One Country Project's Hot Dish

Heidi Heitkamp (00:04):
Welcome to the Hot Dish Comfort Food for Rural and Middle America. I'm Heidi Heitkamp.

Joel Heitkamp (00:10):
And I'm her much younger baby brother, Joel Heitkamp.

Heidi Heitkamp (00:12):
He doesn't look much younger though, no.

Joel Heitkamp (00:15):
Well, she says that, but I don't have a makeup staff like she does, Madam TV.

Heidi Heitkamp (00:22):
We could fix that, Joel. We could really fix that. Yeah.

Joel Heitkamp (00:25):
Trust me, I worked in TV. I didn't like it.

Heidi Heitkamp (00:28):
This is a very exciting episode. I'll be speaking with Professor Ben Winchester, an expert who researches economic and demographic topics that are rewriting the rural narrative. Today we're going to find out exactly what Ben and his fellow sociologists are calling the rural brain gain and what the data that he is accumulating tells us. Stay tuned. But first I want to share something special with you. We've got a few young gentlemen on a mission and they want your help, but most importantly, they want to hear your stories. Crossroad America was founded by Lucas and Ezekiel on the belief that we are more alike in this country than we are different, and we thought it would be great for all you listeners to hear what these young minds have to say and what their mission is.

Lucas Kult Banout (01:22):
My name is Lucas Copadute.

Ezekiel Wells (01:24):
My name is Ezekiel Wells. And we are Crossroads America.

Lucas Kult Banout (01:33):
And we are Crossroads America. I was born in DC and moved Chicago when I was one, and I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois.

Ezekiel Wells (01:38):
I spent some years growing up in China, and then I came back and grew up mostly in Oak Park as well.

Lucas Kult Banout (01:44):
We met sometime back in fourth grade.

Ezekiel Wells (01:47):
Yeah, yeah. I remember I met Lucas, I think originally on the playground, and I was really into playing our little silly games, and Lucas just happened to be into playing those little silly games and hanging out with the same friends that I hung out with.

Lucas Kult Banout (02:03):
And I think I just remember being like, oh, this kid is fun. Got some good energy.

Ezekiel Wells (02:07):
Yeah. Really it was just a perfect match from the start, and we've been great friends ever since.

Lucas Kult Banout (02:14):
When I was in high school, I started working on political campaigns. The one that really changed the way I thought it was working on the Kimmy Collins Congress campaign in the seventh District in Illinois. And so that got me talking with local community activists, people who had been through gun violence and all sorts of things that I had not experienced myself. And so being in those rooms, being able to document those voices, that changed the way I thought about using my camera, not just for the fun YouTube videos I had been making for a few years, but a form of social change.

Ezekiel Wells (02:45):
I think I grew up in a way that was very different than the majority. I spent up until third grade, until I was nine years old in Chengdu, China. I lived right outside of the city for the most part in a little factory town outside of the city of 19 million. And it was really different, but at the same time, everything was the same. People are just people. And I think that led me to be really receptive of hearing other people and what they have to say. But I think the events of past few years politically, it's just, I think it's mindset that most people share. It's hard to get there.

Lucas Kult Banout (03:31):
Ezekiel and I were talking, we're FaceTiming sometime in the fall, and we had both noticed that in our college campuses, there wasn't a lot of conversation happening.

Ezekiel Wells (03:46):
I think what both Lucas and I saw, people were in their camps. It was just a lot of trying to win points, trying to get hot takes. I think part of it was calling Lucas and figuring out, okay, how do we use that engaging nature and trying to understand people better instead of trying to polarize people more?

Lucas Kult Banout (04:07):
Things were really tense. People weren't trying to really see and hear each other. That's a pattern on college campuses and just in communities all over the country. And so we thought what would be a fun, creative way for us to use our talents in filmmaking and interest in politics to try to bring people together. Media right now, whether it's traditional media or social media, constantly is telling all of us, whether Democrats, Republicans, whoever in this country that we're different, that the other side can't be trusted and that we have to stay in our camps. And what we want to do throughout our video series, which we'll be posting about 30 videos in different places around the country throughout our three months on the road, is actually give a little bit of a glimpse at what life is like for other people in this country who we don't think about that much, but who we believe we're going to find are actually a lot more similar to us than we think.

