Economy
'I Wanted to Be Successful, and I Could Do That in Houston'
Young professionals see the Texas boom town as a bastion of the traditional American Dream.
Dena Washington isn’t the sort of Millennial we tend to read about in scary trend pieces about a “doomed” generation. She’s 28 and married, with a son in elementary school. She’s college-educated and has a good job servicing business accounts at Reliant, one of the largest energy companies in the Houston area. She’s been working there for the past seven years, has excellent benefits and a 401k. Two and a half years ago, she and her husband bought a house in Spring, a suburb that’s technically inside Houston’s city limits.
In other words, she’s living the American Dream—or at least the retro dream many of us still clung to before the recession hit.