Opportunity to Go Commercial - in Italy ?

[Scooter68]

Ok so right off the bat this is just a post of a story on fox news about a small community in Italy that is trying to attract new people to move there. BUT if you are prone to dreams of relocating to a romantic place and making wine... well who knows. I'll post the link below and a few paragraphs here.

It would be sort of cool to do this but I'm sure there are a lot of issues not mentioned.

A region in southern Italy that has lost the most inhabitants in the country in the last five years is offering people approximately $770 a month for three years to move there, according to reports.

More than 9,000 people have left Molise, a small predominantly mountainous region, since 2014, leaving the population at around 305,000. Not a single birth was registered in nine of its towns last year.

The requirements for accepting the money include moving to a village in the region with fewer than 2,000 residents and a pledge to open a business — any kind of business as long as the investment goes back into the village. “If we had offered funding, it would have been yet another charity gesture,” Donato Toma, the president of Molise, told the Guardian, adding: “It’s a way to breathe life into our towns while also increasing the population.”

The benefit of the money will not be limited to just those moving there. Toma said these towns will also receive more than $11,000 a month to help build infrastructure and promote cultural activities. He said this will help give people a reason to stay. “Otherwise, we’ll end up back where we started in a few years,” he added.

This is not the first time a region or town in Italy has offered compensation to move and settle there. In 2017, the northwestern Italian town of Bormida offered more than $2,000 to people willing to move there and settle down. At the time, the village had 394 people calling it home.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, the town of Mussomeli, in southern Sicily, offered to sell abandoned properties for a symbolic price of just under $2 as long as the purchaser agreed to renovate it within a year.

Link https://www.foxnews.com/world/italy-town-molise-underpopulated-money

 

[BernardSmith]

I wonder why the birthrate is so low and why so many have left the area... Understanding what in fact is going on there may be very important to anyone who decides to move there ...

 

[Scooter68]

Further down they sort of answer your question.
"Italy's population has fallen to about 55 million, according to the Guardian. Factors include a decrease in births and an increase of the migration of young people to other European nations looking for new job opportunities."

Apparently the country isn't as "romantic" as portrayed in movies etc. Given the government changing frequently, the place may be a nightmare in some ways. Hard to tell unless you know folks from there. I remember how the movie "Under a Tuscan Sun" gave Tuscany a glowing appeal. Perhaps different regions have better conditions.

Anyway I posted this as we keep getting people on the forum talking about going commercial - Wow - wouldn't you think that moving Italy would be a way to do that? Again visions painted by movies.

 

[Jal5]

I have friends and relatives in Southern Italy. The taxes are terrible, living under a government that isn’t serving it’s people, they resent being in the EU, few jobs. The situation now is similar to the great migration of the late 1800s to 1930s when so many Italians came here in search of work and ways to better take care of their families.

 

[user 36973]

More than 9,000 people have left Molise, a small predominantly mountainous region, since 2014, leaving the population at around 305,000. Not a single birth was registered in nine of its towns last year.

Translated sales pitch: "Customers will be few and have a difficult time finding the winery however the few that escape their ill-fated visit through the garbage in Naples will find your winery an oasis. This isn't the money pit it seems to be! 'Under the Tuscan' was fake news anyway, right? It is so much better in the south!"

 

[Scooter68]

As I figured. The Italian government changes so often.

I imagine if a retiree from say the US or someone with their own independent income might make a go of it but it's not some unknown secret, I'm sure.

I remember another offer some nation made - they needed a couple to take over an island that just happened to have a lighthouse - that was the catch. Free place to stay but you had to tend the lighthouse 24/7/365. And it wasn't some tropical climate either.

But yeah - your grape vines should do well if they have to struggle to exist, if you can last long enough to get them into production. But then the taxman shows up..

 

[Greg Teegarden]

This reminds of a little town my in-laws are from called Monsanto in Portugal. It’s in the middle of the country, about an hour north of Lisbon. Back in the day it had a thriving tannery industry but that’s long since closed. All the remaining residents are quite old and as they die off there’s no younger generation to replace them; everyone under the age of 30 lives along the coasts or in the major cities where the jobs are.

Monsanto itself is your typical provincial town, every home has its own well though all are hooked up to municipal water, there’s a lot of livestock around, orchards, vegetable gardens, olive trees, and what caught my eye- wine grapes everywhere. It’s a perfect location to farm grapes as the soil is great, there’s plenty of water from wells, lots of open space and great climate, very similar to central California.

The problem with these places and likely that town in Italy mentioned above is that these are dying towns. There’s really no reason to live there, open a business, or raise a family. The infrastructure is literally crumbling everywhere, you can’t drive more than a quarter mile in any direction without seeing ruins of old homes with their roofs collapsed, old long abandoned factories and everything just generally being in a state of decay and disrepair.

The populations of these countries aren’t very large, and anyone young looking for excitement isn’t going to find it in places like this. There’s no families, just old people who’ve held on from the old days surviving on savings or pensions slowly dying and leaving these dead towns in their wakes. It’s sad.

 

[Scooter68]

Yup it is sad. Could be an interesting 'adventure' to learn the old cultures and maybe, just maybe inspire something of a change. But the sad reality is that such places are in fact dying out.

Some 'youngin' that made it big with some investment or invention could move there live on the cheap and learn a little but the vast majority, as you said, want to live in the fast lane. So much culture to absorb, not all that grand perhaps, but still to see it lost. Sort of like those who want to try wine making the old-fashioned way. Use what you can and use as little of modern ways, just to be safe.