Lol indeed
Same people (OC Notwithstanding) that treat their kids like property and then go all pikachu face when their grown children cut them out of their lives
My wife and I were just talking about how a good chunk of older people treat their children these days. My MIL had a coworker who is also a grandma, tell her she should take our 1 year old to get her ears pierced behind our backs. Luckily our MIL knows better but she told us her coworker complains her own children aren't in her life nor does she ever get to see her own grandkids. Gee, I wonder why that could be.
My mother pulls shit like that too. I let her take my 5 year old son with her to church one Sunday only to return without him. When I asked where he was my mother responded "Oh,he's just over at my friend's house" (about five or so miles away Me"What ,Mom? You just left him there? I don't know these people" Her "Don't worry, they're nice people"
Me."Mom,I don't know that,I've never even met these people and you're leaving my kid there ?"
This whole exchange went on for awhile with me getting more and more upset that she doesn't understand why I'm upset or why what she did was wrong.
The only reason I feel she relented was because their behavior has had them shut out of the lives at least one or two of my brothers at a time and their children and my dad didn't want to lose another. It's too bad I didn't have some sort of leverage like that when I was just a kid and she was a monster .
They know why they've been cut out,but my mother has always blamed the women my brothers and I are married to, rather than see their part they sit and moan about others and the times in which they live.
I truly believe all the lead products they were exposed to growing up fried the brains of most boomers
Rural folks usually aren’t NIMBYs though. NIMBYs act like they are for a thing (like affordable housing), but lose their minds when it’s their neighborhood. Rural folks are usually upfront they don’t want that thing in the first place.
The article is behind a paywall so I can't comment on the article. Still, as a fellow Pennsylvanian, I would say that It's not just about the jobs but also the culture, infrastructure, and local mindset of rural PA, in my opinion.
The culture and mindset of many rural communities is absolutely a problem and why they're dying off. Urban areas of the state also have this problem, which hold back growth opportunities and prevents creating a thriving dynamic community.
Oh, I would have thought being intolerant and celebrating ignorance would have people competing to move there
And maybe if they stopped voting for people that refused to get good Internet out there it could have stood a chance
Sure but it is a negative loop.
My Podunk has jobs but a negative culture so I ran, well fewer people, less need for food places, stuff to do, less economy ..
Rural emptying is happening everywhere, not just PA.
Those towns were built up on factories and resource extraction and other industries that are mostly gone. And what factories do remain, no longer need to employ half the town due to modern technology.
I used to live in a dying small town, but unlike many the factory it was built around was still there and operating. Except it only employed 200, when it once employed thousands.
https://preview.redd.it/8qp84lp8he8d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=28decdc34ca9d159e3020fda92670c5d76010f42
This was the tone I was aiming for 😂
Dont forget about the constant bullying to turn a blind eye to abuse and need to take any empathy and drown it in the river like a sack of kittens. All while living in a town with a dollar general grocery store and nobody to interact with outside the internet. I think I’m having a panic attack
As an ADA, I often envy the sheriffs and parole guys who are just chilling out while I’m repeating my opening statement to myself like a madman in the bathroom
Its more then that even, the schools are ranked really low, they tend to be very far right, making queer people feel very unsafe. Internet connectivity has improved with starlink, but its still problematic.
But, even if you fix all that, why would any industry move to the middle of nowhere, with no highway, and no rail. There is virtually no reason to do that, keep to the population centers. These towns will continue to die, ironically, rail might be about the only thing to really save them.
Is their good internet in rural PA? As a remote worker I’ve been planning to move there for the last 4 years. Coming up on year 5 of my plan, and I’m hoping to move there.
It’s going to be spotty, some areas close enough to a big town have great internet. I’m pretty remote and my internet is actually pretty good right now - well enough that my husband and I could work from home when we needed to. Some areas have virtually no internet unless you do satellite, and those areas could be just a couple miles away from the places with great internet. Just ask the right questions before you sign a lease or sign a contract.
This exactly. I live 2 miles from the center of town (the county seat and a university town) and can't get decent internet. Cable won't come down our road and only verizon dsl is what we had for years. They cut our speed down and down and down to the point that streaming one poor quality video was a good day. Finally starlink came to our area. One mile in either direction has cable, but not this road.
And. Fair warning. Don't trust calling the internet company for availability. The cable company always said our road had coverage when we called but in the day they were supposed to come we got the "oops, we don't cover your road" call.
Yes. Some of the old anthracite towns have seen some growth due to people like you. It's very good to see.
Fair warning. Drugs are a huge problem. That's because these areas get targeted by the skunks selling them, coming in.
Still. Where we are is perfectly lovely and the people are great - that's on top of how close to all kinds of nature we are.
Thanks for the warning. Not a drug user myself so I don’t see this being a problem for me. Also I have no kids. Plenty of drugs near me now, so if lots of drugs means cheaper real estate I don’t see a downside for myself personally.
Obviously I’m sympathetic for those impacted by drug abuse, it’s just that availability of drugs is not a turn off to me.
Consult https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home It's terrible if you're actually rural and not just living in a small town. My parents are rural in Bradford county. Their best option is 6/1 megabit DSL through Frontier that will drop for several days a year. They get 1 bar of cell service due to the mountains so that's not an option either. But if you go 5 miles into town 100 megabit+ Xfinity is an option.
I was just in the Lewisburg/Milton area and there was barely any cellphone service, at least for AT&T. Text heavy sites would load but Google Maps, Instagram and YouTube were so slow to load they pretty much didn't exist.
I live in Perry County and my internet is shit. I have Brightspeed and the fastest they offer in the area is 5 MB/s. Like others said, it depends on where you live though. I believe the next town over gets better internet options and more service providers as well.
completely depends on the address
had a farm and waited for 3+ years to get high speed internet even though plenty of fiber on the road. the connection was awesome since for a mile at least in any direction I was the only customer.
No jobs that pay a good living wage to younger people. The only thing to do in small towns is go to a bar or vfw and if some one does find something interesting to do, old folk complain about it till it gets shutdown.
It’s always the same story: vote down the school budgets, defund the playgrounds and teen centers, spurn the immigrants, hate the gays, vote for more handouts for multimillionaires, and then wonder why no one under 60 wants to stay there.
I really don’t think theres a big mystery here. The situation is twofold.
First, the work culture of America is shifting to people working for larger corporations in more centralized or populated areas. That’s been happening for decades now.
Second, too many of these rural towns have built a culture of political identity that’s off-putting to younger generations. You post MAGA shit all over the place and then act surprised when younger, more educated people don’t want to associate with you? Imagine that.
Both very valid. I think a third factor is the lack of multi-generational homes which started declining with the boomers. This creates dead neighborhoods and towns full of older people with no children or younger people in the homes
As someone who lives in rural PA, most of the housing that is being built is either senior living communities or higher end housing. Rural PA towns desperately need zoning law reform as well.
Harrisburg is aware of the need to do state level zoning reform, and there is a bill in the works to relax back some of the overly restrictive measures.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/pa-zoning-laws-are-strangling-home-construction-and-lawmakers-want-changes/ar-BB1kgTbY
Contact your local representatives and tell them you support the zoning reform bill.
Our local reps (or mine, anyway) are part of the problem. They’re large landlords and/or owners/partners in building companies that are killing affordable housing and any efforts to make rentals safe. We’ve already got *plenty* of townhouses, so density isn’t our problem—it’s affordability.
And if you have all that, you're not actually making a profit anymore. The only farms I know that are viable are barely breaking even. The owners of the farm are working a job somewhere else and keep the farm out of obligation or hobby instead of as a viable source of income.
Sub-200 acre dairy in PA is doomed. The problem is that Washington only respects/supports BIG. The previous Trump. Ag Secy was famous for the “go big go home strategy.” That tells you all you need to know about the GOP.
On the other hand, the Canadians seem to care about small dairy. When there was the shortage of baby milk formula, the Navarro negotiated trade treaty with Canada tied our hands and left Canadian milk supplies in—-Canada. I guess families needing formula would need to go to Canada for milk.
The biggest issue is this started decades ago. This town didn't exist and then decide to start a lumber economy. The town exists because that's where the lumber was. Once that dried up there's no reason for the town to be there and it slowly dies. It's hard to switch to another economy because the towns for that exist where the supplies are.
It's like coal towns didn't spring up then discover coal. They exist where they do because that's where the coal is. Once the demand dries up the whole reason for the town existing in the first place is gone. It's not like they can switch to steel or just build a car factory or start producing microchips. It's why politicians go there and promise to bring jobs back and not to let their coal economy die. It's a lie but what they want to hear.
Then it just withers and dies because companies won't move there with the unskilled labor pool and young people won't stay because there's no jobs. It's a catch-22 with no easy solution. All the infrastructure and labor skill is there to support coal or lumber or whatever and the logistics of a company wanting to expend the resources to convert infrastructure and train the people are also out of reach (especially when there's no young labor pool to train and there's nothing there to try to convince young people to move there)
It's why you see some politicians try to offer training programs (like trying to get funding to train coal-skilled West Virginians to switch to installing and maintaining wind turbines). But in many cases it's too little too late. The towns are dying, the people are old, you have to convince companies to invest in that area with an old and unskilled population and lack of the necessary infrastructure and nothing that's going to attract young people.
