CHEYENNE -- Anita Rowley is a member of a community welcome team in Torrington that helps recruits for the new prison and their families who are moving into the area.

Her husband, Tom, is now in training to become a corrections officer for the Wyoming Medium Corrections Institution.

Anita Rowley is worried that Torrington is not prepared for when those recruits graduate and start trying to find places to live that they can afford.

"The people here are wonderful, but there's no housing. There's no state aid for housing," Rowley said.

"These guys are coming here with nothing," she added. "They have lost everything. They're trying to make a living by starting a new career."

Some new apartments have been built in Torrington, but rent is relatively high -- about $700 for a two-bedroom unit, plus the cost of utilities.

Rowley said a lot of recruits won't be able to afford those units.

Some landlords are asking $800 a month "for dumps," she said.

Meanwhile, the entry-level pay for a corrections officer is about $30,000 a year.

They must pay the first and last month's rent to get into an apartment, plus utility hookup fees, Rowley said.

Rowley, her husband, Tom, and their 13-year-old daughter moved to Torrington from Orion, Mich. When he finishes training, she will begin hers.

She never performed corrections work before. For more than 13 years she worked in hospital billing all over Michigan. Then she ran her own home health care business for five years.

Tom Rowley worked at a Chrysler tech center in Michigan for nearly 20 years.

"What happened to Chrysler and Michigan was completely devastating. Because of the economy, everything took a dive. So we were looking for jobs," she said.

"We are starting over,'' she added.

She and her husband came to Torrington early and are renting a nice 2-year-old apartment with a "wonderful" landlord, she said.

The family is in better financial shape than most of the newcomers because Tom Rowley had a buyout from Chrysler.

Yet the move, with a small U-Haul, cost the family $3,000.

Living in a travel trailer

Another Michigan transplant, Christine Campbell and her family, are not in the housing market at this time.

The family, which includes the parents in their early 40s and two children, will be living in their travel trailer for six months to a year.

"We want to get out of debt," Campbell said.

She said she and her husband, who are from Hillsdale, Mich., have essentially been unemployed for two years.

"There was nothing there for either one of us," Campbell said.

The people in Torrington have been very nice to them, she said, and the pastor of a local church helped them buy Wyoming license plates.

Contact capital bureau reporter Joan Barron at 307-632-1244 or joan.barron@trib.com