Ezekiel Wells (04:56):
This weekend we were just recording in Chicago and we were talking to a lot of folks on the west side, and when we have gang members and other folks in the community talking about their struggles and their challenges and talking about their values, how they're worried about caring for their families and safety in their community and making sure that their kids can have a good education and that they can prosper and go on to do a better things, that's something that I think someone watching it from middle of nowhere South Carolina, that they might really connect with. And those are the things we want to talk about, a set of things that we can really connect on at the end of the day, no matter how divisive things become. Our first video will be published roughly around June 1st.

Lucas Kult Banout (05:47):
For those of you who are looking for media that is going to tell stories that are hopeful and inspiring, it's going to be uploaded every three, four days and shed light to the good of humanity in this country.

Ezekiel Wells (05:58):
We'll be on the Hot Dish podcast for one country project periodically throughout the summer, and we're excited to share our updates as we continue to learn about all of the stories around our country. If you're interested in reaching out to us or just if you have any comments or feedback on the show, feel free to reach out to our email, which will be listed at our website, crossroadsamerica.org.

Lucas Kult Banout (06:22):
And our social media where you'll be able to find our YouTube where the videos will be published, that is all linked on the site. We'd love to have you showing up to these episodes, liking and commenting, sharing with your friends and family. All that support is greatly appreciated.

Heidi Heitkamp (06:43):
Joel, these kids have bought a van and hopefully producing a documentary as a result of these conversations and hopefully will help us expand our message that we are not that different. I think it's just such a great project, especially coming from two kids who, let's say have not spent a lot of time on the farm.

Joel Heitkamp (07:04):
Well tell them to come to Lake Elsie. There's a great big rock on top of the hill that says high cap, and I'll give them some input and believe me, we'll have a cold one in the fridge for them, how's that?

Heidi Heitkamp (07:15):
They're a little young for that, Joel.

Joel Heitkamp (07:17):
Then they can watch me.

Heidi Heitkamp (07:24):
I am so excited to be speaking today with Evaluation and Rural Sociology Professor Ben Winchester. And Ben, I was looking at your resume and you're actually a mathematician, which actually makes sense. I think some people think this is all loosey goosey, but you are definitely data-driven and that's why I'm really excited about this conversation. And you've been working both in and around small towns in the Midwest for over 25 years, but you are at that little crown jewel of one of the best public liberal arts schools in the country, which is the University of Minnesota Morris. You have been doing a lot of research on regionality, a lot of research on demographic trends in rural America. And so I want to start out with one question, which is tell me what you think the biggest myths are about who we are as rural America and why people believe those myths.

Ben Winchester (08:26):
Yeah. I think we do have a history that lends itself to us believing when we drive through our small towns that maybe our best days are behind us. And it's easy to see boarded up buildings and think there's nothing left here, and you don't see people necessarily walking up and down every main street. And so a lot of times this narrative is informed by what we see. It's easy to think that we're a totally agricultural community, but we're not. We are more than just the singular industry there. We actually have a much more diverse economy across rural America than ever before. But I do, I talk a lot about the rural narrative and the premise behind all of my life's work has been the narrative we're using to describe our small towns and rural places is terrible. A lot of times it's based upon things that happened 50 or 100 years ago without a recognition where we are today.

(09:13):
I went to school at the University of Minnesota Morris, so I grew up in the small town of Winona, which was 25 or 30,000 people. And I used to think that was a small town until I got to Morris, and that was 5,000 people. And I was like, oh, right on. This is a small town here, Morris, right? But then I realized that even Morris, that's a good-sized city. 85% of all the cities in the country are smaller than Morris. They're smaller than 5,000 people, but many of our small towns, we don't have an opportunity really to write our narrative. We don't have newspapers, radio stations. A lot of times this narrative is written about us rather than by us right now. We do want to lift up the voices and try to look at some of the trends that we see in the data that show our small towns are not dying. In fact, we're durable. We're still here. We're not these hollowed out places where our kids want to get out and some kids do want to leave, and that's called the brain drain. And that's true. Kids do want to leave, but we like to remind them is that they've got a more than viable place to come home to.

Heidi Heitkamp (10:10):
Right, right. If I'm curious, listening to our podcast, I say, so other than agriculture, what do you do in rural America? How would you answer that question, Ben?