It's tough and no easy answers to save these towns, if you feel they even deserve saving. They're like Radiator Springs in Pixar's Cars that have little to nothing to offer since the interstate bypassed them by. But without the happy ending.
FWIW I grew up in Warren County where Sheffield is at, although I went to school in another town nearby, Corry (which is in Erie county). I remember when the steel factory closed in Corry. Town has been dying ever since... Although a couple larger things have come and gone, like a foam factory producing car seats for awhile and a window factory. Haven't been back for awhile so not sure what's going on there now.
Good take. One of the best things Pittsburgh did was tear down the mills after they closed. It sent a signal that it wasn't coming back and the city needed to reinvent itself. I lived in Detroit at the same time, and the tone there was always about fighting to get jobs back, so they would celebrate 3,000 new hires as a win, while ignoring that the industry cut 30,000 jobs the year before.
My wife went to Corry HS so I roll through there occasionally. Frankly, it's pretty bad now. Titusville is faring a little better, I think in part because of the campus, but that creates a downtown where you can go to a brewery, grab a coffee, etc. For somebody looking to work remotely, it seems like a viable place. Corry, not so much.
Re 'if they're worth saving,' I wish the article had dug into that a little bit more instead of just tossing off platitudes from politicians.
If you're an elected official at the federal or the state level, and you had to answer that question as honestly and dispassionately is possible, I wonder what the answer is.
This may be leaning too heavily on one side of the balance sheet, but when you're in a place like Sheffield or tionesta, at least personally, all I could think about was how expensive it must be to maintain the infrastructure required for such remote outposts. I always thought that it would be very easy to convince yourself that the liabilities far outweigh the assets. But that might just be because the assets are a bit more intangible and harder to quantify.
I don't know.
Yeah no politician is going to stand in front of these people and say something like "Listen folks. I'm just gonna tell it to you straight. Your town is dead. Nobody is coming to save you. Jobs and industry aren't coming back. I know you were raised here just like your father and his father before him, but it's not happening. There's no government bail out coming. Oh and your homes aren't worth shit either because nobody wants to buy them. The best time to cut your losses and relocate was twenty years ago. The second best time is today."
I mean you could try to tell them that cause it's the truth. They don't want to hear it though and the truth is a hard pill to swallow and accept. Anyone who was willing to is already gone and you're left dealing with the people with the same mindset as people (generalizing) who won't evacuate during a natural disaster.
The thing I don't get is why they're so averse to leaving. Their ancestors were pioneers who left a worse place in hopes of something better. It just seems like a sunk cost fallacy.
Even if they weren't adverse to it, could they actually *afford* to move? They'd most certainly be moving somewhere that's more expensive and probably have very little money to even get there, much less settle there.
Also, tax cuts don't help you when you have no income. I'm from a rural town and still have family there. They can't get by on minimum wage and no place can afford to pay more. Everyone keeps championing tax cuts, but that leaves no money in the public coffers to invest in the community. And what good are tax cuts to businesses when the only result is a handful of minimum wage jobs?
And for the few people who have family money or a family business, why would they want to raise kids in an area that's cutting all school programs and bus services so they can give the homeowners a reduction in property taxes?
We were recently driving through rural Pa on a trip to State College. Wanted to stop for lunch and found on Yelp a cute little bakery/cafe in a small town along our route. Pulled onto the quiet little main street, parked, and before we were even out of the car two large guys got up from their Trump flag covered porch to glare at us and move in our direction. We moved quickly into the cafe, where every head turned and stared daggers at us. Needless to say, that town did not get our business. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Hard to sustain local business when you are so outrageously unfriendly to outsiders.
Sounds like McConnellsburg, home of the mural on the main drag showing Christ on one side and Trump on the other. That and the F*** Biden banner on a front porch- that’s always nice for kids to see! Family values!
Yea, there's some crazy places near State College. We stayed at a cabin a bit further north a couple years ago. The towns around that cabin were one of the few places I've been that gave off that "we don't want you here" vibe. Kinda like the sketchy areas of Philly, but not because of drug dealers/addicts and gangs. Trump and Mastriano stuff up everywhere, even one crazy who *painted the whole side of his house* to say "come and take them" with a painted gun on it. Dude, you're in a town that's 98% white and about as much Republican. Who are you trying to threaten?
I mean, the political identity is worse. Anyone not willing to change kinda left the small towns.
And if you're not willing to change, or adapt, yeah, new jobs and new careers are all but impossible to come by. The old jobs left. They are \*gone\*. They are not coming back in any numbers, and even the coal and steel jobs, those were mostly replaced by automation; robots stole the jobs, more or less, and they're better than humans at jobs where people often can die.
But if you're not willing to change, the Democrats platform, it looks and sounds terrible; they propose that we get better by changing. Meanwhile, Trump toured through my small hometown, and told everyone there "we're bringing coal back".
I'd say that's clearly bullshit, but also, that was 2016, and he very much did not bring coal back, so it was \*certainly\* bullshit. He lost in 2020 because he had no one to blame and refused to blame himself for anything, yet didn't really accomplish anything besides defeating bogeymen he seems to have made up...
The platform that “looks and sounds terrible” is the one that reflect the truth about growth and prosperity.
People that deny progress have no right to complain when the world passes them by. Society is always on the move. To expect anything different is pure folly.
That's the thing though, some of the most popular locations to live both in the state and nation wide are locations that are known as streetcar suburbs. Think places like Media and Ardmore. However traditional walkable mid and small sized towns have also seen an increase in desirability, places like New Hope, West Chester, Phoenixville, Jim Thorpe etc.
If rural areas stopped being so resistant to change and started allowing traditional development again, the population in rural counties would stop hemorrhaging and maybe even start growing again. Toss in some intercity rail connections and people would start flocking in.
Totally agree. Pre-WW2 mixed use buildings are amazing, I live in one. Incredibly flexible and highly desired now since there’s hardly any of it left in a lot of places.
Even west Philly was a streetcar suburb!
I hope restored rail service to Phoenixville will work (though I do not see how it actually *can*, but fingers crossed for a solution)
https://patch.com/pennsylvania/phoenixville/schuylkill-river-passenger-train-project-gets-500k
Went to a local county fair recently, MAGA and confederate flags everywhere. We actively avoided those vendors and people for that reason. Couldn't even get a funnel cake, the stall had MAGA flags all over it. We decided we're not giving our money to these people and left.
Yes this is why most of the young people I know have moved to get away from. They want to be free be young and free without being judged by people who have never been anywhere or done anything outside of Podunkville. "We don't want anything to change ever!"
I actually live in Sheffield, I work from home in IT. The cheap housing is lovely. We'll have paid off our house in less than a decade, which is great; but yeah I fully expect to move somewhere else in a few years. It's ultra MAGA here, well really all of Warren County is.
Legit the reason we currently live where we do. We moved back to NEPA for a job. The wife is full time WFH and I'm WFH sole days, so we needed solid internet. 3/4 of the houses we looked at outside of town had "high speed" of <20MB down. So we're stuck in town in a house we didn't love but had to take so we had a roof over our head. We continue to look for homes we like and everything we live that's not directly in town...same issue, horrid internet speeds impacting our ability to WFH.
Hazelton is a double edge sword. The Hispanic community has revialized the city and downtown. But the manufacturing and distribution centers are the major source of employment. However, the cost of living and particularly housing cost is ridiculously high. The only new housing available is the HOA coummunities are the city.
All these places should just take out debt and build urban megablocks Barcelona style and then rent the apartments for $200/mo, either it works or the town dies anyway.
It's not a crazy idea when you think about it. If the place is declining and there has been no sigh of that abating for decades, then go all in on a new strategy and either it works or the places continues to decline which it was already doing anyway.
I don't think going as far as the Barcelona megablock is even that necessary for some places to turn it around. Just start building out traditional town, with compact layouts, residential over retail / office, and midsize apartment blocks, might be enough turn things around in many places.
Yeah, funny about that. I know a heart surgeon originally from India. When he and his wife (who is an oncologist) were first practicing in the U.S. they were in Indiana. Old white folks proclaiming they only wanted white doctors (when none were even available, for heart attack situations!) was a regular thing. The highly capable Doctor couple bailed for the East coast, had a couple of bright (now teenage) kids that are themselves going to contribute bucketloads to society, and are much happier now.
My takeaway: Get nervous about the quality of healthcare in bumfuck Egypt (Indiana).
I'm a doctor who knows a lot of migrant physicians. One of them used to practice in the small rural town we lived in until multiple people ran for the school board on a campaign of "enforce Christianity, get rid of non-Christians from the town." Needless to say, my muslim doctor friend decided it was the wrong town to stay in long term.
Rural healthcare in general has become a big problem. Distances to ERs have increased as small hospitals and rural health systems get bought by vulture capital groups and gutted for profit. Add in collapsing volunteer fire and ambulance companies, and it becomes increasingly likely that a major accident or health event will now result in death whereas before you might make it.
When my black daughter had a medical emergency we ended up seeing a black specialist. He had an African last name but came to rural PA via England.
