Meredith Palmer

Meredith’s list is short and it is sacred: cheap, close to a drink, and absolutely no one who is going to look at her funny. Atlanta has a place that delivers all three, and it happens to be one of the most genuinely interesting square miles in the country.

It’s easy to write Meredith Palmer off as the office wild card, the one who day drinks and overshares and has been hit by Michael’s car more than once. That’s real, but it’s the surface. Underneath is a working single mother raising a son on a modest salary while going back to school for a degree, which is a lot of load bearing life for a person the show mostly used for chaos. So when we place Meredith, we take her seriously the way the office never quite did. She isn’t asking for much. She’s asking to be able to afford it, to have a good time, and to be left completely alone by anyone inclined to judge her. That’s a solvable problem.

Who we’re working with

Meredith works in supplier relations, which she has cheerfully turned into a lifestyle of discounts and free drinks, and she’s a PhD student on top of it, because the education thing is genuinely one of her stated values and she’s smarter than she lets on. She’s a single mom to her son Jake. She is an extrovert of the no filter, thick skinned, seen it all variety, and she has exactly zero patience for pretension. She is going to have fun whether you approve or not, and she’d prefer neighbors who feel the same.

Her housing profile is refreshingly grounded. A small house or townhouse, nothing fancy, in fact aggressively not fancy, since her two deal breakers are fancy neighborhoods and HOAs. She wants working class and no judgment, stated plainly, and urban adjacent so the fun is close. And the budget is tight, $150,000 to $250,000, one of the lowest on this whole site, which rules out most of the metro and points hard toward the places that are real, affordable, and unbothered.

The match: Clarkston

Meredith belongs in Clarkston, and it’s one of my favorite matches on the entire site.

Clarkston is, famously and accurately, sometimes called the most diverse square mile in America. It’s a longtime refugee resettlement hub, a small working class DeKalb city where dozens of countries and languages share a few blocks, and the defining quality of the place is that nobody is the odd one out because everybody came from somewhere. For a woman whose single hardest requirement is a neighborhood that will not judge her, that is the whole thing, not a minor perk. Clarkston is genuinely one of the least judgmental places in Georgia, because judgment requires a norm to deviate from, and Clarkston’s norm is everybody. Meredith could be exactly herself here, loudly, and be completely unremarkable, and completely welcome.

The money works too, which for Meredith is not a given. Clarkston’s median runs around $309,000, and at the lower end, condos and small older townhouses, her $150,000 to $250,000 budget can actually get her in the door, into precisely the modest, unfussy, HOA free place she asked for. It’s affordable, it’s real, it’s endlessly interesting, and it’s a genuinely good and welcoming environment to raise a kid who’ll grow up knowing the whole world lives down the street. Meredith would fit here immediately, and Jake would be better for it.

The alternatives

Stone Mountain. The budget runner up and an easy call if she wants to stretch her dollar even further. It’s a bit cheaper than Clarkston at around $284,000, diverse, working class, unpretentious, and it clears every one of her deal breakers. The main thing Clarkston has on it is that specific, remarkable, everybody welcome density. But if Meredith prioritizes the lowest possible number, Stone Mountain wins, and it’s a perfectly good life.

Forest Park. Working class, affordable, south side, near the airport. Cheap and unpretentious in the ways she likes, a little further from the fun. A real budget option.

East Lake. In transition, historically rough and now mixed, with pockets that fit her budget. Interesting, a little less settled. A wildcard for a wildcard.

The verdict

Meredith lands in Clarkston, in a cheap unfussy place with no HOA and no one keeping score, in the most welcoming square mile in the state, and gets on with the business of having a good time and raising her kid.

She’s the reminder that a relocation guide isn’t only for people with big budgets and big demands. Meredith wanted three honest things, affordability, fun, and freedom from judgment, and Clarkston is one of the few places that genuinely delivers all three at once. She’d walk in, order a drink, meet nine neighbors from six countries, and never once feel like she had to explain herself. For Meredith Palmer, Clarkston is the best outcome on the board, and the rare kind that’s actually within reach.

Phyllis and Bob Vance are next, and they are the one couple on this list with no drama, no budget anxiety, and excellent taste in refrigeration.