Housing costs skyrocket as SpaceX expands in Brownsville

The city of Brownsville's motto used to be, "On the Border, By the Sea" to indicate its geography at the Southern tip of Texas. In 2019, it changed to "On the Border, By the Sea, and Beyond" — an ode to SpaceX, which has a facility about 23 miles east of the city. In downtown Brownsville, there are space-themed murals. One of them is of an astronaut, on the side of a hot dog stand called Space Dog Station. "When I decided to get this business, I thought, 'You know what, I need to incorporate (space) into the business,' because I know it's going to be poppin', as the young kids say," Rebecca Rodriguez says from the window of Space Dog Station. Rodriguez opened the hot dog stand last year, a hit among the space enthusiast crowd, though she acknowledges the split between those who support and are against SpaceX's presence in Brownsville.

"Elon Musk is bringing a lot of changes here into the city," Rodriguez says. "I think a lot of people, just the same way they don't like it, a lot of people do go for it as well." Some of that change includes rising housing costs. Texas A&M University data show median housing prices have increased in the Brownsville-Harlingen metro by 26% since 2020, from $184,900 to $233,000. The median yearly family income for Brownsville residents is just over $40,000, a third less than the country as a whole, according to Census data. One resident who has endured these rising costs is Christopher Basaldú, a Native American studies scholar and member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. He grew up in Brownsville and moved back in 2017. He lived in a duplex for 18 months before his former landlord sold the property and asked him to leave. Basaldú eventually found a smaller apartment with a higher rent. Left there was an eviction notice taped to the window for the previous tenant. He says it scared him.