For decades, Florida has remained a top destination for retirees looking to settle down roots as they enjoy their golden years.
But despite the Sunshine State’s warm weather and lack of an individual income tax, a wave of more affluent baby boomers is ditching the state for a newer destination: southern Appalachia.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that many so-called “halfbacks” — or boomers who moved from the Northeast and Midwest to Florida before settling in environs midway — are starting to populate once-heavily rural counties in areas that include Southwest Virginia, North Georgia, parts of both North Carolina and South Carolina, and portions of Alabama and Tennessee.
Many boomers moving into southern Appalachia have also bypassed Florida altogether.
The population in southern Appalachian counties that have retirement or recreational areas grew by 3.8% from April 2020 to July 2022 — a rate significantly higher than the national average — according to The Journal.
The changes have brought forth a sort of whiplash. Counties once defined by miles of countryside now see sustained development — newly-sprouted retirement communities featuring upscale amenities.
Big-box stores, more commonplace in larger cities and suburbs, have also crept further into southern Appalachia, where local downtowns have long been the economic engines of many towns and small cities. And with newer residents comes a growing demand for government services and additional housing and roads.
The growth coincides with Georgia’s increased prominence on the national political stage, as it will once again be one of the most hotly-contested states in the 2024 presidential election.
In Dawson County, Georgia, where the county seat of Dawsonville is about 60 miles north of Atlanta, the population has swelled in recent years — from about 27,000 people in 2020 to about 32,000 people in 2023, according to US Census data.
In southern Appalachian counties defined as recreational and retirement locales, incomes rose by an average of $10,095 from 2018 to 2021, according to The Journal.
Ed Helms, who is retired, and his wife, Johnnie, moved to a gated North Georgia community that partially sits in both Dawson and Pickens counties after living in Panama City Beach, Florida.
The couple sought to leave Florida due to the threat of hurricanes, increased traffic congestion, and elevated costs, The Journal reported. And while Ed Helms has encountered new development in North Georgia, he told the newspaper that it still pales in comparison with the sort of growth that he witnessed in Florida.
“Our property insurance was going sky high,” he said of Florida living. “We got tired of being unable to find a place to sit in restaurants.”
“We wouldn’t go back for anything,” he added.
But some new residents fear Dawson County will simply become a northern outpost of the vast Atlanta metropolitan region, known for its suburban sprawl.
Billy Thurmond, a county native and the chairman of the Dawson County Board of Commissioners, told The Journal that some recent arrivals now stop him to express their frustration over the sustained development.
“People who have moved here now want us to put up a gate and stop anybody else from moving here,” he told the newspaper. “It doesn’t work that way.”
