Hacker News Reader

Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

Yep, and always with the same caveats. The dollar houses typically, but not always, need something like a house's real cost worth of renovation. There's no citizenship attached, so one can't just up and move into their new house. And of course, you'd really want to know Italian.

This is all super reasonable, but makes for clickbait headlines.

View on HN

Please also note that those houses are supposed to be in declined tiny villages in the most remote places. Surely, you do not want to commute from there to a job in the city.

It is an acquired taste, but working remote as a software engineer and manager as I have been for decades, I cannot imagine anything better.

> working remote

That assumes there's viable internet connection, which is often not the case in small remote villages (that is one of the huge caveats).

That’s where Starlink comes in.

True, if you need that (I do), but I have not encountered issues since the past 15 or so years. Before that it was harder. Obviously there are places that have nothing: I have lived there too and that is a lot more hassle. For me still better than a city. Each their own.

Maybe this will change with Starlink or over time but usually remote places in Europe have really, really slow internet connections (if any) so they are not really suited for remote work unless you can do everything via Citrix or similar.

I see this a lot. Don't you like culture or people? There's nothing out there, only ignorant old people.

Who said anything about commuting? These schemes are typically looking for remote workers or those looking to setup tourism businesses.

> Surely, you do not want to commute from there to a job in the city.

The 2010s called and wants last decade's arguments back.

For a majority of people, and for whole swaths of the economy this will always still be true. Can't really bartend or lay bricks remotely.

Yes and no. When software developers are working remotely their bartenders are going to be in the same areas.

Cities can’t just be waitress jobs for other waitresses, they need a core of non service jobs to work.

To a point. Economies of scale will still exist for things that cannot be done remotely, which means that population density will continue to beget population density.

Lay bricks? Wut? I thought most houses are 3d printed nowadays…

> but makes for clickbait headlines.

Would be more fun if it were Transylvania

There are (/recently have been) similar programs in the US too. They're not as valuable as clickbait though, because people here are familiar with how undesirable the locations generally are.

Yeah, the one I remember popping up was Olathe. They really tried to push it and make it sound nice.

Would be better for them if there weren't an entire documentary episode about a community fear of foreigners and some murders.[1]

Come for the money and housing assistance. Stay if you survive.

1 - https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8119994/

Is it the same thing though? I would guess the most undesirable places in Italy are still much better than even some mediocre places in the US.

The similar programs that I've seen (over the past 10 years) in mediocre locations in my area of the US were in better locations than the these ones in Italy. They were in commuting distance to good job markets, had good internet access, easy access to building materials, labor, and capital, basic public transport, etc. Those programs have since ended, because they were successful. I'd imagine any of these programs that are in good locations don't last long.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com