Filling the rural housing gap: oklahoma co-op combines creative financing with bricks and mortar to meet housing shortages

摘要

Sarah Lowry and the big meat-packing plant where she works as recruiting manager have a problem: finding space for 50 new workers. Wright Brand Foods already employs 700 men and women at its sprawling processing complex in Vernon, Texas, and the plant itself has plenty of room for the new employees. Where the growth plan stalls is at the critical step of finding places for the newcomers to live. "Vernon's a challenging place to relocate people to because of the housing," Lowry says. "We're really struggling to grow because of the local labor source." Wright Brand Foods, by far the biggest private employer in Vernon and surrounding Wilbarger County, had purchased a three-bedroom house in Vernon as a way station for new executives and mid-level employees. But that, Lowry complains, hardly meets the housing need when a plant wants to add 50 workers. What she and her employer--not to mention the community as a whole--need is a lot of new rental units. "I was out last week looking for rental housing,"Lowry says. "And it's dismaying."