Work from home? Alabama towns say ‘Come on down.’
| SHEFFIELD AND FLORENCE, ALA.
The onset of COVID-19 in spring of 2020 came with hardships for small communities in Northwest Alabama, as it did everywhere. But it also represented an opportunity for programs like Remote Shoals, which offers cash incentives to remote workers willing to relocate.
The pay-to-move concept’s increase in popularity intersects with a tumultuous era and debate over how Americans view workspace. As recent as two years ago, most industries still preferred and maintained traditional office spaces. But with the pandemic shutdown, remote work boomed, while boredom and separation among many pandemic shut-ins inspired a will for change.
Why We Wrote This
The work-from-anywhere boom may be a boon to small towns struggling with population decline. Some of those places are paying for new residents – encouraging people who work from home to rethink home and replant their roots.
That was true for the Millimans, who relocated to Florence, Alabama, through Remote Shoals.
Shannon Milliman grew up in rural Alaska; Eli Milliman, Anchorage. They started a family in Portland, Oregon, where their five children (ages 19, 18, 16, 14, and 11) and two dogs outgrew a 1,000-square-foot home. Portland city life had also grown stale. The Millimans knew they would miss their cosmopolitan lifestyle, but wanted stability – and a larger home to fit their needs seemed unobtainable in Portland. The family was ready to try the slower pace of Southern small-town life. One of the reasons they chose Florence was because of nearby Muscle Shoals, known for its rich music history.
“There’s been a lot of culture shock – I don’t know,” Ms. Milliman says, smiling, as her eyes dart toward husband Eli Milliman on the opposite end of the couch. “Different mindsets, which is good, right?”
It’s springtime in Northwest Alabama, when the birds chirp away in the evenings as Heather Brown and her wife, Janice, watch the day slip by from their white-painted front porch in Sheffield.
It’s a slow-paced town of about 9,000, among a series of small towns nestled in Alabama’s steep hills that seem to stand guard against hastened city life. Ms. Brown toured Sheffield only once before they moved here last year. It didn’t take long for it to feel like home.
By November, their household – dogs included – had relocated from Knoxville, Tennessee, which sits north up the winding Tennessee River. It felt at the time like the river’s current was carrying their lives downstream to small-town Alabama, where they intend to live permanently.
Why We Wrote This
The work-from-anywhere boom may be a boon to small towns struggling with population decline. Some of those places are paying for new residents – encouraging people who work from home to rethink home and replant their roots.
Ms. Brown laughs at the notion – that the river’s powerful push carried their belongings and dogs to Northwest Alabama, like children on a wooden raft. She used a similar metaphor last year during interviews with Remote Shoals, the pay-to-move initiative that brought them here. It allocates up to $10,000 to remote workers who earn at least $52,000 a year. Participants have the option of buying or renting a home in their new community and can leave without repayment after a year. Ms. Brown’s household intends to stay.
The pay-to-move concept’s increase in popularity intersects with a tumultuous era and debate over how Americans view workspace. As recently as two years ago, most industries still preferred and maintained traditional office spaces. But as noted by Mackenzie Cottles, a marketing and communications specialist at the Shoals Economic Development Authority, the COVID-19 pandemic hosted a rethink of what it means to work, and where.
The onset of COVID-19 in spring of 2020 came with hardships for the community, as it did everywhere, but it also represented an opportunity for programs like Remote Shoals. Remote work boomed due to workplace shutdowns. Boredom and separation among many pandemic shut-ins inspired a will for change, and thus a reason to leave cities for towns like Muscle Shoals.
For folks like Ms. Brown, it was as good a time as any to make a change.
“This community decided to invest in me,” Ms. Brown says of the Remote Shoals program. Now, she wants to invest back – financially, once she and Janice eventually buy a new home, as much as emotionally.
Ready for something new
The Remote Shoals program, which encompasses the four main towns in Colbert and Lauderdale counties – Sheffield, Florence, Muscle Shoals, and Tuscumbia – isn’t the first of its type to pay remote workers and their families to pick up their lives and relocate. In recent years, incentivization has gained traction across the United States – Tulsa, Oklahoma; Newton, Iowa; Natchez, Mississippi; and Johnson City, Tennessee, are also among the municipalities to launch relocation stipend programs. And similar to other pay-to-move programs, Remote Shoals’ ultimate goal is to counter population stagnation and pave a path to the future.
