ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP) — Lori Matthias and her husband had tired of Atlanta traffic when they moved to St. Augustine, Florida, in 2023. For Mike Waldron and his wife, moving from the Boston area in 2020 to a place that bills itself as “the nation’s oldest city” was motivated by a desire to be closer to their adult children.

They were among thousands of white-collar, remote workers who migrated to the St. Augustine area in recent years, transforming the touristy beach town into one of the top remote work hubs in the United States.

Matthias fell in love with St. Augustine’s small town feeling, trading the hour-long commute she had in Atlanta for bumping into friends and acquaintances while running errands.

“The whole pace here is slower and I’m attracted to that,” said Matthias, who does sales and marketing for a power tool company. “My commute is like 30 steps from my kitchen to my office. It’s just different. It’s just relaxed and friendly.”

Centuries before becoming a remote work hub, the St. Augustine area was claimed by the Spanish crown in the early 16th century after explorer Juan Ponce de Leon’s arrival. In modern times, it is best known for its Spanish architecture of terra cotta roofs and arched doorways, tourist-carrying trollies, a historic fort, an alligator farm, lighthouses and a shipwreck museum.

A population boom driven by the pandemic

In St. Johns County, home to St. Augustine, the percentage of workers who did their jobs from home nearly tripled from 8.6% in 2018 to almost 24% in 2023, moving the northeast Florida county into the top ranks of U.S. counties with the largest share of people working remotely, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Only counties with a heavy presence of tech, finance and government workers in metro Washington, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and Dallas, as well as two counties in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, had a larger share of their workforce working from home. But these were counties much more populous than the 335,000 residents in St. Johns County, which has grown by more than a fifth during this decade.

Scott Maynard, a vice president of economic development for the county’s chamber of commerce, attributes the initial influx of new residents to Florida’s lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in businesses and schools in the fall of 2020 while much of the country remained locked down.

“A lot of people were relocating here from the Northeast, the Midwest and California so that their children could get back to a face-to-face education,” Maynard said. “That brought in a tremendous number of people who had the ability to work remotely and wanted their children back in a face-to-face school situation.”

Public schools in St. Johns County are among the best in Florida, according to an annual report card by the state Department of Education.

Surging popularity comes at a price

The influx of new residents has brought growing pains, particularly when it comes to affordable housing since many of the new, remote workers moving into the area are wealthier than locals and able to outbid them on homes, officials said.

Many essential workers such as police officers, firefighters and teachers have been forced to commute from outside St. Johns County because of rising housing costs. The median home price grew from $405,000 in 2019 to almost $535,000 in 2023, according to Census Bureau figures, making the purchase of a home further out of reach for the county’s essential workers.

Essential workers would need to earn at least $180,000 annually to afford the median price of a home in St. Johns County, but a teacher has an average salary of around $48,000 and a law enforcement officer earns around $58,000 on average, according to an analysis by the local chamber of commerce.

“What happened was a lot of the people, especially coming in from up North, were able to sell their homes for such a high value and come here and just pay cash since this seemed affordable to them,” said Aliyah Meyer, an economic researcher at the chamber of commerce. “So it kind of inflated the market and put a bit of a constraint on the local residents.”

Waldron, a sales executive in the health care industry, was able to sell his Boston home at the height of the pandemic and purchase a three-bedroom, two-bath home in a gated community by a golf course outside St. Augustine where “things really worked out to be less expensive down here.”

The flexibility offered by fast wireless internet and the popularity of online meeting platforms since the start of the pandemic also helped.

“If I was still locked in an office, I would not have been able to move down here,” Waldron said.

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Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

On Friday night, Haiden Deegan was arrested in Walton County and booked at 11:29 p.m. for violating street racing and stunt driving laws. He was released at 1:23 a.m. Saturday after posting a $1,000 cash / professional bond. The incident occurred at 9:58 p.m.

Deegan posted the booking history as an Instagram story, which disappear 24 hours after posting. Deegan apparently altered the screenshot with the notation “Certified stunt driver” and a laughing emoji.

Deegan currently leads the Monster Energy 250 West championship by 12 points over Julien Beaumer.

Bookmark this page for live updates of Round 10 in Birmingham

RALEIGH, N.C. – In the moments after his team survived a 67-59 rock fight of a first-round NCAA men’s basketball tournament game against Oklahoma, UConn coach Dan Hurley boiled the emotions down to the simplest possible terms.

“It feels normal,” Hurley told CBS’ Tracy Wolfson.

Well, yeah. In a way.

UConn, the back-to-back national champions, won a 13^th straight NCAA Tournament game. That’s normal.

But the ugly, grinding way the Huskies needed to get it done?

Not normal – maybe in a good way.

“As much as our defense has plagued us throughout the year, it advanced us today,” Hurley said.

Also not normal? On Sunday, 8th-seeded UConn will be an underdog against No. 1 Florida. A big one. And if you read between the lines, it’s perhaps why Hurley was so proud to get out of the first round the way they did Friday.

Most likely, it’s coming to an end. And nobody knows that better than him.

“I think there’s honor in getting to the round of 32 and making someone put you down to end this run we’ve been on,” Hurley said. “If it wasn’t for all my antics and viral moments there would be more focus on what we’ve accomplished. It’s been an amazing run.”

The reason Hurley sounded like he was talking in the past tense is because he understands what he’s up against in Florida. When he watches the Gators, he sees a lot of what UConn had the last two years.

The multiple big men who crush you on the glass. The perimeter depth and waves of shooting. The relentlessness and precision in the way they execute. The aura and swagger of a team that knows it’s peaking at exactly the right time, almost on the exact same timeline as the Huskies two years ago when they were the trendy pick to win the title even though they hadn’t done it yet under Hurley.

Florida and 39-year-old coach Todd Golden still haven’t proven it. Maybe that gives the Huskies a chance. Maybe.

“The championship pedigree is still there for us,” Hurley said. “There’s a belief in the UConn jersey this time of year. Someone is going to have to put us down for us to go away.”

You saw a little of that against Oklahoma. UConn tried and tried to build a comfortable lead, couldn’t quite get it to double-figures, then watched it disappear completely as Sooners freshman guard Jeremiah Fears started to get rolling.

But with 3:39 remaining, one of the last remaining pieces of that championship pedigree made the shot that mattered. A bit earlier, Alex Karaban had passed up a 3-pointer in the corner only to get an earful from Hurley coming back to the bench for a timeout.

“I told him to shoot the (expletive) ball,” Hurley said.

“I wasn’t going to make that mistake again,” Karaban said.

And so with 3:39 left, even though he was a couple of steps behind the 3-point line, Karaban saw an opening and Fears coming a little too late to contest. So he let it fly. It hit the bottom of the net for a 60-56 lead, and that was all UConn needed on a night it went 6-of-25 from deep.

“When you play teams at this level, which is the best of the best in the tournament, the windows are tighter,” Hurley said. “You’re not going to get the perfect shot. The only way we’re going to win the game, especially with the way Liam (McNeeley) was shooting (1-for-8 from three), they were both struggling. We were on life-support and we needed one of them to step up and make some shots, and it was Alex.”

So UConn moves on. Probably just for two more days.

But after a season of angst and “suffering,” as Hurley put it, just to get to this point and win a first-round game was meaningful. Even for a coach whose mind is wired for perfection, it certainly sounded like it was enough.