The United States-Mexico border region is marked by the presence of hundreds of rural subdivisions, characterized by extreme poverty and severely substandard living conditions. These communities, known as colonias, are home to over 1.5 million people. While some of these communities are newly formed, many have been in existence for over 40 years. During this time, numerous community-led efforts have sought to address the problems in the colonias. The federal government, along with local and state governments, have been spurred by colonia advocates to implement policies and regulations to address the colonia phenomenon and restrict their further growth. Yet these communities continue to exist. In recent years, the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the burgeoning debate on immigration issues has focused increased public attention on the border region. There is renewed commitment on the part of local nonprofit, and the public and private sectors, to jointly tackle the problems along the border.

This report highlights some of the innovative approaches for addressing the needs of colonia residents. Each case study represents a unique effort at improving conditions in the colonias, and is intended to encourage additional such projects in the colonias. A brief background on the colonias provides a context for examining the different initiatives. In addition, a summary of the conditions prevalent in the colonias outlines the challenges to solving the problems in these communities. Finally, a series of broad recommendations is also discussed. These recommendations draw upon the experiences of organizations currently working in the colonias. They are intended to provide a framework for building upon existing opportunities in the colonias, and designing strategic interventions for immediate assistance to the residents of these communities.

What are Colonias?

Colonias are rural, mostly unincorporated communities located along the U.S.-Mexico international border, as mentioned above. While the term colonia has its origins in the Spanish word for "neighborhood," it has come to refer to a residential development characterized by substandard living conditions. In fact, colonias are defined primarily by what they lack, such as potable drinking water, water and wastewater systems, paved streets, and standard mortgage financing. Colonia communities are often concentrated pockets of poverty, physically and jurisdictionally isolated from neighboring cities.¹ Communities with these characteristics exist in all four states which border Mexico. However, Arizona and California have lagged behind Texas and New Mexico in acknowledging the presence of colonias within their jurisdictions.²

Although numerous colonias developed in the 1950s, they remained relatively unnoticed until the 1980s. Eventually, the 1990 National Affordable Housing Act (NAHA) created a federal definition for the colonias. A colonia under NAHA is an "identifiable community" in Arizona, California, New Mexico or Texas within 150 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, lacking decent water and sewage systems and decent housing, and in existence as a colonia before November 28, 1989. Access to federal housing and infrastructure programs, particularly those administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is often tied to this definition of colonias. Prior to this, a 1983 Border Environmental Agreement between Mexico and the United States defined the "border region" as a zone within 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, on either side of the political boundary. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began to address environmental issues of common concern through this agreement on cooperation between the two nations. To this day, access to EPA programs, including infrastructure funding, remains contingent upon colonias falling within this 62-mile zone. Similarly, individual states and counties often follow a definition of colonias based on the requirements of the assistance programs they administer. [Refer to figure 1 for map depicting different boundaries for colonias programs in New Mexico.]³ Consequently, definitional issues of what exactly constitutes a colonia continue to pose a challenge.

The need to create a precise definition is tied to determining program and funding eligibility for these communities. Local colonia activists are opposed to the NAHA cut-off date of 1989, since in many border counties the proliferation of colonias has occurred since that date. While the date was established to facilitate holding unscrupulous developers of colonias accountable for provision of basic services to residents of communities, in reality it has merely rendered unfortunate colonia residents ineligible for federal assistance.⁴ Other colonia advocates feel that the 150-mile boundary is too liberal. While communities with high poverty rates and substandard living conditions exist throughout rural America, the colonia phenomenon is really a unique problem tied to the intertwined border economy between the two sovereign nations of Mexico and the United States.⁵

Despite the desire to create a standard definition for the colonias, the more pressing need is to expend resources to actually address the conditions prevalent in the colonias. No definition can adequately capture the human dimensions of the problems faced by residents of colonia communities.

Figure 1: Map Depicting Different Boundaries of Colonias Programs in New Mexico

Some colonia developments began as small communities of farm laborers employed by a single rancher or farmer. Others originated as town sites established by Realtors in the early 1900s. A number of colonias emerged in the 1950s as unscrupulous developers discovered a large market of aspiring home buyers who could not afford homes in cities or access conventional financing mechanisms.⁶

For the past several decades the U.S.-Mexico border region has experienced severe developmental pressures due to industrialization, immigration, and population growth. Infrastructure to meet environmental, health, housing, transportation and other needs has not kept pace with this development. As a result, colonia developments have continued to proliferate.⁷ Lax land use and zoning regulations, and the lack of enforceable subdivision laws and building codes, have allowed the continued growth of new colonia developments.

