A distinctive characteristic of Texas poverty is the concentration of extremely low-income communities along the Texas-Mexican border. Universally referred to as colonias, these settlements date back to perhaps the 1950s. They consist of irregular communities, generally created on unincorporated country land, that for the most part initially lack most basic facilities - water, sewerage, electricity, paved streets and sidewalks, and the like - and where much of the housing is at least initially self-help and substandard. In many ways they closely resemble the ubiquitous squatter settlements or shanty towns of Third World cities.
Colonias are found in all of the border states (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas), but the largest number of people and settlements exist in Texas. According to figures from the Secretary of State's office in , Texas has approximately 2300 colonias with a total population of at least 450,000 people (accurate figures are difficult to come by); the great majority are Hispanic. About two thirds of all colonia inhabitants are US citizens; about 85-90% of all those under age eighteen were born in the United States.
These settlements are located for the most part in Texas' border counties . They have come into existence as developers divided worthless or unused agricultural land into small lots, put in little or no infrastructure, and then sold these lots to low-income individuals who wanted affordable housing. As already discussed, some of the nation's poorest counties exist along the Texas border; per-capita median incomes in counties such as Starr, Hidalgo, Cameron and Maverick counties average less than half of the overall Texas state median. Cameron Park, discussed earlier and labeled as the poorest place in the United States with at least a thousand households, is a colonia.
Colonias fill a need for low-income housing, which exists in limited supply in border counties and cities. Most low-income households have little knowledge of, or access to, standard housing. They have no collateral for bank mortgages; their incomes are low and/or unpredictable; and a lack of English-language skills may prevent them from seeking assistance. Lots in colonias are frequently sold through a system known as "contract for deed", which means that the developer offers a low down payment and low monthly payments, but that the buyer has no title until he makes the final payment. In years past these contracts for deeds often had high interest rates and if (as is frequently the case) the contract was not recorded with county authorities, then a developer could reclaim the land if the buyer misses a payment and then resell then land, along with any improvements that had been made. In 1995 the state legislature passed the Colonias Fair Land Sales Act to address such problems, but land titles and foreclosures remain a major problem for the colonias.
In addition to such legal issues, a variety of other challenges exist. Access to potable water and sewer services, for example, is not only an inconvenience for the residents but is a major public health problem. Most colonias do not have a sewer system, meaning that residents have to rely on septic tanks that may be too small or inadequate; in addition, drainage in these areas is likely to be poor and if septic systems overflow, sewage can pool and present significant health risks.
But even if a colonia has an adequate sewer system, border counties do not have facilities to treat wastewater, and wastewater can go untreated or inadequately treated into canals or streams and rivers that eventually drain into the Rio Grande or the Gulf of Mexico. Many colonia residents have no access to potable water in their homes and must either drive somewhere to purchase it in barrels and/or depend on well water than can be contaminated.
Not surprisingly, the colonias have much higher incidences of disease than any other part of the state. Hepatitis A, salmonellosis, dysentery, cholera and tuberculosis occur much more frequently in the colonias than elsewhere. This problem is compounded by a lack of medical services: shortages of primary care providers, resident difficulties in accessing health care because of long distances to travel, fear of losing wages for time spent away from work, lack of awareness of available care, and no health insurance.
Unemployment is yet another problem. While statistics are spotty, most studies agree that colonia unemployment sometimes reaches five or six times the state average. Under-employment also presents difficulties for many residents, since many have seasonal work (field labor, construction) or are migrant workers who live in the Valley only part of the year. And finally, education for children is a constant problem. Schools may or may not exist in a colonia; for low-income families sending a child to school can be a substantial sacrifice; and establishing residence for a school district that services city but not county residents is often difficult to do.
While a variety of programs exist that are aimed at assisting the colonias (see Part III), these come from several sources - municipal, county, state, federal, and non-governmental agencies (churches, charity groups, etc.) - and this multiplicity is itself a problem since many of them come and go depending on the political and economic climate.
The colonias thus present an extraordinary combination of factors that have created poverty that is geographically and racially concentrated and that from almost any perspective presents enormous problems for their inhabitants and for the authorities that confront them.
