'Home could be anywhere': South Bend-Elkhart region partners with MakeMyMove to lure remote workers

SOUTH BEND — A 25-year-old video game developer who grew tired of the "hustle culture" of her Bay Area hometown and sought a change of pace.

A family of Nigerian immigrants to Louisiana who came north in search of a better public school system.

A 35-year-old Seattle native who, having moved around from one big city to another in his 20s, found that he yearned for the sense of community — and the affordable home prices — he saw in humbler settings.

All are part of an experiment by local leaders and the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership, an economic development agency, to pay a small number of remote workers thousands to move to three cities in the Michiana area. As of May 21, 27 workers had moved to the region, many of them trailing spouses and children, and 21 more were on the way in the coming months.

Working with MakeMyMove, an Indianapolis-based company that facilitates the moves, dozens of Indiana cities with stagnant populations have tapped into state funding to lure higher-earning knowledge workers to their communities.

Since MakeMyMove's online marketplace launched in December 2020, the firm says, more than 1,000 remote workers and their families have used it to move to states like Kentucky, Kansas and Oklahoma. But the company says Indiana's unique statewide effort to match $2.5 million worth of funding for cities' relocation programs has led more than 800 people, including remote workers and their family members, to call the Hoosier state home.

The cities of South Bend, Elkhart and Culver are all providing incentive packages. The South Bend program offers $5,000 cash and $1,200 in benefits such as theater passes, tickets to baseball games and membership to a co-working space. Elkhart's program offers $5,000 cash and $2,750 in benefits, while Culver's initiative offers $5,000 cash and $2,600 in benefits.

MakeMyMove Chief Operating Officer Evan Hock said he sees a small-scale undoing of the trend whereby workers flock to city centers in search of opportunity. With more people working on computers — a recent Pew Research Center survey found that around 22 million employed U.S. adults, or 14% of the workforce, work from home all the time — many are choosing to live in smaller places where housing is cheaper and amenities are convenient.

"The societal shift that I see is the breaking of that link between where you work and where you live," Hock said. "It just puts the power into the individual worker’s hands of where they want to be, and lets them choose based on their own personal definition of quality of life."

From Seattle to South Bend

Elio Galo, 35, was born and raised in Seattle. He's lived in San Francisco. He's lived in Chicago. But his move this March from his hometown to South Bend is the first time he's relocated to a small city.

He said it made sense for him to settle down in the Midwest. He works with media companies that highlight communities of color, and most of his clients are in the region. Moving back to Chicago was his first inclination. But he'd spent time in small towns during his travels in recent years, and he was struck by the sense of community he observed among residents.

"The big cities — L.A., Chicago, Seattle, San Fran — they’re transient places ...," Galo said. "You'll make friends and before you know it, they're moving. I was just looking for something different."

He had also come to feel that it was impossible to invest in a lifestyle he valued while paying so much to live in a large city, he said.

If he ever bought a home in Seattle or Chicago, he figured, he'd have to funnel money toward his mortgage payments and skimp on traveling. Now he pays far less money to live under two hours from the third most populous U.S. city, where he attended a work conference this month.

For now, he's renting a unit in the new high-rise apartment building at 300 E. LaSalle Ave. If he wants to get out in the community and work, he walks to the library in downtown South Bend or to local coffee shops like Chicory Café and Cloud Walking. He's met with local Hispanic leaders and the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce to connect with minority business owners. A weekend trip to Chicago or Indianapolis or Grand Rapids is merely a car ride away.

"I felt like I was living to work and not working to live," Galo said of his time in Seattle. "I wanted to live in a city where I'm not spending all of my income on rent and where I'm supporting local businesses and getting out to do stuff. And unfortunately that doesn't happen for a lot of people who are living in big cities.”

South Bend, Elkhart and Culver offer cash, entertainment incentives

Galo came to South Bend with the promise of $5,000 cash — half paid upon moving with state money distributed by the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership, and half paid by the city of South Bend once he stays for a year. He also got $1,200 in amenities donated by local businesses, including free tickets to the Morris Performing Arts Center, the Potawatomi Zoo and Four Winds Field for a South Bend Cubs game.

To qualify for the regional program, movers must retain their jobs or, if they're self-employed, their clientele. Each city's program requires movers to earn at least $60,000 a year and live outside of Indiana before relocating.

Lauren Thomas, the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership's point person for new movers like Galo, said much of the cash incentive is meant to cover moving expenses. The program's costs are outweighed by the money new residents spend at area businesses and the local and state taxes they pay, Thomas said.

For every $1 invested, according to data shared by Thomas, the program generates an estimated $18.40 in new annual economic output, a statistic that blends consumer spending and tax revenue. MakeMyMove says an analysis by Indiana University's Public Policy Institute — commissioned by the company — found that every $100,000 of income brought by relocated workers results in $83,000 of new economic output each year.

Hock said MakeMyMove's program in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which began in 2018, reported a three-year retention rate of 76%. About 80% of movers to Indiana have stayed for at least a year, he said.

