Work from home? Alabama towns say ‘Come on down.’
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.
Ms. Brown laughs at the notion – that the, 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.
