Would you move to your hometown?
We do a lot of work associated with economic development, and the reality is that many are attempting to retain and recruit talent. With the pandemic still raging, hundreds of New Yorkers and Californians are looking for somewhere else to live. So, I ask you, “would you move to your hometown?”
And now, answer the question “why?”. I have read tens of papers and hundreds of tweets or other personal social commentaries. I have yet to read someone who provides a treatise as to why property taxes or, any taxes are a factor. This is not 100% true – as I have also seen high-end athletes move to Texas or Florida because of the lack of income tax – but my point is that our elected officials are simply talking about the wrong things. Taxes don’t matter much.
Instead, here are the factors for me and my family. First, I have six kids (this makes me an exception). We decided to move to Omaha because 1) it was close to family, 2) it was affordable (at the time of our move my second child was 10 days old), and 3) it was accessible.
A Place for Families
Close to family is a very consistent theme in movement. A 2015 New York Times article entitled “The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles From Mom” suggests that people around the country live close to their mothers. Only 20% of all Americans, according to the research, live further than “a couple of hours’ drive from their parents.” This is significant for people seeking to build a public policy about recruiting people to an area. Start with moms and dads as your primary tool.
First, can you provide a tax credit for families that choose some form of parental/grandparental childcare? One critical issue that the pandemic has revealed is the incredible difficulty of working parents (particularly moms) working from home with school-age kids at home and possibly at home school. Second, what about an effort to focus on why the parents moved away in the first place. My guess is that there were three primary reasons – a) better universities for their own training, b) better jobs for their own income/life experience, c) more things to do that appealed to them.
When I moved to Houston, all three of these things were true. They remain true. The difference is that the balance shifted. Two major things happened. First, I became disillusioned with corporate life as I worked at Enron, and well, that did not go so great. Second, I was diagnosed with a serious progressive illness – primary sclerosing cholangitis. The life prognosis for people with this disease is not awesome – but I have far outlived my actuarial life, so let’s just call it a win. The point is that my calculus around my choice of location changed. This happens. A goal of retaining people does not fully embrace the idea that having people leave and feel like it is good and accepted – may lay the foundation for later returning. If your area does not have a premier university, you are likely losing your best and brightest. Don’t lose touch with them by pressuring them to stay or see the University of XYZ as the Harvard of your parochial town. Many people want more when they are 18 or 22 – let them try for it.
Cost of Living
The second big reason for moving to Omaha was that it was affordable. Here are three key parts of our cost structure as a family. First, we live in a great neighborhood in a 4000 square foot home that costs less than $300,000. That is simply not possible in most places – not just coastal. Second, we send our kids to Catholic schools. The private high school that our boys attend costs around $11,000, and the private grade school is roughly $1800 per kid. We are blessed to be able to afford this. But, these are crazy inexpensive numbers compared to coastal private school costs. I remember having a conversation with a friend from New York City that said he was paying $42,000 for preschool. I literally cannot imagine. Finally, my wife and I make above-average wages for our professions compared to most other places (including more expensive ones) in the country. It is true that we would make more if we lived in a place with a higher cost of living – but we do fine, and our income/spending delta is significant.
Here’s the challenge for community builders. My experience of affordability in Omaha is really similar to Des Moines or Tulsa or Cincinnati or Madison. Many, many communities in the middle are affordable. Simply shouting your stats at someone is not enough. The key is to explain why affordability matters to the individual. For me, Catholic schools were important. For me, being in a place, where we could buy a small business for my wife’s optometry career was important (because we assumed it would be the primary source of income when I died at or around age 32). These things are not everywhere. Understanding this type of thing about your target market is critical. At some level, this is segmenting your unique assets and selling them to the people that care. Not everyone cares about Catholic or private education – but those that do, do. So, if you are in place that has something truly unique – otherworldly outdoors experience or a uniquely built early childhood education program for children suffering from autism – you need to target and be specific. Affordability matters – but only when the other key assets are uniquely awesome…awesome, not above average. So, for example, Nebraska has okay outdoors opportunities. Colorado has awesome outdoor opportunities. Move to Colorado – Grand Junction, for example – if this is a critical decision criterion for you. The problem for most communities is that this requires humility about your assets and a long-term strategy that involves building awesome strengths, not above average ones…but awesome ones.