Noting that MakeMyMove gets national press, Thomas said this relocation program exposes the South Bend-Elkhart region to a national audience of prospective residents.

On the appeal of South Bend, her hometown, she said, "It's like a small big city, if you will. You can have a huge network if you want and make an impact, but you can also have a small-town vibe if you want. But you're able to make an impact at the end of the day."

Caleb Bauer, executive director of South Bend's Department of Community Investment, said the city contributed $50,000 to the pilot program, enough money to support 20 movers to South Bend.

"A program like this is not going to be our primary form of population growth," Bauer said, noting that he'd like for the city over this decade to double its 2.3% growth rate in the last census. "But it can help supplement all of the good things that are already happening, and bring the workers who are willing to relocate and have them put down roots here in South Bend.”

In Culver, town government contributed $12,500 to the program while the Marshall County Economic Development Corp. matched that amount to bring the total to $25,000, Thomas said. Mike Huber, director of development services for the city of Elkhart, said his city paid $45,000 to support 18 prospective movers.

A video game developer's haven in Elkhart

For 25-year-old Alisa Khieu, a mid-20s reset meant leaving behind the Silicon Valley "hustle culture" in which she'd come of age. The ideal place to restart, she decided with the help of MakeMyMove, was Elkhart.

She attended the University of California at Berkeley for two years before dropping out to accept a full-time job offer, she said. She now works remotely as a software engineer developing video games — a skill she taught herself over two feverish months in high school while under the influence of a crush on someone building their own game.

The daughter of Vietnam War refugees, Khieu grew up in San Jose, a city of nearly a million people just south of San Francisco. To her parents, Khieu said, the move to Elkhart came as a shock.

"There’s a big sense of keeping your children close in Asian cultures, and for them … essentially I was moving into the middle of nowhere," Khieu said. "They had no idea where Indiana was or what the bordering states were or what Indiana was famous for."

But the ambition surrounding her in the Bay Area had begun to feel overwhelming, Khieu said. She respects big ideas, but many innovators seemed disconnected from the real-world outcomes of the technologies they were building.

She wanted to find a community where people seemed eager to care for one another. The Midwest appealed.

"I was just going through a really rough time, and I wanted a clean slate where I could rediscover myself, my values and who I wanted to be in the future," Khieu said. "And that's easier to do when you're away from the location, the place, the comfort of being where you lived most of your life."

She said the word Elkhart was the "most awesome" among its northern Indiana competitors. She was also partial to the city's incentive package.

She moved to a downtown apartment this January. She doesn't own a car, so she gets around by walking and riding the bus.

She travels to South Bend most Saturdays to play Digimon, a card game that's similar to Pokémon, at a local store. The first time she made the trip, she took the bus. But she learned to her dismay that the schedule didn't allow her to catch a ride back to Elkhart.

Ever since, however, a fellow player has been driving to pick her up and bring her home. She pitches in for gas money.

"I was really surprised that a person would be willing to do that," Khieu said. "In hustle culture, we say time is money, and even if I chip in the gas money, I would feel terrible that someone is driving 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back."

But in her new town, she's found, "people are just willing to casually offer it and not expect much in return. I’ve had multiple people offer some type of transportation help to me when they discover that I don’t yet have a car."

'Home could be anywhere'

Olawunmi Olanrewaju, 49, and his 44-year-old wife, Bunmi, immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria eight years ago, he said. Though they knew they'd be in for a cold winter, the couple moved to South Bend with their three children last August.

The couple and their oldest two children came from the West African nation to Louisiana for Bunmi to attend a graduate program. Now parents to three children, they hoped the U.S. education system could broaden their kids' horizons.

Olanrewaju said they found a wonderful community in Baton Rouge, a city of about 225,000 people, while his wife earned her doctoral degree. But they were looking to move last year after learning about worse educational outcomes among children in the South, where funding for public schooling tends to be lower. On average, students in southern states score lower on math and reading proficiency tests and are less likely to attend or complete college.

They decided to enroll their two high schoolers at Adams High School, where the South Bend Community School Corp. offers its International Baccalaureate magnet program. Olanrewaju works remotely as a data analyst while his wife works at 1st Source Bank in South Bend.

They're renting a home in northeast South Bend and looking to buy, though they've been shocked by some nearby home prices exceeding $600,000.

Leaving behind family in Nigeria was difficult, Olanrewaju said. His mother was supposed to visit her youngest grandchild, whom she has yet to meet, last Christmas in South Bend. But apparent issues with her paperwork led the U.S. consulate in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, to deny the trip, according to Olanrewaju.

Regardless, he said, life in the U.S. has been fulfilling. They attend Kingdom Harvest Church, on South Michigan Street, where they've found a welcoming faith community.

"Where home is does not necessarily have to do with where you were born or where you grew up," Olanrewaju said. "Home for me is where you have people and where you have God.

"Home could be anywhere."

Email Tribune staff writer Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend-Elkhart region partners with MakeMyMove for remote workers