From the workers coming in from Texas and Iowa to work at Quality Pork Processors, to young executives who will populate the offices at Hormel, to the doctors who the Austin Medical Center has lured on board, one problem has come to the forefront for each group.

Wednesday, November 10, 1999

From the workers coming in from Texas and Iowa to work at Quality Pork Processors, to young executives who will populate the offices at Hormel, to the doctors who the Austin Medical Center has lured on board, one problem has come to the forefront for each group. Where will they live?

It’s a real problem in Austin. People who moved to town months ago and set up shop "temporarily" in tiny apartments have unpacked their boxes and settled in, because they can’t find a place to move into. Others have piled several into an apartment, even several families to an apartment, not just due to finances, but also because they can’t find a place to call home.

The city has annexed land and run sanitary sewer out to those areas, and houses are being built on a case by case basis as people become tired of looking for one to buy, but Austin’s ability to grow has been quashed to some extent by its inability to house people.

The county’s long-range planning committee is mulling over the problem, and so is the hospital. Austin Medical Center owns several apartments to house new doctors when they come in, but it would be easier to lure more were there more housing.

From the highest income levels to the lowest, housing shortages in Austin and Mower County are real and problematic. Our civic leaders need to recognize this and take on this issue directly before inviting one more business to move to an area where employees who followed would have no place to live.