While some colonia experts argue that development of colonias is really a land use phenomenon, most agree that broader social and economic forces are responsible for their continued existence. To a large extent, the colonia phenomenon has been driven by the complexities of the domestic and international agricultural labor markets. A significant number of colonia residents are farm workers, or otherwise employed by agriculture related businesses. For instance, the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas serves as the principal home base for the Texas migrant stream of farm workers. Hidalgo County, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, houses the greatest number -- nearly 75 percent -- of all colonias communities in Texas.⁸ Similarly colonia communities in the Imperial and Salinas Valleys, California, are home to farm workers who constitute part of the California migrant stream. Farm workers suffer from inadequate coverage by labor laws. In addition, National Council of La Raza advocates assert that the traditional practice of reliance on immigrant agricultural labor from Mexico adds to the stresses on available housing and infrastructure systems, forcing greater numbers into colonia communities.

Over the years, increasing advocacy by colonia activists, among other causes, has focused greater attention on the border colonias. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has contributed to additional debate on the colonia situation, leading the federal and state governments and others to devise strategies for solving the problems faced by colonia residents. Texas has been the most proactive in addressing this situation. The state legislature has formed a Senate Committee on International Relations, Trade and Technology. The Committee has convened several hearings on the colonias and has worked to pass enabling legislation to address some of the problems. The legislation provides basic consumer protections to people purchasing land in border region counties under a contract for deed under the "fair land sales act"; directs the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) to set up five Self-Help housing centers in border counties and sets aside funds for colonia-related purposes; reserves $40 million in tax exempt mortgage bonds for the colonias; and halts land sales in the colonias where lots lack water and sewer facilities that meet state standards, under the "Economically Distressed Areas Program (EDAP) subdivision regulation."

Other border states have not shown a matching degree of concern or interest. Despite this, local advocacy groups have continued to devise ways to mitigate problems in the colonias. In fact, there is broad consensus among local and national groups interested in solving the problems in the colonias that there is very little they can do to address the larger international economic realities responsible for continued proliferation of colonia communities. However, the groups do agree that they can begin to tackle the physical problems prevalent in colonia communities. The groups also agree that the most effective way to address these problems is by working collaboratively with the public and private sectors.⁹

In order to provide a context for examining effective intervention strategies for addressing the problems in the colonias, it is necessary to examine the key challenges to community development posed by conditions in the border colonias.

Poverty

Colonia communities persist in part because of weak land use regulations and lack of enforcement by local authorities. However, most colonia developments are a direct outcome of the extreme poverty along the entire U.S.-Mexico border region. People choose to live in colonias primarily because they cannot afford to live elsewhere. An estimated 43 percent of all colonia residents live in poverty. The average yearly income for a colonia household in Texas is $6,784. Lack of affordable housing and high land costs (starting at $10,000-$20,000 in Laredo) and equally prohibitive living costs in cities near the border force low-income families to seek housing within colonia developments.¹⁰

Texas is a home base for many migrant farm workers. As a result, employment and income are seasonal for many colonia residents. Typically, colonia residents possess a strong ethic of home ownership, while traditional home ownership financing methods are inaccessible to them. Consequently, colonia residents tend to purchase small lots and construct their own dwellings, adding to them when possible. Unscrupulous developers are willing to exploit this situation, while the government looks the other way. This results in the "contract for deed" arrangements with developer financing on small (60 by 100 feet), remote lots, small down payments and low monthly payments. With this type of financing, property ownership is not transferred until the final payment is made. High interest rates, steep late payment fees and compounding interest penalties make land ownership impossible. This situation is exacerbated by the related problems of poor education and health services, limited job opportunities and high unemployment rates of over 40 percent. All of these problems are symptomatic of the overall poverty and economic disparity prevalent in the border region. ¹¹

Similarly, since the poor tend to be politically disenfranchised, the lack of political will on the part of the government to deal with problems facing colonia residents can also be attributed to the same basic problem of poverty. For the same reason, local governments have been unwilling either to extend their services to, or annex, adjacent colonias. The potentially low tax base from annexed colonias is seen as a burden on the other residents. Also, colonia residents generally make up only a small fraction of the overall county population, which is concentrated in the cities, and find it difficult to compete with other constituencies for scarce resources. This situation has led to the political and legal isolation of colonias.

Population and Geography

Because colonia residents tend to be politically disenfranchised, and are concentrated along the border region, they remain largely unheard in national policy discourse. However, colonia residents represent a significantly large population. In Texas alone, nearly 1.7 million people live along the border region according to the 1990 Census. In 1992, the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) estimated that 279,863 residents lived in 1,193 Texas colonias. In 1995, TWDB updated this figure to 340,000 estimated residents in 1,436 colonias. Nearly 60 percent of these residents are concentrated in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, in the four counties of Hidalgo, Cameron, Willacy and Starr. Seventeen percent are located in El Paso County. The rest are scattered throughout the border region.

