Las colonias de los EEUU

Today’s New York Times features a story on the colonias of south Texas - communities where the homes are half-built and are only recently gaining access to water systems, electricity, and paved roads. The Times report focuses on the growth and determination of the residents of these neighborhoods, who appear akin to hardscrabble settlers of an earlier American age. Yet the situation itself cries out not for a nostalgic or romantic perspective, but for supportive solutions. Certainly the residents of the colonias (the majority of whom are Latino) require some protection against the impulses of less-charitable politicians - but let’s go beyond that point.

The Texas Secretary of State, Phil Wilson, has a website that defines a colonia as a residential area along the Texas-Mexico border where the most basic needs of residents are going unmet. This includes access to potable water, wastewater systems, electricity, and roads. What the definition doesn’t give you is an image of homes half-built, where the cost of construction means that one wall goes up at a time over a period of years. These are not stagnant communities, brooding in poverty without recourse to either aid or the will to do better; most residents work hard at jobs that help pay for the land purchase and the concrete, tin, and wood that goes into the house. Even so, this is not your Little House on the Prairie. Over 400,000 Texans live in colonias, according to government statistics; importantly - for those who jump to an ‘illegal immigrant’ state of mind - 64.4 percent of all colonia residents, and over 80 percent of residents under the age of 18, were born in the United States.

Per capita annual income levels are dramatically lower in the colonias than in most of the state; a 1994 study showed that income levels in some border counties were as low as $5,559 and $7,631. Considering that this writer lives on a tight budget while sharing a home with four other people (and four other incomes) but nets over $2000 per month in income, the relative poverty of those living in the colonias shatters all expectations.

So how did the colonias come to be? According to the same government website, they began in the mid-1950s when developers broke outer-suburb land into small lots, put in little to no infrastructure, and sold the lots as affordable housing opportunities to people of low income. The appalling ethics of that aside, there’s another scary factor to consider: the way many of the land purchases are financed, the developer requires a low down payment and low monthly payments. Sound good? Maybe not, when you find out that the deed to the property does not actually transfer from the developer to the landowner until the final payment has been made. Consider then how long it would take to default on a payment if your minimum wage job disappears, or if you get sick (usually less than three months, if that), and the risk of losing everything rises even higher. In other words, those who can least afford it are paying into a system that takes their money with little or no security provided, and the poor pay into a system that never insures or matches their investment.

Sources:

http://www.sos.state.tx.us/border/colonias/index.shtml

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/us/27colonias.html?ex=1189310400&en=068ce04d5ddb4bb8&ei=5070