New York City took the top prize as home to the most rodents, but two California cities also made the top ten on the infamous list.

When Davida Gaffney's lease in Oakland, California, ended last spring, she had a "come to Jesus moment."

The 42-year-old loved living near her sister in the city, but she struggled to find a place with the creature comforts she and her 13-year-old daughter wanted. Apartments with outdoor space and in-unit laundry cost more than $3,000 a month.

Dismayed by the real estate market and ready for a change, Gaffney googled "towns that will pay you to move." She stumbled on a program in Rooks County, Kansas that would pay her $5,000 in cash to relocate and offered a number of other benefits, including an income tax waiver, a pass to state parks and a lunch with the area's economic development director.

"The quality of life for me working at home, raising a kid on my own, having space to develop this home, this garden, this yard - it's been huge," Gaffney, a content marketer, said. "I couldn't afford to do it many other places."

More than 100 programs offering people economic incentives to move to cities and states across the country have sprouted up over the last decade on the online site Make My Move. Some existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, but most sprouted up with the rise of remote work. They've proliferated as rising home costs and high interest rates push people further out of city centers.

People like Gaffney, who are taking advantage of these offers, say the extra cash and incentives have boosted their quality of life, even if it has meant leaving big cities with more professional and social opportunities for more suburban and rural areas.

The communities implementing the programs, many in former rust-belt manufacturing hubs, say the people-first economic development approach is helping bring in increased tax revenue, organic growth and long-needed revitalization of local downtowns.

For every $100,000 of relocated worker income, local communities reap $83,000 of new economic output each year, a 2021 Indiana University Public Policy Institute model created for MakeMyMove found.

"These cities, rather than trying to attract companies, are relocating or recruiting individuals and the payback is big," said Evan Hock, founder of MakeMyMove. The site has registered more than a quarter of a million remote workers and has seen growth every year since it launched in 2020, even as workers have begun to be called back to the office, Hock said.

Movers want to 'afford life'

Gaffney relocated to Stockton, Kansas, instead of other towns near family in Nebraska, because of the benefits offered by the county. The $5,000 lump-sum incentive mostly covered moving expenses, and the gym, golf and state park memberships have been nice to have, Gaffney said.

But the biggest upside wasn't related to the offers she sought out. When Gaffney lost her job in November, she didn't have to scramble to figure out how to pay the bills as much as she would have needed to elsewhere.

"I don't live as much paycheck to paycheck because my mortgage, including insurance and taxes, is a third of what I paid in California and half of what I paid when I lived in Missouri," Gaffney said.

Matthew Mekech, 27, similarly moved with his boyfriend from Huntington Beach, California, to Bloomington, Indiana, because the couple "just wanted to be able to afford life."

Mekech was considering several different communities in the Midwest, but was persuaded to pick Bloomington, where his partner's parents live, because of its "new resident" package. The giveaway includes a three-year membership to a co-working space in town, access to entrepreneurial programming, season tickets to a local theater and other perks valued at $8,000 total.

The networking benefits were a "huge plus" for Mekech, a creative marketing manager for the juicery chain Earth Bar, who works on photography and design projects on the side and has a self-described "entrepreneurial spirit."

Another perk: the cheap cost of housing. In California, Mekech said he and his partner qualified for low-income housing because they made less than $115,000. They paid $2,400 for a small apartment. Now, they're building a three-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home overlooking his partner's family farm for $380,000.

An avid climber, Mekech said he still has access to cliffs and trails and his dog can now "run around and chase squirrels" in his backyard. The home of Indiana University, Bloomington, also has a small LGBTQ+ community, Mekech said.

One downside: he misses urban culture.

"There's a Broadway show coming to town for two days in October and I have an alarm set on my phone so I get tickets for it," Mekech joked.

"It's just different from what I'm used to. l'll take the slower pace of life; I'll take the walking and hiking that's right outside my back door over what I had in California ‒ at least for a while," Mekech said.

Cities see 'something to advertise'

It's not just movers benefiting from the programs. Cities and towns offering the incentives say they're seeing major returns, too.

For more than a century, Newton Iowa's economy revolved around a Maytag washer and dryer factory - until it didn't. When the company closed the facility in 2010, the city lost an estimated 2,000 jobs.

Bruce Showalter, a lifelong Newton resident, remembers the mass exodus and the empty, dilapidated homes they left behind. The city, he said, was "double whammied" by the 2008 housing crisis.

A study conducted in the early 2010s painted a grim picture for the city's future: the population was getting older, young families were moving away and there weren't any jobs.

"A lot of people thought, after Maytag, (Newton) was basically a black hole and it was dying," Showalter said.

So, in 2014, the city began buying dangerous and dilapidated properties and selling the land to developers at a low cost. Then, they started offering a $10,000 cash incentive to anyone who bought a new home valued at more than $240,000.

More than anything, the program gave Newton "something to advertise," said Showalter, who leads the Newton Housing Development Corporation. Today, he sees it as a vital reason the city has avoided the dire predictions after Maytag left.

Over the last decade, the city has issued 132 building permits for single-family homes, leading to an estimated tax increase of $37 million, Showalter said. Newton's population hit a record high in the 2020 census and Showalter said roughly half of those who've received the housing incentive are new to the city.

Tulsa's pay-to-move template

One of the largest programs offering pay-to-move incentives popped up in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2019. Funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, it offers selected remote workers $10,000 to move to Tulsa and stay for at least a year.

The goal, when the program started, was to reduce brain drain and shore up the city's knowledge-based workforce.

"We put out an offer of $10,000 cash, access to coworking space and a promise of community and belonging to remote workers and in turn, our hope was that we would attract knowledge workers to the city and diversify our labor workforce," said Justin Harlan, managing director of Tulsa Remote.

But the city has also seen spill-over effects. An independent study published earlier this year by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that each dollar spent on the program delivered $4 in benefits to existing Tulsa residents.

So far, the program has welcomed more than 3,500 people to the city.

Study author Timothy Bartik wrote that the program has a better "benefit-cost ratio than many business tax incentives" and is a "relatively cheap way to create local jobs."

Organizers like Harlan see Tulsa's success as a blueprint for how Midwest cities can kickstart growth and reduce population declines.

"We can change the notion that talent belongs on the coast," Harlan said. "We can show you can make an impact here in the middle of the country and there are ways in which cities like Tulsa can improve your quality of life without having to sacrifice a ton."

Is the grass greener somewhere else? Communities lure new residents with cash incentives