydro-geological stability, pollution and so on. You want people, convince them to be part of you project do not "buy them with candies". Convincing people to be part of a project means finding (if you succeed, of course) active people who can bring value to your community, otherwise you might collect some fool who will go soon or will remain as a burden to the community.
Those things are all pretty easily Googleable for anyone interested. Honestly, I would expect most people in the US to be able to answer most of those questions with reasonable accuracy without Googling.
The candies are to offset the downsides currently preventing people from moving there. Given its Appalachia, those downsides are probably a) bad, poorly maintained infrastructure, b) lack of jobs, c) lack of proximity to anything, and d) the surrounding poverty.
A lot of Appalachia struggles because the towns were built around a profitable industry, which then died. The town still has all that infra, but now has none of the tax base to pay for it.
They’re probably fine with someone who wants to build a McMansion they never leave, as long as they pay their tax bill and buy groceries in town to support local jobs. They honestly mostly need money. Appalachia is well known for their sense of community already, but also for their poverty.
Cumberland also happens to be where the Chesapeake and Ohio canal tow path terminates, and is a really nice 168 mile mostly off road dirt bike ride all the way to Washington DC. It has been extended all the way to Pittsburgh. So if you were into biking, Cumberland could be kind of a cool place to hang out.
They're taking the entire mean over the summertime, which isn't a useful metric IMO. If your days are 90, and your nights 60, you mean out around 75, despite it never really being 75 during the day where you can enjoy it. The average high in July is in the high 80s, which I think matches the entire region pretty closely.
It looks like a nice place. I know about a few similar programs in some towns in Europe. It is interesting to see something like this in some towns and cities in the US.
It seems like Zillow is full of people selling houses at 2x to 3x the estimate in Cumberland hoping to sell and run to whoever takes advantage of the relocation program. I see houses assessed at $90,000 in 2023 selling for $300,000. Give me a break.
"Assessed" doesn't mean much, there are many towns (such as my current town, and many others here in NJ) where houses all sell for a similar premium over the official assessed value.
The next question there would be how many of them had recently bought those properties - i.e. did they have a heads up from their friends on the City Council that this was coming down the line?
They will give you $10,000 cash, plus another $10,000 toward a renovation to a house you buy, or to a down-payment on a house you are required to buy, with a value of >$150K that you are required to live in for 5 years.
And you have to apply, and be approved, and undergo a casual interview by the city council.
And you have to be ready to move in within 6 months of approval.
And you have to be fully remote, have a local job, or be moving to cumberland in acceptance of a job...
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They GIVE YOU NO FN REASON WHY you would want to move there.
The municipal website is a "Parks & Rec Fisher Price" as it comes, where the first link on "Populat links" is "Pay utilities"
There are no posted bid offereings (meaning no active project cumberland is seeking RFPs on)
And community events is barren...
So, why is this on HN?
It doesnt even give a nice GPT synpsis of what the heck cumberland is even about - Here, I GPTd it for them:
Is my math wrong or something? Did anyone actually look at the image?
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Back when Detroit was doing super bad, and lots for huge Victorian and other nice architecture homes were going for ~$5,000 - there was a lot of chatter of a bunch of millenial-ish techies buy up a bunch of plots and start a tech-commune sort of adventure out there. (turned out the person organizing that effort was pulling a huge grift)
Maybe try to do a YC startup fund where "Hey heres free housing internet and utilities for your startup if you can prove "XYZ" -- like what about a visa program if some Hackers can come in and do a startup there and raise the economy where the city is invested in the startups? But have the program vetted by some panel of experts the city recruits
This could be attractive to people like my brother and his girlfriend. His job is remote and she's going to school for an art degree, mostly into ceramics and wood turning. They love the outdoors and this would be a good spot for them.
Frostburg State University, Deep Creek Lake and Wisp Resort are close. Summer temperature was 10 degrees F cooler than my house near DC the last time I spent a week at Deep Creek.
I'm not responsible for whatever tone you put on my post in your internal monologue's voice.
Being starkly the only one who points out how weird it is that there was no reason for why would even want to consider this offer, and the unappealing rules for which this is controlled -- its a weird endeavor for this town, and weird post for HN.
Is stating such lacking of manners? Or are emotional triggers > discussion of the content posted?
@Debo - I was talking about the content of the freaking Cumberland website and their offer.
Whatever - defend this absolutely atrocious offer, my comment being downvoted doesnt make the offer any better, nor it presentation.
Mining towns are one of the examples of human hubris and stupidity I can't get my head around. If you build something in a shitty place just because there is a single resource you can sell, and everything else you have to import, then what do you expect will happen when said resource dries up? These places were meant for people to go temporarily, make serious money, and then go back to the city or countryside to build a life there, just like people who go to oil rigs do. Instead people brought their families and created an entire town or city in the middle of nowhere.
Now, the past is past and what's done is done. Can't we just acknowledge this basic reality and let these places die and move to better ones? Maybe thanks to the internet one day they will be repopulated by small tech companies operating from a single building with 100 computers and a fiber network, but until then why bullshit ourselves?
Deep-sea oil rigs don't grow into towns because there is no spare land to grow on - the "land" is an insanely expensive man-made structure whose size pushes against the limits of human engineering ability. But when oil is found on dry land or even in the sea close to shore, oil industry almost always results in significant urban growth - e.g. see Baku, Los Angeles, or Dubai.
In the olden days, these towns wouldn't pay you money, they would pay you scrip issued by the mining company[0]. This could only be used at company-operated stores, so miners were imprisoned in the towns. Moving back literally wasn't an option for the people that worked there, but if there was no other jobs around, where else could you go?