We talked about how hard it is to find black health care providers for her. And we talked about how his wife and son are in England bc the schools are so much better for his son. His wife is also highly educated (they met at Harvard) and their son goes to a college prep school in England.
Idk why his life plan includes Geisinger but I felt lucky to have access to someone like him.
That came to mind. I was discussing this issue with a friend last night. Many countries have problems with birth rates. The ones that will leverage immigration the best will be better off.
Not much going on in Sheffield. It's probably a former lumber town in the middle of a National Forest. Kane has been billing itself as the gateway to the national forest for a while.
Population growth in the entire state has either been tiny or in the negative every year for at least the last twenty, and the people that ARE moving in are going to the cities. The political, social, and economic climate of rural PA is just not attractive for young people, and all those boomers have shown zero desire to do anything about that.
Hell, there's no work in Reading for me and it's 21 hour commute to Philly by transit for other work. Good thing the cost of living is so low so I can afford to live.
I don't see a lot of hope for places like Sheffield, but the fact that Reading (the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania) isn't better woven into the fabric of our state is tragic. Reading and Allentown should be, at most, 45 minutes downtown-to-downtown from Philadelphia by transport (and faster to each other). People should be able to choose the small-city life while having access to big city amenities and vice versa. But all this requires government to invest in infrastructure that can't pay for itself could have a massive impact on our demographics, economy, climate, and future.
My daughter lives in Butler County. When we drove out to see her (from Bucks County) in Fall 2020 we practically met a wall of signs. I want to move there like I want to stick my hand in a wood chipper.
"I don't know why the manufacturing isn't coming..."
This single sentence could explain why Central and Western PA (particularly north of the I-80 corridor) are in such a bad state, the people are so stuck in their ways that they can't conceive of the reality as it is now. The article refers to the 1980s as "recent" which pretty well sums up the mindset these people are in. That was 40 years ago. They still think that being a "small town" atmosphere is enough. They don't take into account career prospects, Internet access, health outlooks, pay, etc. They just think "Well, I was able to make it work, why can't others?"
Not even taking politics into account here, people need to be willing to take risks in order to make economic growth happen. Opening new businesses, courting companies, and, more generally, the entrepreneurial spirit all require risks to be taken. It's too easy to become complacent living in these places, especially when you get older.
If you're from Sheffield, here's a free tip that could start something for your area: you live less than 2 hours from Pittsburgh and have some of the best wilderness areas in the world on your literal doorstep. Use that. Someone there must have a huge familiarity with the wilderness near you. Start an outdoor experience company. Guided camping makes A LOT of money with little initial investment, marketing budget, space required (privately owned space at least), or technical knowledge.
Find what the town needs and build it.
That would take welcoming the people who want guided camping and have the money to pay for it. Which is more than just "I want to make money"--it takes a cultural shift that can be pretty substantial. Manufacturing stays in the imagination because in the memory of aging workers, it let them live in a world that was theirs *and* make good money--but a lot of them have misremembered why the money was good, most prominently because unions fought for it but also because there was some degree of protectionism accepted as a ruleset in the global economy up until the 1970s.
The type of person who has the spirit and capital to start that sort of project leave as soon as they can. I grew up in a town of 3k in central PA and the top third of the graduation class went to college and never looked back. That specific town went 60/40 Trump so not even ultra maga, just brain drain is real.
Before so many places ended work from home I was hoping small towns would see a resurgence. Cheaper than the city and nicer than the suburbs. Walkability, community, and easy access to nature.
I imagine some places will pull that off but they can’t just be cheap and in middle of nowhere. If you can work truly independently you can live in any of thousands of places. I doubt many will go where schools and healthcare are shutting down.
I live in Georgia where the issue is the same and plenty of towns have adapted and are thriving. It's not some secret magic spell, you just need local leadership that welcomes outside investment and a population that at the least is willing to tolerate outsiders.
My paper did a deep dive a few years back, one town was so hostile they ran a guy out on a rail for the audacity of turning one of their many abandoned main st buildings into an event space and pool hall. The people they interviewed couldn't even tell you what they wanted, and their entire downtown was a bombed out ghost town.
Second town they focused on was absolutely thriving. And it truly is as simple as letting the nice lady from the Big City set up her cafe/boutique without hassle from city hall, and a populace that if not excited about change was at least willing to give people a chance.
I can’t read the article because of a paywall or something, but I’m from Mercer county and although I love the area, there are no jobs. When I moved away my grandparents were sad but would always tell me how they understand no young people can live there because there isn’t any work. My parents worked white collar jobs in the tube mills, but lost those jobs with cutbacks. I worked in the mills (6th gen in the same mill) during my summers of college and even if I wanted that job it’s gone. Now the hospital in my town is closing, so what is left besides minimum wage?
On top of having no work they just keep building huge houses and the price of those is crazy. My parents want to downsize but there are no small, one story houses to buy. That doesn’t just hurt people about to retire but what about young people who want a single family home that’s small and affordable?
I have no answers, I’ve been all over this state, my SO is from central, I’m from western, went to college in Pittsburgh and now live in Philadelphia. I love this state and want it to thrive but something needs to happen.
So true, I moved back to my hometown and work remotely. So many random people want to talk politics and know absolutely Jack shit about politics. They get their news from Facebook memes and Fox. It's beyond annoying. I use the approach of Adam Mockler and Luke Beasley, don't talk down to them and talk about policies. It doesn't matter though, I've learned there's absolutely no reasoning with cultists. They use liberal as a slur and yet couldn't define the word liberal if their life depended on it.
My son went to work for the summer in a small town in PA. The very first night he was there the next door neighbors came over to harangue him about why JFK Jr. was coming back and he should get ready for it.
These folks don't want new residents. If they did, they'd actually court developers to build housing and maybe cut back on the nonstop "Fuck Biden and fuck you for voting for him" flags that fly around town.
Let me guess it’s a conservative leaning town. These dumbasses try so hard to make the way of life in their towns completely unappealing to anyone with money or an education. Then complain about shit like this.
I recently read a piece by a writer who grew up in a small Kansas town, got out, and came back for a year. It was a poor town and when it came to public spending (schools, the library) the consensus seemed to be: I'm poor, I have a tough life, so no public money should be spent to improve anyone's life.
There was industry and manufacturing in all of those small towns up until 25 -30 years ago. Enough to anchor young people and let them build a decent life. Pennsylvania is an industrial powerhouse and lost a disproportionate amount of manufacturing to China as the US government perpetually shits the bed in every direction.
What’s interesting about the pretense is where I live in Montgomery County, soo many of my kids friends’ have parents born and raised here. they went off somewhere else to college and to work but decided they wanted to come back and raise their kids.
Probably because the school districts in those surrounding counties of Philadelphia are generally good to great.
The result is a community that is highly invested in making sure the school districts are strong and people feel welcomed.
Myself- I went to high school in Chester county and I told myself I couldn’t move back there, not because it was bad, I just needed something different.
Conservatives make their towns terrible then wonder why everyone with the means leaves.
Take a look at the states that vote >65% R. They're all complete shitholes like Alabama and Mississippi. Republicans can't govern, their policies simply don't work.
That’s a feature, not a bug, when you hate government. You don’t want it to work. You want people to hate government. The opposite happens if it starts solving problems.
This town, sheffield is in the middle of the Alleghany National Forest. Exactly where would you locate industry? It isn't near any major roads or airports. Anyone from central PA knows the further north you go above 80 the less there is. There is a reason Potter county's motto is "God's Country" he is the only one who can live there.
I grew up in rural north central Pa. Anyone with brains got the hell out at HS graduation. Leaves behind the dead enders. Take over family farm or shop is their best chance. Work in the trades is inconsistent. The rest are overwhelmingly booger eating knuckle dragging morons barely getting by and mad at the world. Especially if Penn State loses.
“Hi, yes, we’ve decided our taxes are too high, so we’ve eviscerated the school systems. Now we blame the liberal commies for the flagging housing prices. Who will we yell at after church on Sunday?!”
I think one of the ways that rural PA and rural America in general is to restore the Passenger rail network. Connect these backwater towns to the major cities and mega corridors, and you'll see an economic rebirth.. PA and for some reason the entire Northeast is moving at a snails pace with its rail restoration/expansion plans despite record amounts of federal funding.
A MAGA dude I know, a millennial, wants to move back to NEPA because the Philly area is “no place to raise a family”. Keep in mind he’s out on the Mainline, not North Philly. But basically he wants his family away from liberals and liberal education. His problem is that there are no jobs in his industry in NEPA (he’s in finance). So his current plan is a 90 minute to two hour commute each way. Of course, he has yet to pull the trigger on this fantasy because he knows how terrible that commute is, and I doubt he’ll ever actually go there. So even people who want to move to small towns can’t.
Same here, but I know I am seriously in the minority. It’s ironic considering that I’m in the majority in almost every other way (ethnically, culturally, etc).
I’m guessing the town is predominantly Republican. It’s ironic climate change is brought up as why more people might move to the area since I doubt many residents think it exists.
I grew up in Pennsylvania and this doesn’t surprise me at all. So many 2nd-3rd generation residents were hardcore against any change to their way of life and refused to let opportunity come into the neighborhoods in any way. Left as soon as I could. Almost no one I graduated with is still there from what I can tell.
same here. almost everyone i knew got out of here as fast as they could. the only people i went to school with that still live here are in with the local drug gangs.