Ben Winchester (10:23):
While it's true, any one town may not have a diverse economy, but when you put three to five, seven counties together across the rural landscape, you end up with the same diversity in the economy in terms of occupations and industries that you find in the metropolitan areas. A lot of times when I do talk to folks from urban areas, I say, hey, would you ever move to a small town or a rural place? And they're like, well, I'm not in farming. It's like, well, actually our economic base is much more diverse than ever before. The top industries in rural America today are education and health services. They make up about a third of all of our jobs. Rather than you can fill in the blank with you can be a blank in rural America, but you're right, it may not always be in Hancock, but I've got to know that that job is in Bentz and then next door.

Heidi Heitkamp (11:06):
Mm-hmm.

Ben Winchester (11:07):
And how can I really be okay with referring a job to my neighbor? And that might even be in a different county when I'm trying to achieve some goals for my academic development group to create jobs in my county. Well, I don't want to see people move out of my county then or promote jobs there, but we live in this regional atmosphere, which is very different. And when we have a lot of outcomes around economic development that are geared toward narrow jurisdictions, it really doesn't match up with how our people are living. And we live in these broad regions where we're commuting to jobs. And of course, if you struggle with transportation, if your employers have employees that are unable to get to work, we need to fix that. This is one inherent nature of the aspect of rural life. But again, it reaffirms the notion for me that we live in these broad regions.

Heidi Heitkamp (11:52):
Let's talk a little bit about demographics because I know that if you put a microphone in front of people who don't live in rural America, they would say it's white, it's old, and it is conservative. Is that true?

Ben Winchester (12:10):
In the Midwest, sure.

Heidi Heitkamp (12:12):
Yeah.

Ben Winchester (12:13):
Yeah, it looks that way. But when you look at rural as a whole, we are very diverse, but it tends to be really viewed through a very, very narrow lens. This is, for me, anytime you drill down to any one place, you might not see that diversity, especially in the upper Midwest where you're still primarily white, but they're changing very slowly. And they're changing slowly and literally one house at a time. And there is a lot of change coming because we are filled, especially in our rural communities, with older people. And so three quarters of our rural homeowners today, especially in the upper Midwest through where we are here, are baby boomers and older. You wonder why your school enrollments are going down or had gone down for a number of years. It's because all the people who had moved in the seventies, eighties and nineties that brought their kids and had their kids, their kids graduated and left, but then these people stayed in their homes. If you have a rural community, you have a fairly finite number of homes.

(13:07):
Imagine if you have 100 homes in town and you had some kids leave, but their parents stayed here, your population just went down by two people if the kids graduated and took off out of town, but your housing units are still occupied. This is how you can have population loss and still have stability in your housing market.

Heidi Heitkamp (13:26):
The challenge that we have in building housing in rural America and financing housing in rural America really limits opportunity, it seems to me, of people to see themselves in a place like Carrington or a place like Morris.

Ben Winchester (13:45):
That's right. One of the pieces I really try to portray here is how the trends of rural migration have filled up our homes. Essentially since the seventies, you had a lot of people start moving into our rural communities. In the nineties, this brain gain, I call it, trend of people in their thirties, forties and fifties, moving in took off. It filled up about every vacant home we had across rural America, so much so that during the 2000s and 2010s, the trend slowed of the brain gain. And I couldn't exactly figure out why. Why was it slowing down? Essentially once we started to dig into it, what we found out is that the folks who had moved in the first wave that then retired from their jobs, they filled up all of this move over housing, and that might be homes or independent living, not assisted living.

(14:29):
We're not getting into continuum of care. I'm talking about the continuum of life housing after retirement. And what we have found is that the latest generation now, this latest generation of people retiring over the past 10 to 15 years, don't have anywhere to move over to because all that move over housing was already filled. They are in these four bedroom, two bath places forever because there is no place... Typically, 20 to 30% of seniors once they hit the age of retirement would move out of their home. And what happens when they move out of their home after retirement? It makes room for people to move in and have labor substitution. But now over the past 15 years, we watch way more people retire than come into our small towns. And now we see it in terms of a labor shortage, which for me is not a labor shortage, it's a housing shortage. You cannot welcome new people in unless they're somewhere for them to live.

