Forum Held To Address Fort Bliss Housing

EL PASO, Texas — A week after pointing out that El Paso will soon face a serious apartment shortage thanks to thousands of new soldiers, the city held a housing forum to address the issue.

Builders, developers and investors from El Paso and across the country attended Wednesday’s forum.

The consensus was, in this tough economy, it’s not going to be easy getting these apartments built in time for the arrival of thousands of new soldiers and their families.

“I think that we have a big challenge in front of us,” said local realtor Dan Olivas.

Congressman Silvestre Reyes attended the forum to talk about solutions. “The obstacles are making sure that we can count on the local economy to make these kinds of investments…That’s why this seminar is so important,” he said.

Beautiful new barracks are being built all over Fort Bliss, but post officials said they will still need 8,000 apartment units off-post to be built by 2012.

“There’s ways to do it, but you have to work it out and figure it out … I’ve already heard from some of the builders during the break, they’ve already got some ideas … So I’m pretty optimistic,” said Maj. Gen. Howard Bromberg, the commander of Fort Bliss.

Others were not as upbeat. “The soldiers coming in are part of the problem in that when they come in, they put pressure on the rental market, causing rents to go up,” Olivas said.

Joe Calcara, the senior civilian advocate on Capitol Hill for Base Realignment and Closure, said housing is a challenge wherever you go: “By and large, we’re ready for this growth…The money is in place to pull off the building and the assets…We have a bit of a challenge left on the housing side.”

He said that Fort Bliss is our country’s biggest BRAC expansion project with $4.6 billion committed.

At this point, they are spending one million dollars in construction per day and delivering one building a week to the Army. The only question now is whether those apartments will be completed in time.