![]() The resulting housing boom breathed “new life into the Puerto Rican economy” as early as 2020, Rodrick Miller, chief executive of Invest Puerto Rico, told. It’s “created this almost club of high-net-worth households that have chosen to establish residence in Puerto Rico,” Peter Bazeli, a principal and managing director at luxury real estate firm Weitzman, told the Wall Street Journal. Coupled with the rise of remote work, Puerto Rico’s stronger tax breaks emboldened everyone from crypto bros and families to digital nomads and businesses to flock to the island. ![]() It’s a better deal than Florida with the same warmth and sunshine while Floridians enjoy some of the lowest overall taxes in the nation, including no income tax and an average combined sales tax just over 7%, they still have to pay federal taxes. But it really accelerated in 2019 when modifications were passed as part of Act 60 that enabled qualifying new non-local Puerto Rico residents to not pay any federal taxes. The trend has been a “slow burn” since 2012 when significant tax breaks began, Peter Bazeli, principal and managing director at luxury real estate firm Weitzman, told the Wall Street Journal. ![]() Now remote workers and the ultrawealthy have found a new housing market to wreak havoc on: luxury villas in Puerto Rico. Florida became one of the biggest hotspots, but the influx of people made the Sunshine State less affordable as skyrocketing housing prices push out its retiree population to cheaper places like Alabama. Winners of the middle mile grants announced Friday will have up to five years to complete their projects once they receive those funds, though a one-year extension may be requested under certain conditions.Since the pandemic began, wealthy individuals and remote workers have been moving to other states and even countries to live larger while the cost of living remains high. States will then run their own programs to identify recipients that would then build out last mile networks to unserved communities. States’ allotments from BEAD are expected to be announced at the end of this month. Most of that money, $42.5 billion, will be distributed to states as part of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program partly based on new federal maps identifying areas that aren’t connected. The grants were set in motion by the $65 billion allocated by Congress for broadband as part of the $1 trillion infrastructure measure Biden, a Democrat, signed into law in 2021. “These grants will help build the foundation of networks that will in turn connect every home in the country to affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service.” “The Middle Mile program is a force multiplier in our efforts to connect everyone in America,” Commerce Assistant Secretary Alan Davidson said. The expansion is one of several initiatives pushed through Congress by President Joe Biden’s administration to expand high-speed internet connectivity to the entire country. “They’re the ones that are bridging the gap between the larger networks and the last mile connections, from tribal lands to underserved rural and remote areas to essential institutions like hospitals, schools, libraries and major businesses.” “These networks are the workhorses carrying large amounts of data over very long distances,” said Mitch Landrieu, the White House’s infrastructure coordinator, in a media Zoom call. ![]() Department officials likened the role of the middle mile - the midsection of the infrastructure necessary to enable internet access, composed of high-capacity fiber lines carrying huge amounts of data at very high speeds - to how the interstate highway system forged connections between communities. The so-called middle mile grants, announced by the Department of Commerce, are meant to create large-scale networks that will enable retail broadband providers to link subscribers to the internet. took a major step forward on Friday with the announcement of $930 million in grants to shore up connections in remote parts of Alaska, rural Texas and dozens of other places where significant gaps in connectivity persist. The massive federal effort to expand internet access to every home in the U.S. ![]()
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