Quality of Life
The third reason for my family moving to Omaha was that it is accessible. We were able to drop our commute times dramatically. So, I walk about fifteen minutes to my office every day. I live and work in the same neighborhood. My kids walk (by themselves) to school. Our school is approximately five minutes from our house. I can get to any place in the city in under twenty minutes BY CAR. We can execute our household well in Omaha. We could not have done that in either Columbus, Ohio or Houston, Texas. For example, our daycare in Houston required that we pick up our kids by 6pm. This was virtually impossible for me unless I left on the 4:45 bus from downtown Houston or drove. This put my commute in the heart of rush hour, and it was terrible. Omaha’s commute is not – although some have come from rural Nebraska, and their perspective is different.
Omaha was also accessible because I went to the right high school, Creighton Prep, and I knew the right people – my parents were well-respected and well-known in numerous social circles here. That gave me an incredible leg up in Omaha. But, this would not have been the case without those social connections. This meant that I had a nice lead-in for a job at the Omaha Chamber. This meant that I could make phone calls with community leaders and have them returned. This means that I had access.
This is not the case for most people moving to my hometown, and by the way, this is not the case for many people moving to your hometown. If I had brown or black skin, I would not move to Omaha. If I was an immigrant, I would not move to Omaha. If I was not already connected, I would not move to Omaha. And this is the fundamental problem that Omahans and most of the middle face, we are welcoming if you have already been welcomed. We are a place that is near our families. But, for outsiders, we are scary, isolating, and different. Looking through someone else’s eyes may reveal why all of our communities are fighting to retain and attract…to our way of life. Rather than trying to change to be more attractive to others and their way of life.
Attract New Talent
If we wanted to be attractive, we need to change. That change will not be attractive to every person, but segmenting towards things that matter to some is important. So, for example, if we are going to recruit people who have their parents within 3 hours of this place, what can we do better than any other place in the region. In my region, KC has major league sports, Lincoln has a university, Sioux Falls has no income tax, and Omaha has…
Winning on a “top places to live” list means that you are above average to good at many things. But, this is not enough to get someone to move. It is time for places to stop playing towards “kind of good” – and instead they focus on becoming their own uniquely awesome place. Win in a couple of areas and attract and retain people who care about those specific things. So, how does your hometown create an overwhelming advantage in something that transforms its level of attraction to you and to other people?
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After writing this article, people asked me what I think should be Omaha’s goals:
1) Build the #1 parks system in the country. Specifically, I think that every Omahan should be able to get on a trail within a five-minute walk from their house that connects them to every other trail in the city. This should be over-lain with transportation to ensure that every walker and bike rider can 100% avoid car traffic and every kid can walk to school safely on well-lit, well-maintained (plowed in the winter) dedicated trails. Having a great zoo and a single great park is simply not a path for most people. Those are attractions for visitors – not for inhabitants.
2) Win on education. Our schools – public, private, K-12 – should be considered the top schools in the country for learning. This means support structures for parents. This means better teachers. This fundamentally also means dis-associating all of the other stuff that our schools are asked to do: daycare, meals, healthcare, technology, etc. Unwinding and re-imagining schools in Omaha should be transformative to the whole ecosystem of family and child support. And this requires a lot of transformative leadership and thought – not just a slight incremental change or a small philanthropic donation. This is not about iPads; this is about thinking about virtual classes from world masters and a school day that looks nothing like it does today.
Why these two?
I do not think Omaha is ever going to have mountains, a coast, proximity to other big cities, an Ivy League university, and many other things. It will always have physical space. If we build at a human rather than a car level – we are differentiated from every other US city. We have a lead in education already. We also have precedent – Boys Town is unique. In other words, both are achievable and relevant for our targets. It makes us different from KC and Des Moines. Right now, we are about the same in both categories. It is not enough to have one more mile of trail or .1 points on the ACT. The difference needs to be overwhelming and indisputable for a competitive advantage to arise.
Feature Photo: https://www.oldmarketlofts.com/