Noah J. Durst

Measuring self-help home improvements in Texas colonias: A ten year ‘snapshot’ study

This paper builds on earlier data presented in an Urban Studies paper for a major household survey in 2002 that evaluated the impact of title regularization intervention among low-income homeowners in ten colonias in Starr County, Texas. In 2011 the research team returned to those low-income households, oversampling more than half of them in order to compare and analyse the extent and nature of housing improvement, levels of overcrowding and access to home amenities, and the methods of financing for home improvement and extension. Significant improvements and investments were observed totalling an average of almost US

Municipal Annexation and the Selective Underbounding of Colonias in Texas' Lower Rio Grande Valley

9000 over ten years, mostly financed out of income and savings, although an increasing trend to seek loans from the formal market was observed. Correlation analysis explores how self-help and self-managed dwelling environments are adapted to family and household dynamics over the life course. Awareness of ‘green’ housing applications and sustainability is discussed.

Second-Generation Policy Priorities for Colonias and Informal Settlements in Texas

Municipal underbounding is the systematic failure of cities to annex surrounding minority communities. Recent analyses of the phenomenon in the United States have focused on small White Southern towns with African American communities along the jurisdictional fringe. This paper applies similar logic to the study of the exclusion of colonias in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of Texas. These low-income informal settlements, located in the hinterlands of cities, have historically had high rates of poverty, poor housing quality, and insufficient infrastructure and utility service. Using TIGER/Line files (GIS shapefiles), Summary Files of the US decennial censuses, and ArcGIS technology this project explores the prevalence of the municipal underbounding of colonias. In order to place the issue of municipal annexation in context, the paper begins with a description of regional demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, municipal growth, and annexation patterns in the LRGV. The paper then explores the extent to which colonias have been selectively excluded from annexation using logistic and autologistic regression. The results suggest that census blocks that contain colonias are less likely to be annexed than are other census blocks; in addition, those census blocks that contain colonias with poor infrastructure appear to have odds of being annexed that are lower still. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings.

Informal Housing in the United States.

Along the Texas border with Mexico, more than 400,000 people live in over 2,000 informal self-help settlements known as colonias. These exceedingly low-income, largely Latino settlements have historically suffered from severe health risks, poor infrastructure and housing conditions, and physical and social isolation. Researchers and policymakers have focused extensively on what I call “first-generation policy priorities.” This has primarily entailed efforts to regularize title and infrastructure, support self-help home improvement for colonia homeowners, and prevent the growth of new informal settlements along the border region. I provide a comprehensive review of existing research on colonias to document the myriad ways in which housing and infrastructure conditions and titling practices have changed since these settlements first proliferated throughout the border region in the second half of the 20th century. These changes necessitate a rethinking of the policy priorities for colonias and informal settlements throughout the state. In particular, I argue that colonias must be recast to recognize the significant improvements that have taken place but also the long-term and sometimes severe problems that persist. These “second-generation policy priorities” include the development of sustainable forms of governance, regulation, and finance to address ongoing infrastructure investment needs in colonias; supporting access to and upkeep of safe and affordable renter- and owner-occupied housing through both self-help and contractor-led projects; ensuring long-term title clarity; and promoting community organizing in new and aging settlements.

The Nature and Extent of Self-Help Housing in Texas From Colonias to Model Subdivisions

Research on informal housing tends to focus overwhelmingly on less developed countries, downplaying or ignoring entirely the presence of informality in United States housing markets. In actuality, a longstanding and widespread tradition of informal housing exists in the United States but is typically disregarded by scholars. In this article we draw on three definitions of informality-as non-compliant, non-enforced, or deregulated economic activity-to characterize examples of informality in US housing markets, focusing in particular on five institutions that govern housing market activity in this country: property rights law, property transfer law, land-use and zoning, subdivision regulations, and building codes. The cases presented here challenge the notion that informality is absent from US housing markets and highlight the unique nature of informal housing, US style-namely, that informal housing in the US is geographically uneven, largely hidden and typically interwoven within formal markets. We conclude with a discussion of how research on informal housing in the US can inform research in the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonia Housing Conditions in Model Subdivisions: A Déjà Vu for Policy Makers

Despite regulatory efforts in Texas aimed at preventing the spread of “colonias”—self-help settlements with inadequate water and wastewater infrastructure—since the early 1990s hundreds of new self-help “model subdivisions” have formed throughout the state. Using aerial photography and parcel-level property records, I provide the first systematic analysis of these subdivisions. Their proliferation poses considerable challenges for local planners, and although most model subdivisions appear to have basic infrastructure, housing conditions are exceedingly poor because of the protracted nature of the self-help process. The study highlights the need for renewed attention by scholars, policymakers, and planners toward self-help settlements in Texas.