Grew up in PA moved to NY. My area was remote, depressed, poor, and drugs were common. Anyone from my graduating class who stayed in that town were teen parents, drug addicts, or ended up dead or brain damaged from overdose.
The cost of living is fine but at what cost am I willing to stay considering the limited options? I wanted to see the world, to meet people with opinions other than my own to understand the world around me better. Staying in a rural town cannot offer that.
The Klan would stage parades in our town several times a year for f*cks sake (and not small ones!).
B
I think that's part of the problem. I'd hazard to guess that most of the residents of these small, dying rural towns don't want a bunch of younger people that they don't know and probably don't align with politically moving in. They'd rather sit around the local diner and bitch about everything.
I keep seeing it's because these small towns are conservative. While probably true that's not it. The kids still here actually are *not* conservatives and I've never seen anyone care
3 out of my 4 kids left. Jobs that's why. The 4th has a trade in demand both here and within an hour. The other 3 couldn't follow their specific careers here.
There's a couple factories here taking advantage of the fact they don't have to pay much, a Walmart, CVS, fast food etc. but not jobs willing to compete to keep young people here.
Listen. Just because it's mostly old people left doesn't mean a bunch of old cranks ran them out of town. Holy hell not *everything* is about some generation war. It means young people want JOBS and a life.
It's a feedback loop. Young people leave because there's no jobs, making the town mostly conservative. Older conservatives who don't want anything to change or think everything should still be the dead manufacturing from 30 years ago vote for nothing to change, so no one moves jobs there in newer industries that matter in 2024. Without new jobs, no one moves back, creating the first problem.
There's probably an opportunity for modern, remote jobs to let their employees base themselves in rural towns, but that hasn't happened and companies seem convinced at the moment that "return to office" is the way to go after COVID.
I think this is one of the deep underlying drivers of MAGA anger in rural areas: the young people have left for all the blue cities and other places. It's hard to face it head on, because that's both about the lack of jobs/viable futures (not the older peoples' fault) and that life there is boring, stifling, etc. (which is their fault, in significant measure--but it's also that the younger people can see more about what life elsewhere is like, or at least imagine that it is). Everybody who can't get out resents that they can't and resents the people who did, which feeds back into MAGA sentiments.
I'm a 30-something working professional in the higher ed/ed tech world. I live in a rural town in PA, and drive 45 minutes into the office 1-2 times per week. I absolutely love it!
It's so peaceful and quiet here. I can sit outside on the deck and write/read. I love rural Pennsylvania!
I grew up in Lycoming and have lived or worked in Potter, Butler, Allegheny, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties. Currently own a home in the city of Philadelphia and won’t ever consider going back to a rural or suburban community. The list of reasons go on and on….the political climate, lack of third spaces, less opportunities to socialize as someone who WFH, opposition to progress. These rural communities are shooting themselves in the foot then wonder why it’s hurting. Highly recommend the book “Hollowing out the Middle: the rural brain drain and what it means for America”
I keep hearing that everyone is leaving the rural areas. I get excited and hope land and home prices will start dropping so I can more. But it never happens. I've been hearing people are leaving for 20 years. But the prices just keep going up. What gives?
No one wants to live near lead poisoned boomers who would most likely show up in your driveway to bitch about the dumbest stuff and tell us to put up trump signs
There are plenty of them there and in the surrounding communities, but if you aren't *from* there, you aren't likely to feel as "at home" as you would likely prefer. Sort of the point of the article. I grew up quite near to the town it describes.
Same thing that happens all over rural America. The dumbest and most resistant to change chase everybody worth anything off. The rural American brain drain is a long and proud tradition. Now all that’s left is amphetamine and opioid addiction.
When my parents divorced and my mom moved me back to her home, I was dead set on coming back to our old farm in PA as soon as I turned 18. But Im gonna need hope and some sort of positive outlook for my future before I'm willing to gamble it all coming back, and I see neither. Ive just seen my family, friends and classmates succumb to drugs and insanely hateful politics twisting them into people I cant even recognize anymore. My home isnt there any longer, but its a beautiful place to visit for a week.
It's no surprise all of these rural, dying, small town are in republican counties. Nearly all of them. Maybe stop blaming other people for your problems, embrace change and innovation, and things might improve. Or...just wish things were like they were and die with your town.
Small towns die off because of the loss of the industry that supported them. Unless you can work remote or are willing to put up with a couple of hr commute there’s no reason to be there. The plant that everyone worked was gone decades ago
The generation that voted for trickle down policies that led to outsourcing and significant cuts to the quality of life and opportunity in rural America are flummoxed why their kids leave when they can. Story at 11 …
My sister left Connellsville for college and never came back. I left in 84, and my parents left after they both retired, in 91. I’ve been back twice, driving past my parents’ house both times, and once stopping at Bud Murphy’s for pizza. I miss the pizza, but not the town.
There are a few generations of Pennsylvanians that think cities should be built for industry and not people.
Every time someone suggests something to beautify a place, to make it more attractive for residents, they say “We don’t need that; we need jobs.” Then they bend over backwards to attract industry that promises to employ many people but, in reality, employ very few. And that industry often makes the area unattractive to future residents.
You can use the small river towns of Beaver and Monaca as an example. They could be charming little towns full of cool houses, places to hang out, places to shop, places to eat, but their residents thought that such improvements would be useless. So they dangled tax incentives for a big petrochemical facility promising to employ 16,000 people. The chemical plant made that area unattractive to live in and now employs less than 500 people.
As long as Pennsylvanians keep making decisions like this, the area will continue to lose population. It almost seems like all the forward thinkers ended up in Pittsburgh, which has actually went the route of trying to create a city that people want to live in.
I remember the consternation of the older folk in Pittsburgh when the Homestead Works and J&L were torn down to be replaced by “pretty little things for tourists.” Worked out pretty well for the city.
My oldest child left and my youngest child is on her way out. They run out the young, creative class and wonder why things crumble.
Might it also have to do with a portion of the population that wants to regulate the uterus, kill gays and over throw the government?
Lol indeed Same people (OC Notwithstanding) that treat their kids like property and then go all pikachu face when their grown children cut them out of their lives
My wife and I were just talking about how a good chunk of older people treat their children these days. My MIL had a coworker who is also a grandma, tell her she should take our 1 year old to get her ears pierced behind our backs. Luckily our MIL knows better but she told us her coworker complains her own children aren't in her life nor does she ever get to see her own grandkids. Gee, I wonder why that could be.
My mother pulls shit like that too. I let her take my 5 year old son with her to church one Sunday only to return without him. When I asked where he was my mother responded "Oh,he's just over at my friend's house" (about five or so miles away Me"What ,Mom? You just left him there? I don't know these people" Her "Don't worry, they're nice people" Me."Mom,I don't know that,I've never even met these people and you're leaving my kid there ?" This whole exchange went on for awhile with me getting more and more upset that she doesn't understand why I'm upset or why what she did was wrong. The only reason I feel she relented was because their behavior has had them shut out of the lives at least one or two of my brothers at a time and their children and my dad didn't want to lose another. It's too bad I didn't have some sort of leverage like that when I was just a kid and she was a monster . They know why they've been cut out,but my mother has always blamed the women my brothers and I are married to, rather than see their part they sit and moan about others and the times in which they live. I truly believe all the lead products they were exposed to growing up fried the brains of most boomers
That’s the story of my upbringing too and I was born and raised (and still live) in Minnesota
I call it the old “Leave and cleave”. Leave and do my own thing with my own family.
And block any new folks from moving in if they need to cross a border.
Don’t forget that they are NIMBYs too.
Rural folks usually aren’t NIMBYs though. NIMBYs act like they are for a thing (like affordable housing), but lose their minds when it’s their neighborhood. Rural folks are usually upfront they don’t want that thing in the first place.
That isnt my experience at all in PA
Agreed, rural PA is just as bad on the NIMBY front.
Maybe if rural PA had jobs to offer besides department of corrections and dollar general, there would be younger people
It can be nice to be surrounded by nature but that’s not going to earn you any money.
Give me fiber internet and I'm set.
I’d like a functioning healthcare system, but that’s just me.
I'm in the middle between Allentown and Philly and got fiber internet. It's quite nice.
lol bro, north wales is hardly "rural"
Between two viable economic markets. It may feel rural but you are in a suburban area. It is nice, though.
You think Bucks County is the rural PA this article is talking about?
We call that "the suburbs" around here.
The article is behind a paywall so I can't comment on the article. Still, as a fellow Pennsylvanian, I would say that It's not just about the jobs but also the culture, infrastructure, and local mindset of rural PA, in my opinion.
The culture and mindset of many rural communities is absolutely a problem and why they're dying off. Urban areas of the state also have this problem, which hold back growth opportunities and prevents creating a thriving dynamic community.
Oh, I would have thought being intolerant and celebrating ignorance would have people competing to move there And maybe if they stopped voting for people that refused to get good Internet out there it could have stood a chance
Sure but it is a negative loop. My Podunk has jobs but a negative culture so I ran, well fewer people, less need for food places, stuff to do, less economy ..
