The Rio Grande Valley is home to some of the poorest cities in all the United States, Brownsville & Harlingen rank #1 while McAllen ranks #2 on the list.  Struggling to make ends meet is typical for many residents living in the valley.  With jobs hard to come by and the jobs that are available only paying a bit more than minimum wage, it is no secret that many of our finest and brightest leave to find opportunities else where.  I was fortunate that while I lived in Brownsville I was able to work at home for a company that paid pretty good to be able to fulfill my quality of life otherwise I would of left a lot sooner if I couldn’t find a job.

A house in cameron park

Inside a house in Cameron Park

The two pictures above is from a house in Cameron Park, granted not all houses are like that in that area, but it represents pretty much the type of houses some people are forced to live in.  When people think Cameron Park, this is stereotypical representation that comes into their head.  It’s amazing that people can live in those conditions but sometimes do not have the financial conditions or really have an opportunity to have a better quality of life.  So when there is not much going for you, what could you do? Don’t you want to live in better conditions than those above?

Your new living room

Your room

The two pictures above could be your new residence.  Imagine a 60 inch TV with all the channels you could think of,  dart board to play with your buddies, nice dining table to eat with all the people you know.  Your room is probably not that big but hey you got central air and heating, free wifi, and a nice wooden desk that you can sit down to do a lot of reading.   With all the commodities available to you such as a gym, sauna, weight room. What if I told you the cost of all this would be about $1000 bux, flat fee, sounds too good to be true right? Well it kind of is because it actually is a maximum security prison in Norway known as Halden.  Here prisoners are sent to do time and most importantly go through rehabilitation so that once they serve they can be released back into society. So all you have to do is buy a one way ticket to Oslo, go to a bank and slip a note “bank robbery in progress” and wait for the police to come and get you.

But on a serious note,  if Norway is able to provide nice jails and nice accommodations for their prisoners why can’t our government provide better opportunities to its citizens so that people can be able to afford and live in better communities.  We just had the City of Brownsville pay $140,000 to a marketing company out of Austin to redesign the city logo only for the city commission to turn around and say  “hey actually we like the original logo” and also not long ago the mayor of Brownsville did some shady back door deal with a friend to buy a downtown building worth $700,000 and use city money and pay 2.3 million dollars (1.6 million difference).    I believe that Brownsville can have nice things and that all people around town can have a nice standard of living so that we don’t have to be wondering about flying to Norway and getting arrested but it’s going to take a change of mentality of all the people living here so we can make a difference.