What would it take?

I read this article during my trip the other day:

Towns offer free land to newcomers

The gist of the thing is that there is a real drain on the populations of rural towns, and some of them are going to extremes to try to bring people in.

Places in rural Kansas actually seem to be giving free property, home construction loans, job placement, and a $1000 per child dividend to families who relocate there. In some places they are actually going as far as to pair high school upper classmen with near retirement age business owners to try to even give people a business. Otherwise it seems that if a resident goes away to college, they don't come back.

So it got me thinking what it would take for me to move to rural Kansas - and by the way we're talking capital R rural here, not a suburb of Kansas City.

Realistically, I don't think I've exactly chosen a career that places me too far out of town. As long as I have family around the country, I don't think I want to live more than 45ish minutes from a major airport. I think I may have become attached to a few retail establishments - BestBuy, Home Depot and the like. Also, I'm not sure if me and my New York sense of humor would do that well in this type of community (that's a West Wing reference).

Maybe I am too shallow to live in rural Kansas.

It's a red state too, yes? I'd need a lot of blue paint.

Still, its an interesting phenomenon - the population drain as laid out in the article - and it can't be limited to these few spotlighted communities. They say that this is the new replacement for "Elephant hunting." That was the process of finding a large corporation to open a manufacturing plant in your town. It sounds like they've realized they just can't compete with China in that regard and they'll have to find another way.

The $1000 per child thing? It's about keeping local schools open. You don't get the money if your kids don't go to public school. Apparently the closing of a towns school is one of the most pronounced death convulsions. After that it becomes somewhat harder to get people to move to your no school town.

The whole thing is actually kind of sad. I hope they find a solution.