bought seven homes in the neighborhood. She pays $1,600 a month in rent and says it's well worth it. They got burglarized twice in one week at their old apartment, east of Bear Creek. "In this area, you can leave the doors unlocked," Nixon said.

Nixon's new landlord didn't tell her the place had flooded, nor that it sits in the flood plain.

"I should have asked him," said Nixon. "But I was in a rush to just get out. I was ready to move anywhere."

Richard Young, 67, a contractor, has lived in Bear Creek for almost 30 years. He raised his children there and doesn't want to leave. But he looked out at the empty houses around him one recent afternoon. Not a single resident on his cul-de-sac hasstayed.

"It's hard when you see 5 feet of water in your home," he said.

Now he and his wife are thinking they'll sell, too. Two floods in two years is too much. He knows it's going to flood again.

And, he said, they continue to get offers on their house. Every day.

David Hunn came to the Chronicle in June 2016 as an enterprise reporter covering energy. He has since written on bankruptcies and debt loads after the 2014 oil price crash and the boom in the Permian Basin that followed. He previously worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he was on a team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of a City Hall shooting. He can be reached by email at David.Hunn@chron.com or on Twitter