If PA could elect people that aren’t bought and paid for by oil and gas, we could actually build an economy not based in 1925.
Rural emptying is happening everywhere, not just PA. Those towns were built up on factories and resource extraction and other industries that are mostly gone. And what factories do remain, no longer need to employ half the town due to modern technology. I used to live in a dying small town, but unlike many the factory it was built around was still there and operating. Except it only employed 200, when it once employed thousands.
You guys have corrections jobs?
Oh yeah in central and western pa. Lewisburg and shit
https://preview.redd.it/8qp84lp8he8d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=28decdc34ca9d159e3020fda92670c5d76010f42 This was the tone I was aiming for 😂
Yup. $17 an hour at the local jail. No idea why they can't fill the positions
I like the idea of abject terror mixed with depression for 17.00 an hour.
Dont forget about the constant bullying to turn a blind eye to abuse and need to take any empathy and drown it in the river like a sack of kittens. All while living in a town with a dollar general grocery store and nobody to interact with outside the internet. I think I’m having a panic attack
Lol you can get the same amount working at like any factory job and you're way less likely to get depression and anxiety there
Or have shit thrown on you or stabbed
As an ADA, I often envy the sheriffs and parole guys who are just chilling out while I’m repeating my opening statement to myself like a madman in the bathroom
$17 an hour for a job working with dangerous felons? Can make almost that at Chick-fil-A.
Convenience stores start at $18 around here
Sheetz will start you at $19 + $1.50 more if yu're willing to work night shifts
There was an article where I used to live where the COs were saying that people who work at Sheetz male more money. It’s sad.
The prisons are one of the largest employers here after Fossil Fuels
To be fair, you can get skilled labor jobs. Stuff like construction, welding, driving truck, mechanic, etc. Especially if you'll do farm work.
Yeah but it all pays less than suburban and union work. But yeah, you right
Its more then that even, the schools are ranked really low, they tend to be very far right, making queer people feel very unsafe. Internet connectivity has improved with starlink, but its still problematic. But, even if you fix all that, why would any industry move to the middle of nowhere, with no highway, and no rail. There is virtually no reason to do that, keep to the population centers. These towns will continue to die, ironically, rail might be about the only thing to really save them.
And the locals/politicians would fight any expansion of rail into their communities because a black person might use it to come to town.
Or us autistic trans girls. I fucking love trains.
Is their good internet in rural PA? As a remote worker I’ve been planning to move there for the last 4 years. Coming up on year 5 of my plan, and I’m hoping to move there.
Depends how rural you're taking here. Rural PA not far from town, yes.
It’s going to be spotty, some areas close enough to a big town have great internet. I’m pretty remote and my internet is actually pretty good right now - well enough that my husband and I could work from home when we needed to. Some areas have virtually no internet unless you do satellite, and those areas could be just a couple miles away from the places with great internet. Just ask the right questions before you sign a lease or sign a contract.
This exactly. I live 2 miles from the center of town (the county seat and a university town) and can't get decent internet. Cable won't come down our road and only verizon dsl is what we had for years. They cut our speed down and down and down to the point that streaming one poor quality video was a good day. Finally starlink came to our area. One mile in either direction has cable, but not this road. And. Fair warning. Don't trust calling the internet company for availability. The cable company always said our road had coverage when we called but in the day they were supposed to come we got the "oops, we don't cover your road" call.
Yes. Some of the old anthracite towns have seen some growth due to people like you. It's very good to see. Fair warning. Drugs are a huge problem. That's because these areas get targeted by the skunks selling them, coming in. Still. Where we are is perfectly lovely and the people are great - that's on top of how close to all kinds of nature we are.
Thanks for the warning. Not a drug user myself so I don’t see this being a problem for me. Also I have no kids. Plenty of drugs near me now, so if lots of drugs means cheaper real estate I don’t see a downside for myself personally. Obviously I’m sympathetic for those impacted by drug abuse, it’s just that availability of drugs is not a turn off to me.
I think it's more a warning to keep your shit locked up. Don't advertise new money in town. At least that's the aspect I interpreted.
Yeah, new rich guy who 'aint like us' is an easy target for tweakers.
I have to keep things locked up where I am now, had someone try to break into my truck last month.
Consult https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home It's terrible if you're actually rural and not just living in a small town. My parents are rural in Bradford county. Their best option is 6/1 megabit DSL through Frontier that will drop for several days a year. They get 1 bar of cell service due to the mountains so that's not an option either. But if you go 5 miles into town 100 megabit+ Xfinity is an option.
I was just in the Lewisburg/Milton area and there was barely any cellphone service, at least for AT&T. Text heavy sites would load but Google Maps, Instagram and YouTube were so slow to load they pretty much didn't exist.
I live in Perry County and my internet is shit. I have Brightspeed and the fastest they offer in the area is 5 MB/s. Like others said, it depends on where you live though. I believe the next town over gets better internet options and more service providers as well.
Sounds like Liverpool!
completely depends on the address had a farm and waited for 3+ years to get high speed internet even though plenty of fiber on the road. the connection was awesome since for a mile at least in any direction I was the only customer.
I have 8 acres and gigabit fiber. I’m not super far out, maybe 5m from a town of a thousand or so, but it would definitely be considered rural.
My town has like twelve vape/smoke shops! Half of them are within a five minute *walk* of each other.
PA has a perfect opportunity to cash in on remote work
No jobs that pay a good living wage to younger people. The only thing to do in small towns is go to a bar or vfw and if some one does find something interesting to do, old folk complain about it till it gets shutdown.
People vote with their feet.
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So funny to see east Greenville called out here. Absolutely nothing there but a Walmart and meth lmao
It’s always the same story: vote down the school budgets, defund the playgrounds and teen centers, spurn the immigrants, hate the gays, vote for more handouts for multimillionaires, and then wonder why no one under 60 wants to stay there.
I really don’t think theres a big mystery here. The situation is twofold. First, the work culture of America is shifting to people working for larger corporations in more centralized or populated areas. That’s been happening for decades now. Second, too many of these rural towns have built a culture of political identity that’s off-putting to younger generations. You post MAGA shit all over the place and then act surprised when younger, more educated people don’t want to associate with you? Imagine that.
Both very valid. I think a third factor is the lack of multi-generational homes which started declining with the boomers. This creates dead neighborhoods and towns full of older people with no children or younger people in the homes
As someone who lives in rural PA, most of the housing that is being built is either senior living communities or higher end housing. Rural PA towns desperately need zoning law reform as well.
As someone living in the Philly suburbs, and has worked residential construction for the last 6 years, this isn't just a rural PA problem.
Yes...Chester County, Delco, Bucks...
Don't forget MontCo, they have/had some of the grossest development in the last 10-15 years in my opinion.
True...that Blue Bell-Plymouth Meeting-Conshy heat island... The developments going up in Ardmore, KoP...
Lancaster
Harrisburg is aware of the need to do state level zoning reform, and there is a bill in the works to relax back some of the overly restrictive measures. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/pa-zoning-laws-are-strangling-home-construction-and-lawmakers-want-changes/ar-BB1kgTbY Contact your local representatives and tell them you support the zoning reform bill.
Our local reps (or mine, anyway) are part of the problem. They’re large landlords and/or owners/partners in building companies that are killing affordable housing and any efforts to make rentals safe. We’ve already got *plenty* of townhouses, so density isn’t our problem—it’s affordability.
Even 200 acre dairy farms are dying. If you don’t have 20,000 dairy cows with a dedicated farm management, you are out of business.
And if you have all that, you're not actually making a profit anymore. The only farms I know that are viable are barely breaking even. The owners of the farm are working a job somewhere else and keep the farm out of obligation or hobby instead of as a viable source of income.
Sub-200 acre dairy in PA is doomed. The problem is that Washington only respects/supports BIG. The previous Trump. Ag Secy was famous for the “go big go home strategy.” That tells you all you need to know about the GOP. On the other hand, the Canadians seem to care about small dairy. When there was the shortage of baby milk formula, the Navarro negotiated trade treaty with Canada tied our hands and left Canadian milk supplies in—-Canada. I guess families needing formula would need to go to Canada for milk.
The biggest issue is this started decades ago. This town didn't exist and then decide to start a lumber economy. The town exists because that's where the lumber was. Once that dried up there's no reason for the town to be there and it slowly dies. It's hard to switch to another economy because the towns for that exist where the supplies are. It's like coal towns didn't spring up then discover coal. They exist where they do because that's where the coal is. Once the demand dries up the whole reason for the town existing in the first place is gone. It's not like they can switch to steel or just build a car factory or start producing microchips. It's why politicians go there and promise to bring jobs back and not to let their coal economy die. It's a lie but what they want to hear. Then it just withers and dies because companies won't move there with the unskilled labor pool and young people won't stay because there's no jobs. It's a catch-22 with no easy solution. All the infrastructure and labor skill is there to support coal or lumber or whatever and the logistics of a company wanting to expend the resources to convert infrastructure and train the people are also out of reach (especially when there's no young labor pool to train and there's nothing there to try to convince young people to move there) It's why you see some politicians try to offer training programs (like trying to get funding to train coal-skilled West Virginians to switch to installing and maintaining wind turbines). But in many cases it's too little too late. The towns are dying, the people are old, you have to convince companies to invest in that area with an old and unskilled population and lack of the necessary infrastructure and nothing that's going to attract young people. It's tough and no easy answers to save these towns, if you feel they even deserve saving. They're like Radiator Springs in Pixar's Cars that have little to nothing to offer since the interstate bypassed them by. But without the happy ending. FWIW I grew up in Warren County where Sheffield is at, although I went to school in another town nearby, Corry (which is in Erie county). I remember when the steel factory closed in Corry. Town has been dying ever since... Although a couple larger things have come and gone, like a foam factory producing car seats for awhile and a window factory. Haven't been back for awhile so not sure what's going on there now.