Lot vacancy and property abandonment: colonias and informal subdivisions in Texas

Abstract The informal self-help settlements in Texas known as colonias have received considerable attention as a public policy problem at both the state and federal levels. These settlements proliferated throughout the border region since the late 1970s and research has highlighted the extreme poverty, austere levels of infrastructure, exploitative land sale practices, and poor housing conditions that characterized these settlements. However, both scholars and policymakers have overlooked the continued spread of self-help settlements known as “model subdivisions,” which barring the presence of basic water, wastewater, and electricity services, are nearly identical to colonias. We present the results of household surveys conducted with residents in 24 model subdivisions in Hidalgo County, Texas, in June 2014. The results suggest that, unbeknown to legislators, many of the problems that characterized colonias are now being reproduced in hundreds of model subdivisions that have formed since the 1990s, and which now require concerted attention and intervention by policy makers.

Landlords and Tenants in Informal ‘Colonia’ Settlements in Texas

Property abandonment and lot vacancy are issues of growing importance given widespread demographic and economic changes in urban areas in the USA. This paper explores these issues in a different context, that of colonias and Informal Homestead Subdivisions in Texas. Housing and infrastructure conditions in these very low-income settlements are invariably poor. Given that the majority of these subdivisions are unincorporated, they face a variety of barriers to coordinated land and housing development that would combat high rates of lot vacancy and property abandonment. This paper documents changes in lot vacancy in these subdivisions from baseline 2002 to 2012, and analyses county tax assessor records to determine the extent to which property tax delinquency is a corollary of abandonment and long-term lot vacancy. The causes of lot and housing abandonment are discussed. Policy interventions such as Land Banking and Community Land Trusts are proposed as mechanisms to bring vacant lots back onto the market and prevent property abandonment by homeowners in unincorporated informal subdivisions.

Informal and ubiquitous: Colonias, premature subdivisions and other unplanned suburbs on America’s urban fringe

Owner-occupied self-help and self-managed housing has been the norm in colonias—low-income informal settlements along the US–Mexico border—so scholarly treatment of renting in these settlements has been limited. This article adds to the scant literature on this topic and is the first to document the nature of renting in multi-unit rental complexes in colonias. The article explores the characteristics of landlords and their motivations for pursuing landlordism by drawing upon key informant interviews with owners of rental property. The results of 47 surveys conducted with households in multi-unit complexes throughout 18 colonias in Starr County, as well as the results from intensive, conversational case study interviews with selected households, are used to illustrate the precarious and informal nature of renting in colonias and provide a limited portrayal of the housing preferences and needs of renters. The article ends with an evaluation of the policy implications of these findings.

Racial Gerrymandering of Municipal Borders: Direct Democracy, Participatory Democracy, and Voting Rights in the United States

Along the US border with Mexico there are thousands of communities designated by the federal government as colonias, a name that highlights the large numbers of low-income, Hispanic immigrants that live in these communities. These subdivisions have been studied extensively in recent years, often using insights from the concept of urban informality. This research has highlighted the challenges posed by exploitative land sales practices, poor-quality or non-existent infrastructure and poor-quality housing in these communities. However, similar informal subdivisions exist along the urban fringe elsewhere across the US, though they are not designated as colonias by the federal government and scholars rarely consider their similarities to colonias in the border region. This study uses data on Census Designated Places from the American Community Survey, satellite imagery and county property records to examine the extent and nature of these subdivisions. The results illustrate that informal land development of the sort described here is not restricted only to the border region, to immigrant enclaves or to Hispanic communities. Instead, it is demonstrated that informal subdivisions exist in large numbers across Southern and Western states and, though their numbers are smaller, they are present even in the Midwest and Northeast. Moreover, these subdivisions are home to diverse populations and they provide important benefits such as expanded opportunities of homeownership for minorities and the poor.