Columbus 2025 is willing to pay you $5,000 to move to the city, but you better bring a good-paying job with you

Chuck Williams
·3 min read

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — An incentive-laced effort to attract professionals to Columbus got a lot of state and national media attention this week.

And the organizers say the effort was misinterpreted on social media.

Now, they are telling the rest of the story.

The online critics have had a field day the last 48 hours poking fun at Columbus.

There was a story that people would be paid $5,000 just to move here.

Turns out it’s true – sort of.

Columbus 2025 – a local initiative born out of the Chamber of Commerce to focus on jobs, talent and place – is running a pilot program to bring professionals to the community.

It is through an online site – MakeMyMove. A story on CNN about MakeMyMove mentioned Columbus as one of the city’s offering cash incentives for professionals to move to Columbus. The catch is you have to bring your job with you.

It was one of the few cities in the South mentioned and the only one in Georgia.

Columbus 2025 Executive Director Tabetha Getz said the program has been in the works for about a year. The ad had been out there for about a month. However the viral post did catch the organization by surprise.

“We’re 100 percent testing the waters,” Getz said Thursday. “We might have gotten a little thrown into that water yesterday, but luckily, we’ve been planning this program for over a year. So, this was nothing new. We originally looked at a similar program back in 2019, before the pandemic. So now that remote work isn’t going anywhere. We just found that this is the perfect kind of ideal scenario to promote the assets we have here in Columbus and the quality of life we have to people that can make a choice about where they want to live, and they retain their employment. So, we’re not displacing anyone out of a job here locally.”

Here are the eligibility requirements:

  • You must live 75 miles or more outside of Columbus.

  • You must be employed full-time with a job that allows you to work remotely

  • You must make at least $75,000 a year

  • You must relocate your primary residence to Muscogee County

If you take the bait, here’s what Columbus 2025 is willing to offer you.

  • $5,000 dollar in relocation cash

  • Six months of co-working space at CoWork Columbus

  • Social gatherings and memberships designed to help you learn the community

  • And even coffee with the mayor.

The negative comments online are not worrisome to Getz.

“So, everyone’s going to do what they’re going to do online where they don’t have all the information and they’re going to begin to speculate,” she said. “They’re going to begin to ask questions. And now it’s our job to make sure we’re answering that as we’re following up with those and we’re putting out the correct information.  But what I also would say to anyone who says we don’t need any and anybody in Columbus that just remember that these people want to be here. They have to go through a rigorous application and selection process.  They have to tell us why they want to be in Columbus.  They have to accept this moving package and be involved in all the things we’re going to ask them to do throughout the year when they live here. So, it’s not a short, quick decision for somebody to say, Yeah, I’m going to move in Columbus tomorrow.”

The numbers back her up.

More than 1,400 people have applied — more than 900 since Wednesday when it spread on the internet, Getz said. Of that more than 300 meet the qualifications. 185 qualified applicants have applied in the last 24 hours.
Ten people will be selected this year.

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