It is difficult to count the exact number of colonias located in a county. Some colonia communities may have been absorbed by the growth of a nearby incorporated town or city, while others may have colonia-like conditions, but may not be classified as colonias. As discussed earlier, this has in the past been of particular concern with the rural communities located along the border in California and Arizona. Finally, colonia communities located near each other may consolidate to form a single colonia, or subdivide to create more colonias, and new colonias may also come into existence. Given this constantly altering baseline, it is almost impossible to document definitive statistics on the colonias. Despite this, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, has been working in 1996 on developing a database and computerized maps of all the colonias in Texas, and correlating these with census information at the block group level. This effort is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and will provide further details on the Texas colonias.

New Mexico reports an overwhelming concentration of colonias in Doña Ana County. Nearly 35 communities have been designated as colonias in New Mexico, and are home to over 16,651 residents.¹² Arizona has identified the existence of colonias in Yuma, Cochise, and Douglas counties and has funded over 11 community projects with CDBG set aside funds in these counties. Similarly, California has identified the presence of colonias in Imperial County and has funded several community projects with CDBG set aside funds in this county.¹³

Rural location, physical isolation and the scattered nature of colonia developments has led to problems on numerous fronts. For the residents, geographical dispersion has made it difficult to organize and present a comprehensive picture of the needs and problems of colonia residents. This has made it easier for the government and others to ignore the problem, and local groups have generally succeeded only in a fragmented approach to tackling problems in the colonias. Although the scattered projects undertaken by community organizations have improved living conditions for many colonia residents, they do not have the same impact that a border-wide comprehensive approach would.

The absence of platting, an expensive process that includes the delineation of property lines, access roads and curbing, is a major obstacle to infrastructure improvements in the colonias and is also an inhibiting factor in their annexation by adjacent incorporated communities.

The scattered nature and remote location of a number of colonias also make it difficult and expensive to deliver services and resources comprehensively, especially to those that are not located adjacent to cities. There are inherent diseconomies of scale associated with small community size. Construction of wastewater treatment plants for such small communities is generally not economically feasible. Similarly the extension of water distribution and wastewater collection lines from existing treatment facilities to remote geographical locations tends to be prohibitively expensive.

Colonias fall outside the jurisdiction of cities. In Texas, counties have limited legal power to incur debt needed to finance infrastructure improvements. Cities are unwilling to annex adjacent colonias or extend services to them. As a result, both city and county governments have ignored the problems of colonia residents.  States have also historically followed the same pattern of neglect until about 1994. For example, Arizona's and California's reluctance to formally recognize colonias has prevented the provision of badly needed grant funds in these states prior to 1995. However, as mentioned earlier, both states have since begun to utilize federally mandated CDBG set asides for the colonias within their jurisdictions. (Arizona has set aside a full 10 percent of its CDBG funds for use in the colonias since FY 1994, and California has set aside at least between 2 and 5 percent of its CDBG funds for the colonias since FY 1992.)

In addition, political will to tackle these issues at a federal level has also been lacking, because colonias are located in a few counties in only four border states. Furthermore, there is a widespread misconception that most colonia residents are illegal immigrants (according to Dr. Chapa's study, 85 percent are U.S. citizens), precluding national level efforts at mitigating the problems in the colonias, especially given the current anti-immigrant fervor. All of this is compounded by the fact that federal programs are often not designed to account for the special conditions prevalent in the colonias.

Housing and Infrastructure Conditions¹⁴

Anecdotal evidence and local studies from the border region, particularly the colonias, suggest that significant housing quality problems plague communities along the border. Census data, while weakened by its failure to include physical dilapidation, strongly supports this conclusion. Information reported in Taking Stock of Rural Poverty and Housing for the 1990s, a publication of the Housing Assistance Council, confirms that all the states along the border have a much higher incidence of substandard housing than either rural or urban parts of the country in general. According to 1990 census data analyzed in Taking Stock, housing quality was worst in Texas, and residents of Texas' border counties were more than three times more likely to live in substandard housing than households in either rural or urban areas nationwide.

Colonia areas also generally lack basic infrastructure. According to assessments conducted by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB), 24 percent of households in the colonias are not connected to treated water and use untreated water for drinking and cooking. (TWDB has estimated a cost of $147.9 million to provide water services to these households.) Forty-four percent of the homes in the colonias have outhouses or cesspools. (TWDB has estimated a cost of $80 million to provide indoor plumbing improvements and a cost of $467.3 million to provide wastewater service to the colonias.) In addition, TWDB asserts that approximately 44 percent of the homes in the colonias experience flooding problems due to lack of paved streets and drainage problems. The Colonias Factbook adds that one of five homes in the colonias also lack adequate heating and cooling.