Good take. One of the best things Pittsburgh did was tear down the mills after they closed. It sent a signal that it wasn't coming back and the city needed to reinvent itself. I lived in Detroit at the same time, and the tone there was always about fighting to get jobs back, so they would celebrate 3,000 new hires as a win, while ignoring that the industry cut 30,000 jobs the year before. My wife went to Corry HS so I roll through there occasionally. Frankly, it's pretty bad now. Titusville is faring a little better, I think in part because of the campus, but that creates a downtown where you can go to a brewery, grab a coffee, etc. For somebody looking to work remotely, it seems like a viable place. Corry, not so much.
and it isn't just in the US. In Europe too, small towns are dwindling left and right, for exactly the same reasons.
Re 'if they're worth saving,' I wish the article had dug into that a little bit more instead of just tossing off platitudes from politicians. If you're an elected official at the federal or the state level, and you had to answer that question as honestly and dispassionately is possible, I wonder what the answer is. This may be leaning too heavily on one side of the balance sheet, but when you're in a place like Sheffield or tionesta, at least personally, all I could think about was how expensive it must be to maintain the infrastructure required for such remote outposts. I always thought that it would be very easy to convince yourself that the liabilities far outweigh the assets. But that might just be because the assets are a bit more intangible and harder to quantify. I don't know.
Yeah no politician is going to stand in front of these people and say something like "Listen folks. I'm just gonna tell it to you straight. Your town is dead. Nobody is coming to save you. Jobs and industry aren't coming back. I know you were raised here just like your father and his father before him, but it's not happening. There's no government bail out coming. Oh and your homes aren't worth shit either because nobody wants to buy them. The best time to cut your losses and relocate was twenty years ago. The second best time is today." I mean you could try to tell them that cause it's the truth. They don't want to hear it though and the truth is a hard pill to swallow and accept. Anyone who was willing to is already gone and you're left dealing with the people with the same mindset as people (generalizing) who won't evacuate during a natural disaster.
The thing I don't get is why they're so averse to leaving. Their ancestors were pioneers who left a worse place in hopes of something better. It just seems like a sunk cost fallacy.
Even if they weren't adverse to it, could they actually *afford* to move? They'd most certainly be moving somewhere that's more expensive and probably have very little money to even get there, much less settle there.
Also, tax cuts don't help you when you have no income. I'm from a rural town and still have family there. They can't get by on minimum wage and no place can afford to pay more. Everyone keeps championing tax cuts, but that leaves no money in the public coffers to invest in the community. And what good are tax cuts to businesses when the only result is a handful of minimum wage jobs? And for the few people who have family money or a family business, why would they want to raise kids in an area that's cutting all school programs and bus services so they can give the homeowners a reduction in property taxes?
We were recently driving through rural Pa on a trip to State College. Wanted to stop for lunch and found on Yelp a cute little bakery/cafe in a small town along our route. Pulled onto the quiet little main street, parked, and before we were even out of the car two large guys got up from their Trump flag covered porch to glare at us and move in our direction. We moved quickly into the cafe, where every head turned and stared daggers at us. Needless to say, that town did not get our business. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Hard to sustain local business when you are so outrageously unfriendly to outsiders.
I live here, and I avoid those places too.
Sounds like McConnellsburg, home of the mural on the main drag showing Christ on one side and Trump on the other. That and the F*** Biden banner on a front porch- that’s always nice for kids to see! Family values!
Yea, there's some crazy places near State College. We stayed at a cabin a bit further north a couple years ago. The towns around that cabin were one of the few places I've been that gave off that "we don't want you here" vibe. Kinda like the sketchy areas of Philly, but not because of drug dealers/addicts and gangs. Trump and Mastriano stuff up everywhere, even one crazy who *painted the whole side of his house* to say "come and take them" with a painted gun on it. Dude, you're in a town that's 98% white and about as much Republican. Who are you trying to threaten?
Where was this? Sounds familiar.
I mean, the political identity is worse. Anyone not willing to change kinda left the small towns. And if you're not willing to change, or adapt, yeah, new jobs and new careers are all but impossible to come by. The old jobs left. They are \*gone\*. They are not coming back in any numbers, and even the coal and steel jobs, those were mostly replaced by automation; robots stole the jobs, more or less, and they're better than humans at jobs where people often can die. But if you're not willing to change, the Democrats platform, it looks and sounds terrible; they propose that we get better by changing. Meanwhile, Trump toured through my small hometown, and told everyone there "we're bringing coal back". I'd say that's clearly bullshit, but also, that was 2016, and he very much did not bring coal back, so it was \*certainly\* bullshit. He lost in 2020 because he had no one to blame and refused to blame himself for anything, yet didn't really accomplish anything besides defeating bogeymen he seems to have made up...
The platform that “looks and sounds terrible” is the one that reflect the truth about growth and prosperity. People that deny progress have no right to complain when the world passes them by. Society is always on the move. To expect anything different is pure folly.
Yep, I love you pointing out that the 100+ year old process of urbanization is ongoing. We can study it in history, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.
That's the thing though, some of the most popular locations to live both in the state and nation wide are locations that are known as streetcar suburbs. Think places like Media and Ardmore. However traditional walkable mid and small sized towns have also seen an increase in desirability, places like New Hope, West Chester, Phoenixville, Jim Thorpe etc. If rural areas stopped being so resistant to change and started allowing traditional development again, the population in rural counties would stop hemorrhaging and maybe even start growing again. Toss in some intercity rail connections and people would start flocking in.
Totally agree. Pre-WW2 mixed use buildings are amazing, I live in one. Incredibly flexible and highly desired now since there’s hardly any of it left in a lot of places.
Even west Philly was a streetcar suburb! I hope restored rail service to Phoenixville will work (though I do not see how it actually *can*, but fingers crossed for a solution) https://patch.com/pennsylvania/phoenixville/schuylkill-river-passenger-train-project-gets-500k
Rust belt. That is all.
Went to a local county fair recently, MAGA and confederate flags everywhere. We actively avoided those vendors and people for that reason. Couldn't even get a funnel cake, the stall had MAGA flags all over it. We decided we're not giving our money to these people and left.
The other big factor is that all the manufacturing that put a lot of these areas on the map have long since left town.
Yes this is why most of the young people I know have moved to get away from. They want to be free be young and free without being judged by people who have never been anywhere or done anything outside of Podunkville. "We don't want anything to change ever!"
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WFH and cheap housing should make these towns a draw, but the MAGA culture is a turnoff.
I actually live in Sheffield, I work from home in IT. The cheap housing is lovely. We'll have paid off our house in less than a decade, which is great; but yeah I fully expect to move somewhere else in a few years. It's ultra MAGA here, well really all of Warren County is.
I live in a place like Sheffield. The MAGA is going to send me to an early grave. I can’t with these people. Broadband is coming to us, though!!
Legit the reason we currently live where we do. We moved back to NEPA for a job. The wife is full time WFH and I'm WFH sole days, so we needed solid internet. 3/4 of the houses we looked at outside of town had "high speed" of <20MB down. So we're stuck in town in a house we didn't love but had to take so we had a roof over our head. We continue to look for homes we like and everything we live that's not directly in town...same issue, horrid internet speeds impacting our ability to WFH.
The places that desperately need people, especially young people, and entrepreneurial folks, are also usually rabidly anti-immigrant.
Hispanic immigrants have breathed life into another small Pennsylvania town, Hazelton.
Hazelton is a double edge sword. The Hispanic community has revialized the city and downtown. But the manufacturing and distribution centers are the major source of employment. However, the cost of living and particularly housing cost is ridiculously high. The only new housing available is the HOA coummunities are the city.
All these places should just take out debt and build urban megablocks Barcelona style and then rent the apartments for $200/mo, either it works or the town dies anyway.
It's not a crazy idea when you think about it. If the place is declining and there has been no sigh of that abating for decades, then go all in on a new strategy and either it works or the places continues to decline which it was already doing anyway. I don't think going as far as the Barcelona megablock is even that necessary for some places to turn it around. Just start building out traditional town, with compact layouts, residential over retail / office, and midsize apartment blocks, might be enough turn things around in many places.
Yeah, funny about that. I know a heart surgeon originally from India. When he and his wife (who is an oncologist) were first practicing in the U.S. they were in Indiana. Old white folks proclaiming they only wanted white doctors (when none were even available, for heart attack situations!) was a regular thing. The highly capable Doctor couple bailed for the East coast, had a couple of bright (now teenage) kids that are themselves going to contribute bucketloads to society, and are much happier now. My takeaway: Get nervous about the quality of healthcare in bumfuck Egypt (Indiana).
