Working From Home? Your Home Should Be In Dalton
Dalton, Georgia has been named the second-best city in America for remote workers to live in a new report. The analysis by real estate website ownerly.com lists Dalton as the #2 "Zoomtown" overall in the nation, #2 among small cities, and #1 in the south for those who work from home. The ranking takes into account factors such as the quality and affordability of broadband internet access, cost of living factors such as rent or housing costs, safety data, and other factors. Last year, Dalton was ranked second in the south and seventh among small cities in their rankings.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, many professions were offering more work-from-home options for remote workers. With pandemic quarantines and lockdowns, many more workers shifted from office environments to working in home offices via the internet. Even after the ease in pandemic restrictions, many workers have stayed home, preferring the flexibility of staying in their home offices.
“This is exciting. That’s obviously going to be a growing trend in the future,” said Dalton Mayor David Pennington. “This tells people that we have the infrastructure here to support working from home with Dalton Utilities’ Optilink high speed internet service – people claim to be ‘gig cities’ and everything like that, but we’ve been a gig city for a long time – it really just reinforces what we already knew, Dalton is a great place to live and a great place to work.”
Bringing high-speed internet service to Dalton’s residents has been a priority of City-owned Dalton Utilities for nearly two decades. The utility’s fiber-optic Optilink service connects homes throughout the City of Dalton to affordable broadband service. Alongside other internet service providers, the Optilink service is a big reason why the report lists 100% of Dalton’s homes have access to wired internet services. The ownerly.com report notes that broadband coverage is higher in Dalton that most of the other cities examined.
“Our Utility offers a robust fiber optic broadband network that facilitates an ideal work from home environment,” said Andrew Parker, Dalton’s city administrator. “In addition to that, the community has positioned itself as one of Georgia’s premiere places to work, live, and play through strategic investments in infrastructure, the parks system, and world-class services.”
“This is a great place to live, and more and more people that don’t have to live in a metro area, I think that people that can move out of those big cities want to move out of those big cities,” said Mayor Pennington. “But they want to remain close enough to be able to get there. And no matter if your home office is in Chattanooga, Atlanta, wherever it is we’re also right on I-75 so you can get there quickly.”
“There are a lot of reasons why Dalton is a great place to call home. This is a welcoming community that has the feel of a small town and a lot of the amenities of a bigger city,” said Bruce Frazier, the city’s communications director. “We have a vibrant downtown, beautiful parks, an affordable cost of living and once you’re done with work, you’re going to love spending your free time in our community. We’re building new parks with expanded soccer fields and a new aquatics center – whether you want to spend your weekend doing brunch downtown or hiking in the mountains, you can do it all right here in Dalton.”
This is not the first time that Dalton has ranked highly among options for remote workers. In addition to last year’s report by ownerly.com, an internet service provider called InMyArea.com in 2021 ranked Dalton the best city in Georgia for those working from home and fifth best among “mid-sized” cities nationally.
The full report can be viewed online at https://www.ownerly.com/data-analysis/best-cities-for-remote-work