Heidi Heitkamp (15:21):
Yeah. And somewhere affordable to live. Somewhere where they can find daycare, somewhere where they can have broadband. And so it really is, like you said, there's not a labor shortage. There's a shortage of opportunity to find a place to live and to thrive in that place. One thing that I think is also something that maybe you want to consider as you're looking at why you see more and more seniors staying in their home, there has been a big move in social services to support seniors staying in their home, not moving them into group housing.

Ben Winchester (16:00):
That's right.

Heidi Heitkamp (16:01):
Giving them the ability with home care and meals on wheels and all the things that... And so we don't want anyone to think we're trying to push old people out of their family homes.

Ben Winchester (16:12):
That is exactly what people say to me. You're trying to kick me out of my home. But at the same time, nobody is entertaining this conversation and recognizing that the churn of housing has been severely limited now by the inability for people in these family structures.

Heidi Heitkamp (16:27):
Ben, you are just singing to the choir with me because I am one of the few people when I talk about rural development, I say, let's talk about housing stock and let's talk about healthcare, and then let's talk about daycare.

Ben Winchester (16:41):
Yeah.

Heidi Heitkamp (16:41):
If I could fix three problems in rural America, those would be the three.

Ben Winchester (16:45):
Yeah.

Heidi Heitkamp (16:45):
What do we know overall on a nationwide basis about the housing stock in rural America?

Ben Winchester (16:53):
Less than we ever have. I would say we used to have a decennial census that provided a lot more detail for us on the long form is what it was called on the characteristics of the home that people live in in terms of bedrooms, age of things.

Heidi Heitkamp (17:07):
This would've been done by census, right?

Ben Winchester (17:09):
Yeah. In 2010 was the last time we had really good data. 2020, now, I'm not very excited about the 2020 census data at all in terms of its reliability for especially our rural communities. I believe they're not counts anymore, they're estimates. I go back to I'm a data guy, but at the same time, for our small towns, you just got to start being county. Print out your mailing list of all your water and sewer hookups and just start identifying how many people you got and where they are and who's moving in and who's moving out and just what can you do. On the topic of housing, getting back to the brain gain piece about people moving in, one of the shifts we had seen during the pandemic is typically people move into rural communities are not from there. Just one in four new households in a rural community is from that town, but they tend to be the ones that people see and recognize like, oh, Heidi, your daughter moved back or whatever it is, right?

Heidi Heitkamp (17:57):
Mm-hmm.

Ben Winchester (17:57):
You've got capital that's recognizable there, but for every one person you recognize, there's three other households moving in that you typically don't recognize. But during the pandemic, we saw that number go up. The percentage of people, of households that had lived in the community before went up from one in four to one in three during the pandemic. And once we dug into it, we found out it's all about relationships. In a tight housing market, I mean, think about this. In a tight housing market, in a rural community, how do you find a home to buy? You have to know someone. The best place to find a home to buy, you working on HR for a business in town, you better help people find a home. And right now, the best place to find a home to buy is to visit with your seniors after church.

(18:36):
Because right now, nobody is responsible for all your housing in town. Typically, your HRA is only responsible for certain types of homes, but I would like to say that all housing is an asset in our rural communities. When we look at that, I want to look at succession plans of these communities houses, and to what extent do we have plans for all of the housing in our rural community to migrate from one generation to the next? What condition is it going to be in? What we had also found during the pandemic is the percentage of homes that were sold. Typically, I guess home sales, they're called arms-length transactions.

Heidi Heitkamp (19:12):
Mm-hmm.

Ben Winchester (19:12):
Meaning a seller put it up on the market, the buyer doesn't know them, right? And it's arms-length. Wait, 40 to 60% of home sales in Western Minnesota during the pandemic were not arms-length transactions. They were never listed. You want to talk about home sales in our rural communities, you will never see it in the data because they never hit the market. This is where even realtor data that gets summarized by national media, that just looks at homes that got put on the market and sold, when essentially you go to the assessor's office and you find out how many actually transitioned, it's much higher. Helping people make these facilitated connections to a housing market. And it might not be in your town, it might be in your neighboring town too 'cause we live in these regions. That for me is the most interesting aspect of some of this change we've seen in the past couple of years.

