Japan is trying to lure people into rural areas by selling $500 homes
insider.com
1 thread
The problem is centralization. You need to work to make money to afford food. It doesn't matter if the house is free, if you can't afford to buy food because all of the jobs are in Tokyo.
Some people either already have the money or don't need to be in a central location to get it; or not full time anyway. Attracting young/new blood can help sustain these communities. And I mean sustain in a very general sense.
True. Gov must encourage remote work to solve centralization but it seems that it's not well adopted even in this pandemic situation, especially for SMEs.