It’s the talk of Tech Town these days: With Silicon Valley and San Francisco watching a booming job market push real-estate prices through the roof, jam up our highways with super commuters and make the most quotidian of tasks seem downright wearisome, a lot of Bay Area residents are either heading for the exits or are already gone.
Consider our story this week of the San Jose-based startup offering to pay residents $10,000 to pull up roots and leave town. Why? As a way to get tech workers to move to more affordable places around the country, and then pair them up with companies that can’t afford the bottom-line-busting salaries now commonplace around the Bay Area.
Still, while the company, called MainStreet, may be pushing Californians out, some states, cities and towns across the nation are pulling in the other direction, offering benefits of all kinds and cold hard cash to bring in the recently uprooted.
Here are some of them:
Tulsa, Oklahoma
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In an effort to bring new blood into town and increase its workforce, this Oklahoma city is coughing up $10,000 a person to get people to move there and work remotely for the employer they already had. It’s the second year of the Tulsa Remote program, says Fast Company magazine, and it’s also offering these new residents free co-working space, invites to local events and leads on finding housing.
The report said that 2018 saw more than 10,000 applications from over 150 countries and all 50 states, while nearly 100 were accepted. This year, another 250 people are expected to grab the move-in money.
“Participants from this year blew away our expectations,” Executive Director Aaron Bolzle said in a statement. “By more than doubling the number of participants this year, we can further our mission of attracting talented individuals from diverse backgrounds to Tulsa and connecting them to the incredible existing community.”
The fine print: To be eligible, you’ve got to move to Tulsa within six months, already have a full-time remote job or self-employment outside Oklahoma, and be over the age of 18.
Vermont
The Green Mountain State’s Remote Worker Grant Program, which kicked off last January, was created to offset Vermont’s shrinking and aging workforce by tapping into an increasingly mobile working-class culture, the same culture that’s prompting salary-challenged Californians to hit the road.
Joan Goldstein, commissioner for Vermont’s Department of Economic Development, told Bankrate that their goal is simple: tap into the mobile culture and create you own job-market mini-boom.
“We’ve got low unemployment rates all over the country, and the country is aging,” Goldstein said. “I think, in general, we need more baby booms so that we could grow the workforce. And I think it just is a reflection of the demographic trends that are facing us.”
In its first six months, the plan put as much as $5,000 into the hands of 33 applicants who have made the move, bringing a total of 87 new residents to the state.
Detroit, Michigan
This recession-wracked city came up with Challenge Detroit, a program designed to “attract and retain” college-educated individuals, specifically new career seekers and entrepreneurs, to the Detroit metro area. The goal has been to develop fresh new talent in the workplace and bring in new residents who’ll stay in town and help the city come back to life.
“Challenge Detroit does not provide Fellows with any financial support. They partner with companies that employ Fellows and who provide a salary for employment, just as with any other employer-employee relationship,” said Challenge Detroit spokesman Walker Post. “Additionally, they do not pay Fellows to move to Detroit, nor do we provide assistance with housing or visa sponsorship.”
Check out the program’s website for more information.
Maine
This state’s three-year-old program called the Educational Opportunity Tax Credit does just that, helping students cut down on their debt load simply by attracting them move to Maine and work. The credit was initially offered to graduates of Maine’s own colleges and universities, but it was later expanded to college and university graduates from anywhere in the U.S., starting with the class of 2016, CNBC reports.
“How the credit applies to you varies depending on the year you graduated, your degree type and whether you are a Maine native or moved from somewhere else in the country,” said the report. “But generally, workers will be able to deduct the total amount of money they paid in student loans for the year from their state income tax bill, up to $377 per month for 2018 Bachelor’s graduates.”
North Platte, Nebraska
The folks who work for North Platte’s economic development agency came up with what they call the WORK NP program. Collaborating with local employers, the city will match sign-up bonuses for new hires of up to $5,000, which can translate into a potential $10,000 signing bonus for workers, says CNBC.
Under the rules of the program, that money can be used for relocation expenses, student loan repayment, down payments or deposits and more. Check out the program details here. Some fine print: the employee must make at least $20 an hour, live in the city for three years and their employer has to belong to the town’s chamber of commerce.
Alaska
The state of Alaska came up with its so-called Permanent Fund Dividend way back in 1976 and started doling out money generated from mineral royalties to residents in 1980. The annual payment varies every year, but 2015, for example, 637,014 residents got $2,072 each, according to a report at SmartAssets.
To get your hands on the dough, you have to have lived in Alaska for at least a year, and you can’t be a convicted felon.
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Perhaps one of the most creatively named programs of its kind is GeekMove, Chattanooga’s campaign to bring new workers to a city that claims to be the first Western Hemisphere city to have gigabit per second fiber Internet accessible to the entire city grid.
GeekMove, says a report in SmartAssets, is an incentive-based program “designed to financially assist computer developers who are interested in relocating to newly revitalized communities.”
