Mexicans fleeing drug war help El Paso house market

By Ignacio Alvarado
REUTERS

11:08 a.m. September 10, 2008

EL PASO, Texas – Mexicans fleeing a gruesome drug war are buying homes across the border in El Paso, helping keep the Texan city's property market afloat despite the worst U.S. housing crisis in decades.
With clashes between rival drug gangs leaving dead bodies on the streets of the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez almost daily, hundreds of middle class Mexicans are selling up and moving to El Paso, just over the Rio Grande.

The cities are a short walk apart, but there have been 12 homicides in El Paso this year compared to some 900 in Ciudad Juarez, where law and order has collapsed as Mexico's most wanted man Joaquin “Shortyâ€