Border region households tend to be larger than households nationwide. According to data reported in Taking Stock, more than twice as many border households consisted of seven or more persons as in the United States as a whole. Over 16 percent of the border region's population lived in households of five or more persons. The border's larger than average households are a contributing factor to the inadequate size of many border residents' homes, and result in overcrowded living conditions.

1990 Census data reveals that home ownership rates were much lower along the border than in rural areas nationally. Local studies indicate that owner-occupied housing in the colonias was valued far lower than housing in other parts of counties with colonias. In addition, mobile homes were a significant and growing part of the housing stock in the border region. The New Mexico border had a particularly high proportion of mobile homes, more than one in five.

Physical deficiencies in occupied housing units have also been identified by several local studies. For example, in 1991, more than half of 310 farm workers surveyed in the Eagle Pass (Maverick County) Texas area, stated that their home required "a lot of repairs" and almost a third described the condition of their homes as "poor." Sixteen percent of the residents surveyed had no indoor toilets, 14 percent no tubs or showers, 6 percent no cook stoves, and 37 percent had no heaters. In addition, 21 percent indicated bad electrical wiring in their home, 38 percent bad foundation, and 32 percent a leaky roof. The majority, 57 percent, said their homes were overcrowded and their financial information indicated that they paid more than 39 percent of income for housing. A 1987 survey of 214 farm workers in the El Paso area reported similar conditions. Texas studies have noted that a large portion of the state's farmworker population lives in the border region. This population finds it particularly difficult to improve their housing conditions due to low and sporadic incomes. However, the low-income colonia residents suffer from substandard housing conditions even if they are not farm workers. A study conducted by the Texas Office of the Attorney General of Hidalgo County, which is being replicated for Cameron and El Paso counties, confirms this. Despite the limitations of these studies, the information presented can be used to generalize about conditions in the colonias. While individual percentages may vary, the grim conditions outlined are often reflected to varying degrees in the other colonia counties as well.Lack of Resources

Limited resources have resulted in dividing even those groups that seek to mitigate the problems in the colonias. Scarce funding resources have caused tension among colonia advocates as they struggle to establish priorities among needs which are all equally critical, such as housing, infrastructure (particularly water), and economic development. This fragmentation has precluded the creation of a comprehensive, region-wide approach.

There is a related lack of sufficient local capacity to solve the problems in the colonias. Capacity needs include access to funding, organizational development, technical assistance, and the creation of new local groups to undertake the task of improving conditions in the colonias.

Conventional lending mechanisms do not take into account the seasonal nature of income and employment of many colonia residents. In addition, the target population's income level, and the levels of risk perceived in serving this population, have prevented private lending institutions from financing housing and community development activities in the colonias. Clearly, any mechanisms serving colonia residents would have to be creatively designed. Private sector institutions are generally driven by profit margins, precluding their intensive involvement in the colonias.

Regional Impact

Colonia communities do not exist only on the U.S. side of the border. The bi-national, regional nature of this problem needs to be recognized. Maquiladoras¹⁵ located on both sides of the border, and the complexities of the domestic and international agricultural markets are also responsible for the colonias phenomenon. In addition, NAFTA has had significant impact on the continued proliferation of colonias on both sides of the border. Unfortunately, until about 1995, there have been no organizations actually dealing with the colonias problems on a regional, bi-national scale. NADBank and BECC are incipient organizations, and are just beginning to address the border problems. [See Appendix A for a brief description of these organizations.] However, whether these are the ideal organizations to address the problems in the colonias remains debatable. It is also extremely difficult to get the governments of two different countries to agree upon an approach to tackle the problems in the colonias. It is equally impossible to make them jointly commit needed resources to this venture.

Finally, it is important to remember that it is possible that for some families, escaping even worse poverty in Mexico, the situation in the colonias could actually be a step up. Any long-term, effective approach to tackling the colonias phenomenon will have to take this reality into account.

Despite the numerous challenges presented by the colonias, a number of organizations have taken on the formidable task of addressing the problems faced by these communities. Local nonprofit groups, with strong grassroots support from the community, have developed and implemented a number of innovative approaches to address the conditions in the colonias. Indeed, many colonia experts and advocates argue that local community-based institutions are the only appropriate vehicle for accomplishing the fundamental goal of empowering colonia residents to solve their own problems. The following case studies are testimony to the inventiveness and determination of local nonprofit in the face of extreme adversity. The documentation of their stories is intended as encouragement and inspiration to other groups aspiring to effect change in the colonias.

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