Housing Drought in Brownwood

"I have no intents for any two bedrooms to be moved out of. And you can forget threes," says Reiger.

And it's not just her apartment complex that's full.

"We're all 100%. And it's just not good," she explains.

The lack of housing doesn't just affect residents of Brownwood. It also affects major corporations like 3M that are constantly trying to bring business to Brownwood.

"We usually do a tour of the town. We show the houses and stuff and you can see the look in their eye, like 'wow," says Gregg Rice, HR manager of 3M.

What they find is not what they were looking for.

"All of the apartments are either very old and outdated or they're income based and those are the newer ones and so they don't qualify for those," he explains.

So they turn the job down, a pattern that is now hurting the company.

"They come and they can't find it and it makes it tough on us. Honestly it means that we have to run shorthanded in our engineering department. It puts a burden on everyone else because we can't find the talent we need," says Rice.

The burden then expands to the city who needs companies like 3M.

"We need to make sure that companies like 3M and Kohler are growing, that we're able to bring the talent in, because that's where the future of Brownwood is," explains Rice.

In order to find out exactly where the housing market lies, the city of Brownwood has now sent out housing surveys to both residents and businesses.

"With this information we hope to be able to provide developers with the type of information that they need when they come in town and try to determine if they need to build apartment complexes, duplexes or single family dwellings," says Bobby Rountree, Brownwood City Manager.

This simple survey could be the beginning of a bigger, newer Brownwood.

http://www.brownwoodbusiness.com/