Heidi Heitkamp (19:59):
Well, Ben, don't even get me on what happens when someone serves 20 years in the military, is an enrolled member of the Spirit Lake Tribe and tries to move home to take care of their mom and can't find a house. You think housing is terrible in rural America? Let's talk about rural tribal America and how tough that is for so many retiring tribal members who would like to rejoin their community to find a place to live or to find educators who are going to serve schools in tribal countries. We're going to have to put that off to the side because we're up against the time.

Ben Winchester (20:33):
Yeah.

Heidi Heitkamp (20:34):
But thank you so much for the work that you do and continue to keep us apprised of where policy could improve because I think one of the things that we do at OneCountry is really try and amplify where the pressure points are and how policy changes on the national level to keep our communities thriving in rural America. It's all really, really important. But I was so excited to talk to you because for me, we just don't talk about rural housing nearly enough.

Ben Winchester (21:03):
Well, that's right. It's certainly my pleasure here, Senator. It's just really a passion of mine to follow the kind of people like you that do this really vibrant work for our small towns, ensuring that we're going to have a future because we are not dying. We are building for the future here. Thank you [inaudible 00:21:18].

Heidi Heitkamp (21:18):
Amen. Joel, you've had a busy week. You've been all over. You had an opportunity to join some of the greatest heroes we have in this country, and those are veterans who you traveled with to Washington DC on an honor flight. You talk a little bit about that experience because I love hearing the stories that these guys tell you and those moments that remind you that people have sacrificed a lot for the freedom in this country.

Joel Heitkamp (21:52):
Yeah, thanks, Heidi. First off, I want to remind people or maybe tell them what the honor flight is. These things are funded mostly locally, if not all locally. And before it was World War II, then Korean, and there was some Korean, actually there was one World War II vet on this flight, but it's mostly Vietnam now of veterans that get on a plane, they get the trip paid for, they get the hotel room paid for, they get the food paid for. In other words, they get everything paid for. But what a lot of these veterans get to do is they get to see the monuments in Washington DC, many for the first time. And so they get to see the very town where the Declaration of Independence is. They get to see it. And so for those veterans, it's quite emotional. It's a real honor to go with them. This is my 10th honor flight that I was on.

(22:49):
And so you get to know these guys, Heidi. You get to know who they are, what they went through, what they're about, how they went on living their life, how they got treated on the way back and how they get treated now. It's a real honor just to watch it from their eyes and push those wheelchairs and high five. That's what I just spent my time doing.

Heidi Heitkamp (23:10):
Well, when you look at it, now that it's mainly Vietnam veterans, I'm assuming that that is a core visit that is done to the wall and there's probably veterans who know the people who were on the wall. That must be incredibly emotional, Joel.

Joel Heitkamp (23:26):
Yeah, it is. It's very emotional for them. The etchings that they take, the prayers that they say, the hugs that they get. And I have to tell you, Heidi, and you know this from working in DC, there's a lot of kids in that town. There's a lot of school groups and whatnot, and the amount of kids that walked up giving these guys a handshake or a hug and thanking them for their service, it just made you believe that America's still a pretty good place, and those veterans ate that up like candy like they should.

Heidi Heitkamp (23:57):
Well, and I think for a lot of the returning Vietnam veterans who literally were told by their units, do not go home, walk through the airport with your uniform on, this is really an opportunity. And I have to tell you, I saw the picture of the Fargo airport when they came home, incredible how the community supports these guys, and it's really moving and it's organic. It's not like command performance. It is family members, it is friends of family. We have someone on the honor flight that's close to our family. And to see him have that moment in the Fargo airport is just incredible. And it's just wonderful that you have been part of this, Joel. I got a chance to visit with a lot of these guys when I was in the Senate, but got a little jealous when I saw the Fargo airport pictures.

Joel Heitkamp (24:51):
Yeah. And it was no less in Grand Forks. Those are the two airports that we fly into. It's Western Minnesota and half of North Dakota that is eligible for the honor flight. But you're right.

Heidi Heitkamp (25:04):
Yeah.

