I actually had a family code word back before AI scams in case someone outside of the family were to contact a family member on behalf of another family member. So, yeah seems like that would apply here too!
What town is that? It seems like the success of diversifying away from cars depends on the place and how it grew. LA, for example, grew at the time of peak automobile infrastructure investment and it's basically unrecoverable at this point. There are probably other reasons why places like LA are so locked in to cars now, but that's the one that seems obvious to me.