Remote Shoals is publicly funded through a half-cent sales tax in Colbert and Lauderdale counties. The revenue goes to the Shoals Economic Development Fund, which launched the program in 2019. Ten remote workers were accepted that first year.
Three years into the program – two years into the pandemic – Remote Shoals has accepted 62 participants, many with families. Ms. Cottles says the number of participants in the program grows by the week. And while the Shoals Economic Development Fund has yet to publish a comprehensive economic impact statement, they cite a $6 million increase in local gross domestic product so far through its participants.
Pay-to-move programs have upsides for municipalities, says Justin Harlan, managing director for Tulsa Remote, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa Remote’s 1,600 participants added $60 million to the city’s GDP in 2021 alone, according to Mr. Harlan. But it also provides an opportunity for outsiders to see regions in a new light.
“Folks have a specific image in their head when they think of Oklahoma,” Mr. Harlan says. However, what visitors “find is that Tulsa does not match that image at all.”
More importantly, newcomers have found a home. Several years into Remote Tulsa, 98% of participants remained in the city for the full-year commitment. Another 88% stayed beyond the initial year, according to data from the bipartisan Economic Innovation Group, which released a study in November on Remote Tulsa’s impact so far.
The retention rate is expected to slip over time, but even with lower rates the programs have a strong economic impact, says Kenan Fikri, Economic Innovation Group’s director of research. The incentives actually “target the feedstock of growth in the modern economy, which is people and human capital,” he adds.
On its face, it’s an easy pitch to recruits looking for not only a change in lifestyle, but also an affordable place to grow roots. Both were draws for the Milliman family, who recently moved to Florence, Alabama, through Remote Shoals.
“There’s been a lot of culture shock – I don’t know,” Shannon Milliman says, smiling, as her eyes dart toward husband Eli Milliman on the opposite end of the couch. “Different mindsets, which is good, right?” Mr. Milliman leans his elbows over his knees and clasps his fingers together. He nods and smiles back at his wife.
Ms. Milliman grew up in rural Alaska; Mr. Milliman, Anchorage. They started a family in Portland, Oregon, where their five children (ages 19, 18, 16, 14, and 11) and two dogs outgrew a 1,000-square-foot home. Portland city life had also grown stale. The Millimans knew they would miss their cosmopolitan lifestyle, but wanted stability – and a larger home to fit their needs seemed unobtainable in Portland. The family was ready to leave.
They looked east for new opportunities. Mr. Milliman, a musician and photographer, researched cultural scenes across the country and educational opportunities in the arts for their children. Meanwhile, Ms. Milliman remembered reading about pay-to-move programs, which fit her new work situation. They landed on Remote Shoals.
Among the selling points was neighboring Muscle Shoals, with its outsize role in American music history. The town of about 14,000 people has attracted icons to its studios: Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Rod Stewart, George Michael, Paul Simon.
And the Rolling Stones, who recorded “Wild Horses” there in 1971. “I love that song,” Mr. Milliman says. Florence, which is just 10 minutes away and where the Milliman family purchased their 4,000-square-foot home sight unseen, has its own rich history of blues music.
One day, they hope to make an impact on their new community. They’re working on a magazine inspired by local art. The inaugural issue, they say, will focus on water.
Where the river sings
In Muscle Shoals, a rock wall stands in tribute to the region’s eclectic charm – and the tenacity of its Indigenous people. In the 1830s, a young Yuchi woman was among thousands of Native Americans forcefully removed from the region and sent to Oklahoma with armed escorts along the Trail of Tears. As 15-year-old Te-lah-nay and her sister attempted to settle into unfamiliar lands, they claimed the rivers of Oklahoma didn’t sing like the one back home.
Te-lah-nay escaped the Oklahoma territory on foot, journaling the five-year trek back to her singing river in Northwest Alabama. When her great-great-grandson discovered the journals in the 1980s he built a wall of stones near Muscle Shoals – 38 billion tons of rock, a nod to each step of Te-lah-nay’s journey back to the Tennessee River, known locally as the Singing River.
If Ms. Brown has anything to say about it, she’ll hear that river sing for a long, long time.
Through Remote Shoals, her wife has received help in landing her own full-time job. The weather’s only gotten warmer in recent weeks, which means they will finally go hiking. They’ve joined a local Unitarian church. They’ve made friends.
“This is it,” Ms. Brown says of staying in Sheffield.
When their lease is up later this year, they hope to buy a house in the nearby countryside. If all goes according to plan, says Ms. Brown, they’ll live near the water.