Joel Heitkamp (25:04):
The response that they get at the airport, I think a lot of them are told that there's going to be some people out there and some aren't. And so to see their reaction, there was a man whose first name was Byron that was on this trip. He was told by his commanding officer that when he got to San Francisco, do not wear your uniform into the airport. And he said, look, that's the only clothes I got. I have to wear my uniform. And he was spit on, he was screamed at. And so when he saw that crowd at the airport, it was more than sentimental. It was breaking down. It was shaking. I gave him a hug and he just wouldn't let go because he wasn't comfortable yet with that crowd. You've got people that come out to it that don't have any family there.

(25:56):
Our sister was there because Keith Keel is part of our family, and those are memories that they're never, ever, ever going to forget. My job as a member of the media was to interview these guys. It's my favorite times. And I got about 17 interviews, and these guys just are so honest. I'll use Keith as an example. I told Keith, I'm going to interview you. And he said, I mean, how much can I cuss on this podcast? Just a little bit?

Heidi Heitkamp (26:25):
A little bit. Yeah.

Joel Heitkamp (26:27):
Let's say it this. He told me where to shove it, how's that? He wasn't going to give me the interview. And then an hour later he comes up and he goes, well, when are we going to do this? Let's just do it and get it done. And I said, well, I've got this other guy. Well, what did you ask for if you weren't going to do it? And he just kept pushing to do it, which was really cool. And then we took about five, 10 minutes outside the Lincoln Memorial. And when he went in, when he signed up for the service, he was 18. He got back when he was 20, and he was in the thick of it in Vietnam. He really was. And I said, well, what was it like? And he said, well, I was scared shitless. I take this interview to the radio show that I do, and believe me, the word shitless still made it on air. I don't care. And I got all kinds of compliments from my listeners for not editing that.

(27:19):
But he talked about what they do now, and this was just coming off the changing of the guard in Arlington. And so all he could talk about was the precision that the guards have and just the response. And of course you know, Heidi, that when those soldiers at the Tomb of the Unknown, when they see these veterans, they break protocol.

Heidi Heitkamp (27:44):
Yeah.

Joel Heitkamp (27:44):
They don't look at them, they keep doing what they're doing, but they scrape their foot on that granite because that's their way of showing respect. And of course we tip them off to that. And again, emotions come pouring out. Keith in his interview talked about that. And I said, "Keith, I'm not saying this to blow smoke up your bing here. I'm saying this because it's true. The job that you guys do at the Manor Cemetery on Memorial Day is just as good as the job you just saw." All of you volunteers that go out to that cemetery and are considerably off time, and you don't hear one gun necessarily. It's blah, blah, blah. These 70-year-old veterans do just as good a job at that cemetery where our father's lying as what those guards at the Tomb of the Unknown do.

Heidi Heitkamp (28:42):
I was walking through the DC airport recently and all of a sudden, the whole airport, basically everybody stood and I'm like, what's going on here, 'cause you never know what's going on. And an honor flight from Oregon flew in and they were unloading right there. And the entire airport, people from all over the country traveling back and forth, stopped and gave these veterans who got off that plane a standing ovation. And so that level of patriotism and respect and gratitude is not just rural America. It happens all over this country. I'm so glad that you went, and this is part of who we are in this country, and we feel discouraged. Think about these kids coming up and hugging and thanking with gratitude. All the people who stop at airports who respect that sacrifice. That's who we are in this country and we don't tell that story enough.

Joel Heitkamp (29:41):
Well, in talking about the Midwest, where Heidi and I are from, North Dakota's got 700,000 people in it. And Western Minnesota is the least populated part of Minnesota. It may be way far North Minnesota. But that being said, there's over 700 Vietnam vets that are waiting in line to get on this honor flight. What does that tell you in terms of a percentage of population that serve this country in uniform?

Heidi Heitkamp (30:11):
Yep. Thank God for them. Thanks, Joel. Great stories.

Joel Heitkamp (30:16):
Yep. Always good to talk to you, Heidi.

Heidi Heitkamp (30:21):
I think this has been a really fascinating episode, and I hope you do too. Let us know what you think and ask us questions or send us your suggestions. Please email us at podcast@onecountryproject.

Joel Heitkamp (30:36):
Thank you for joining us today on the Hot Dish, which is brought to you by the One Country Project, and making sure the voices of the rest of us are heard in Washington. Learn more at onecountryproject.org.

Heidi Heitkamp (30:52):
We're going to be back in a few weeks with more Hot Dish and more Comfort Food for Rural America.

VO (31:14):
Voxtopicia