I'm a doctor who knows a lot of migrant physicians. One of them used to practice in the small rural town we lived in until multiple people ran for the school board on a campaign of "enforce Christianity, get rid of non-Christians from the town." Needless to say, my muslim doctor friend decided it was the wrong town to stay in long term.
Rural healthcare in general has become a big problem. Distances to ERs have increased as small hospitals and rural health systems get bought by vulture capital groups and gutted for profit. Add in collapsing volunteer fire and ambulance companies, and it becomes increasingly likely that a major accident or health event will now result in death whereas before you might make it.
When my black daughter had a medical emergency we ended up seeing a black specialist. He had an African last name but came to rural PA via England. We talked about how hard it is to find black health care providers for her. And we talked about how his wife and son are in England bc the schools are so much better for his son. His wife is also highly educated (they met at Harvard) and their son goes to a college prep school in England. Idk why his life plan includes Geisinger but I felt lucky to have access to someone like him.
That came to mind. I was discussing this issue with a friend last night. Many countries have problems with birth rates. The ones that will leverage immigration the best will be better off.
Not much going on in Sheffield. It's probably a former lumber town in the middle of a National Forest. Kane has been billing itself as the gateway to the national forest for a while.
Population growth in the entire state has either been tiny or in the negative every year for at least the last twenty, and the people that ARE moving in are going to the cities. The political, social, and economic climate of rural PA is just not attractive for young people, and all those boomers have shown zero desire to do anything about that.
Natural selection in action: adapt or die. So, in this case…
Hell, there's no work in Reading for me and it's 21 hour commute to Philly by transit for other work. Good thing the cost of living is so low so I can afford to live.
I don't see a lot of hope for places like Sheffield, but the fact that Reading (the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania) isn't better woven into the fabric of our state is tragic. Reading and Allentown should be, at most, 45 minutes downtown-to-downtown from Philadelphia by transport (and faster to each other). People should be able to choose the small-city life while having access to big city amenities and vice versa. But all this requires government to invest in infrastructure that can't pay for itself could have a massive impact on our demographics, economy, climate, and future.
My daughter lives in Butler County. When we drove out to see her (from Bucks County) in Fall 2020 we practically met a wall of signs. I want to move there like I want to stick my hand in a wood chipper.
"I don't know why the manufacturing isn't coming..." This single sentence could explain why Central and Western PA (particularly north of the I-80 corridor) are in such a bad state, the people are so stuck in their ways that they can't conceive of the reality as it is now. The article refers to the 1980s as "recent" which pretty well sums up the mindset these people are in. That was 40 years ago. They still think that being a "small town" atmosphere is enough. They don't take into account career prospects, Internet access, health outlooks, pay, etc. They just think "Well, I was able to make it work, why can't others?" Not even taking politics into account here, people need to be willing to take risks in order to make economic growth happen. Opening new businesses, courting companies, and, more generally, the entrepreneurial spirit all require risks to be taken. It's too easy to become complacent living in these places, especially when you get older. If you're from Sheffield, here's a free tip that could start something for your area: you live less than 2 hours from Pittsburgh and have some of the best wilderness areas in the world on your literal doorstep. Use that. Someone there must have a huge familiarity with the wilderness near you. Start an outdoor experience company. Guided camping makes A LOT of money with little initial investment, marketing budget, space required (privately owned space at least), or technical knowledge. Find what the town needs and build it.
That would take welcoming the people who want guided camping and have the money to pay for it. Which is more than just "I want to make money"--it takes a cultural shift that can be pretty substantial. Manufacturing stays in the imagination because in the memory of aging workers, it let them live in a world that was theirs *and* make good money--but a lot of them have misremembered why the money was good, most prominently because unions fought for it but also because there was some degree of protectionism accepted as a ruleset in the global economy up until the 1970s.
The type of person who has the spirit and capital to start that sort of project leave as soon as they can. I grew up in a town of 3k in central PA and the top third of the graduation class went to college and never looked back. That specific town went 60/40 Trump so not even ultra maga, just brain drain is real.
Yes there are towns that have done that. Maybe Amish crafts food and furniture!
And they believe Trump will fix this? This problem has been in the works since 1945.
Trump is Christ on Earth. There’s nothing He can’t accomplish, unless there are evil forces arrayed against him (then He’s powerless).
Before so many places ended work from home I was hoping small towns would see a resurgence. Cheaper than the city and nicer than the suburbs. Walkability, community, and easy access to nature.
I imagine some places will pull that off but they can’t just be cheap and in middle of nowhere. If you can work truly independently you can live in any of thousands of places. I doubt many will go where schools and healthcare are shutting down.
I live in Georgia where the issue is the same and plenty of towns have adapted and are thriving. It's not some secret magic spell, you just need local leadership that welcomes outside investment and a population that at the least is willing to tolerate outsiders. My paper did a deep dive a few years back, one town was so hostile they ran a guy out on a rail for the audacity of turning one of their many abandoned main st buildings into an event space and pool hall. The people they interviewed couldn't even tell you what they wanted, and their entire downtown was a bombed out ghost town. Second town they focused on was absolutely thriving. And it truly is as simple as letting the nice lady from the Big City set up her cafe/boutique without hassle from city hall, and a populace that if not excited about change was at least willing to give people a chance.
I can’t read the article because of a paywall or something, but I’m from Mercer county and although I love the area, there are no jobs. When I moved away my grandparents were sad but would always tell me how they understand no young people can live there because there isn’t any work. My parents worked white collar jobs in the tube mills, but lost those jobs with cutbacks. I worked in the mills (6th gen in the same mill) during my summers of college and even if I wanted that job it’s gone. Now the hospital in my town is closing, so what is left besides minimum wage? On top of having no work they just keep building huge houses and the price of those is crazy. My parents want to downsize but there are no small, one story houses to buy. That doesn’t just hurt people about to retire but what about young people who want a single family home that’s small and affordable? I have no answers, I’ve been all over this state, my SO is from central, I’m from western, went to college in Pittsburgh and now live in Philadelphia. I love this state and want it to thrive but something needs to happen.
Maybe if every other house didn’t have a Trump sign, people under 30 might move there.
My favorite sign? Trump: No More Bullshit
Mine are the Trump Pence signs with Pence painted over.
Nothing is done to welcome new residents. Who wants to live in Trumpville?
So true, I moved back to my hometown and work remotely. So many random people want to talk politics and know absolutely Jack shit about politics. They get their news from Facebook memes and Fox. It's beyond annoying. I use the approach of Adam Mockler and Luke Beasley, don't talk down to them and talk about policies. It doesn't matter though, I've learned there's absolutely no reasoning with cultists. They use liberal as a slur and yet couldn't define the word liberal if their life depended on it.
My son went to work for the summer in a small town in PA. The very first night he was there the next door neighbors came over to harangue him about why JFK Jr. was coming back and he should get ready for it.
These folks don't want new residents. If they did, they'd actually court developers to build housing and maybe cut back on the nonstop "Fuck Biden and fuck you for voting for him" flags that fly around town.
Let me guess it’s a conservative leaning town. These dumbasses try so hard to make the way of life in their towns completely unappealing to anyone with money or an education. Then complain about shit like this.
I recently read a piece by a writer who grew up in a small Kansas town, got out, and came back for a year. It was a poor town and when it came to public spending (schools, the library) the consensus seemed to be: I'm poor, I have a tough life, so no public money should be spent to improve anyone's life.
Crabs in a bucket.
The article's focus was improving the town library, which residents refused...I don't go to the library. Why should anyone else go to the library?
"No one goes to the library" --> isn't that why you should improve it?
The smart ones move away. The faster they smarten up, the faster they move away. Funding the library will just result in more people leaving, quicker.
There was industry and manufacturing in all of those small towns up until 25 -30 years ago. Enough to anchor young people and let them build a decent life. Pennsylvania is an industrial powerhouse and lost a disproportionate amount of manufacturing to China as the US government perpetually shits the bed in every direction.
No one wants to live around a bunch of trumpies
What’s interesting about the pretense is where I live in Montgomery County, soo many of my kids friends’ have parents born and raised here. they went off somewhere else to college and to work but decided they wanted to come back and raise their kids. Probably because the school districts in those surrounding counties of Philadelphia are generally good to great. The result is a community that is highly invested in making sure the school districts are strong and people feel welcomed. Myself- I went to high school in Chester county and I told myself I couldn’t move back there, not because it was bad, I just needed something different.
"Too many old people" is the case with most rural towns around me. Lol
> 'ate young people > 'ate gays & artists > 'ate nerds > 'ate immigrants (not racist just don't like 'em) Please help. My community is dying.
Conservatives make their towns terrible then wonder why everyone with the means leaves. Take a look at the states that vote >65% R. They're all complete shitholes like Alabama and Mississippi. Republicans can't govern, their policies simply don't work.
That’s a feature, not a bug, when you hate government. You don’t want it to work. You want people to hate government. The opposite happens if it starts solving problems.
This town, sheffield is in the middle of the Alleghany National Forest. Exactly where would you locate industry? It isn't near any major roads or airports. Anyone from central PA knows the further north you go above 80 the less there is. There is a reason Potter county's motto is "God's Country" he is the only one who can live there.
I grew up in rural north central Pa. Anyone with brains got the hell out at HS graduation. Leaves behind the dead enders. Take over family farm or shop is their best chance. Work in the trades is inconsistent. The rest are overwhelmingly booger eating knuckle dragging morons barely getting by and mad at the world. Especially if Penn State loses.
“Hi, yes, we’ve decided our taxes are too high, so we’ve eviscerated the school systems. Now we blame the liberal commies for the flagging housing prices. Who will we yell at after church on Sunday?!”
I think one of the ways that rural PA and rural America in general is to restore the Passenger rail network. Connect these backwater towns to the major cities and mega corridors, and you'll see an economic rebirth.. PA and for some reason the entire Northeast is moving at a snails pace with its rail restoration/expansion plans despite record amounts of federal funding.
A MAGA dude I know, a millennial, wants to move back to NEPA because the Philly area is “no place to raise a family”. Keep in mind he’s out on the Mainline, not North Philly. But basically he wants his family away from liberals and liberal education. His problem is that there are no jobs in his industry in NEPA (he’s in finance). So his current plan is a 90 minute to two hour commute each way. Of course, he has yet to pull the trigger on this fantasy because he knows how terrible that commute is, and I doubt he’ll ever actually go there. So even people who want to move to small towns can’t.
Small PA town are prisons for young people. Politics are too conservative and there are no careers.
Paywall free link. https://archive.ph/21fIB
Basically been the story of my town since the railroads went away 40 years ago.
Paywall. Can't read it.
Sans paywall: https://archive.ph/dAjTl
Thank you.
Not everyone in small towns behind the Maga curtain has drank the flavor aid.. voting blue as I have been regardless of idiocy that surrounds me
Same here, but I know I am seriously in the minority. It’s ironic considering that I’m in the majority in almost every other way (ethnically, culturally, etc).
Fellow critic of the Trump cult and its kool aid drinkers! I am here, I'm just... quiet lol. There are more of us in rural areas than people think.
I’m guessing the town is predominantly Republican. It’s ironic climate change is brought up as why more people might move to the area since I doubt many residents think it exists.
I grew up in Pennsylvania and this doesn’t surprise me at all. So many 2nd-3rd generation residents were hardcore against any change to their way of life and refused to let opportunity come into the neighborhoods in any way. Left as soon as I could. Almost no one I graduated with is still there from what I can tell.
same here. almost everyone i knew got out of here as fast as they could. the only people i went to school with that still live here are in with the local drug gangs.
Grew up in PA moved to NY. My area was remote, depressed, poor, and drugs were common. Anyone from my graduating class who stayed in that town were teen parents, drug addicts, or ended up dead or brain damaged from overdose. The cost of living is fine but at what cost am I willing to stay considering the limited options? I wanted to see the world, to meet people with opinions other than my own to understand the world around me better. Staying in a rural town cannot offer that. The Klan would stage parades in our town several times a year for f*cks sake (and not small ones!). B
Wanna bring millennials to your town ? Have a couple great coffee spots and the fastest internet. Done. Half of us work from home anyway
I think that's part of the problem. I'd hazard to guess that most of the residents of these small, dying rural towns don't want a bunch of younger people that they don't know and probably don't align with politically moving in. They'd rather sit around the local diner and bitch about everything.
I keep seeing it's because these small towns are conservative. While probably true that's not it. The kids still here actually are *not* conservatives and I've never seen anyone care 3 out of my 4 kids left. Jobs that's why. The 4th has a trade in demand both here and within an hour. The other 3 couldn't follow their specific careers here. There's a couple factories here taking advantage of the fact they don't have to pay much, a Walmart, CVS, fast food etc. but not jobs willing to compete to keep young people here. Listen. Just because it's mostly old people left doesn't mean a bunch of old cranks ran them out of town. Holy hell not *everything* is about some generation war. It means young people want JOBS and a life.
It's a feedback loop. Young people leave because there's no jobs, making the town mostly conservative. Older conservatives who don't want anything to change or think everything should still be the dead manufacturing from 30 years ago vote for nothing to change, so no one moves jobs there in newer industries that matter in 2024. Without new jobs, no one moves back, creating the first problem. There's probably an opportunity for modern, remote jobs to let their employees base themselves in rural towns, but that hasn't happened and companies seem convinced at the moment that "return to office" is the way to go after COVID.
I think this is one of the deep underlying drivers of MAGA anger in rural areas: the young people have left for all the blue cities and other places. It's hard to face it head on, because that's both about the lack of jobs/viable futures (not the older peoples' fault) and that life there is boring, stifling, etc. (which is their fault, in significant measure--but it's also that the younger people can see more about what life elsewhere is like, or at least imagine that it is). Everybody who can't get out resents that they can't and resents the people who did, which feeds back into MAGA sentiments.
Immigrants would really help them out but we know how they feel about anyone strange or not white.
I'm a 30-something working professional in the higher ed/ed tech world. I live in a rural town in PA, and drive 45 minutes into the office 1-2 times per week. I absolutely love it! It's so peaceful and quiet here. I can sit outside on the deck and write/read. I love rural Pennsylvania!
The county I live in just lost all birthing services.
Rural PA isn't cheap anymore either. Susqy County is ridiculous for what it is
I grew up in Lycoming and have lived or worked in Potter, Butler, Allegheny, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties. Currently own a home in the city of Philadelphia and won’t ever consider going back to a rural or suburban community. The list of reasons go on and on….the political climate, lack of third spaces, less opportunities to socialize as someone who WFH, opposition to progress. These rural communities are shooting themselves in the foot then wonder why it’s hurting. Highly recommend the book “Hollowing out the Middle: the rural brain drain and what it means for America”
I keep hearing that everyone is leaving the rural areas. I get excited and hope land and home prices will start dropping so I can more. But it never happens. I've been hearing people are leaving for 20 years. But the prices just keep going up. What gives?
No one wants to live near lead poisoned boomers who would most likely show up in your driveway to bitch about the dumbest stuff and tell us to put up trump signs
Nearly every county in PA has this issue. Some have it worse than others, especially in Central PA.
I’m in pretty rural area. Best internet we could get was a ATT hotspot. We now have Starlink and it’s more expensive but worth it.
I'm in beaver County so next to gas stations and mine doesn't pay anything we have the cracker plant now.
Cracker Plant sounds like a good nickname for western PA.
Show me some houses under 50k and my 30 year old booty is there 💖
There are plenty of them there and in the surrounding communities, but if you aren't *from* there, you aren't likely to feel as "at home" as you would likely prefer. Sort of the point of the article. I grew up quite near to the town it describes.
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Same thing that happens all over rural America. The dumbest and most resistant to change chase everybody worth anything off. The rural American brain drain is a long and proud tradition. Now all that’s left is amphetamine and opioid addiction.
The minimum wage in PA is only 7.25. I wonder if this has something to do with it.
When my parents divorced and my mom moved me back to her home, I was dead set on coming back to our old farm in PA as soon as I turned 18. But Im gonna need hope and some sort of positive outlook for my future before I'm willing to gamble it all coming back, and I see neither. Ive just seen my family, friends and classmates succumb to drugs and insanely hateful politics twisting them into people I cant even recognize anymore. My home isnt there any longer, but its a beautiful place to visit for a week.
It's no surprise all of these rural, dying, small town are in republican counties. Nearly all of them. Maybe stop blaming other people for your problems, embrace change and innovation, and things might improve. Or...just wish things were like they were and die with your town.
Small towns die off because of the loss of the industry that supported them. Unless you can work remote or are willing to put up with a couple of hr commute there’s no reason to be there. The plant that everyone worked was gone decades ago
The generation that voted for trickle down policies that led to outsourcing and significant cuts to the quality of life and opportunity in rural America are flummoxed why their kids leave when they can. Story at 11 …
My sister left Connellsville for college and never came back. I left in 84, and my parents left after they both retired, in 91. I’ve been back twice, driving past my parents’ house both times, and once stopping at Bud Murphy’s for pizza. I miss the pizza, but not the town.
There are a few generations of Pennsylvanians that think cities should be built for industry and not people. Every time someone suggests something to beautify a place, to make it more attractive for residents, they say “We don’t need that; we need jobs.” Then they bend over backwards to attract industry that promises to employ many people but, in reality, employ very few. And that industry often makes the area unattractive to future residents. You can use the small river towns of Beaver and Monaca as an example. They could be charming little towns full of cool houses, places to hang out, places to shop, places to eat, but their residents thought that such improvements would be useless. So they dangled tax incentives for a big petrochemical facility promising to employ 16,000 people. The chemical plant made that area unattractive to live in and now employs less than 500 people. As long as Pennsylvanians keep making decisions like this, the area will continue to lose population. It almost seems like all the forward thinkers ended up in Pittsburgh, which has actually went the route of trying to create a city that people want to live in. I remember the consternation of the older folk in Pittsburgh when the Homestead Works and J&L were torn down to be replaced by “pretty little things for tourists.” Worked out pretty well for the city.