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Irene Canales, a single mother, owns an older model mobile home in the rural part of Hidalgo County and is making payments to buy the lot that she has the trailer on. She said, Before I lived here, I was living with my mother, sister, and two brothers in my mother’s small trailer. I left their house and went on my own because, with my children, it was difficult to have so many people in a small space. In addition, I didn’t like my mother disciplining my children. When I left, she told me that I would be back in a week. I didn’t know how I was going to make it, but I found a small one-bedroom add-on that a neighbor rented to me for fifty dollars a month. We had no furniture and the room had no kitchen, bathroom, water, or electricity. We had to share an outhouse with some people who lived there also. We slept on the floor until someone gave me a bed. I didn’t know what to do for work. I had never made tamales before, but I decided to learn. On a small propane burner I started making tamales, and then we would go to the Wal-Mart parking lot to sell them. Little by little, I saved until I was able to get a small trailer house for $1,000. It took me a year to pay it off, but now we have our own place in this colonia. Now I split my time between working as a maid and making and selling tamales. The informality of colonia housing permits some of the poorest of the poor, like Irene, to find housing—even if it’s only a small trailer—and to engage in economic activities from their homes. Without colonias, Irene most likely would have ended up either homeless or evicted for overcrowding. By living out in the country, she was able to operate a CHAPTER 6 Border Colonias: Informality in Housing Richardson-final.indb 168 Richardson-final.indb 168 8/7/12 10:30:30 PM 8/7/12 10:30:30 PM Border Colonias 169 small tamale-making business from her home. Had she been in the city, she would most likely have been closed down by a landlord or by health inspectors. Hidalgo County (and other South Texas counties) simply does not have the resources to police such activities in out-of-the way locations spread across the county’s 1,570 square miles. In both Mexico and Texas, informality is an important part of colonia housing. Colonias represent a great deal of informality in how homes are built or acquired (frequent lack of platting, unclear titles, informal lending processes, failure to enforce building codes, lack of zoning , etc.), and they are also a springboard from which residents can easily engage in informal economic activities. We will examine colonias as a form of informality and then will examine how they contribute to economic informality. Colonias as Informal Housing Initially, when colonias began to appear in Texas border counties in the 1960s, they were small collections of shacks outside city limits. Texas counties, however, had little authority to regulate the development of colonias and even fewer resources to do so. As colonia growth began to mushroom in the 1980s and as cities began to expand outward to include some colonias, the very poor living conditions of the colonias began to be seen as a major problem.1 Some major border cities tried to avoid dealing with colonias by incorporating around the colonias. Others began to incorporate them within city limits and to blame (and try to pursue) the developers who had failed to bring in the minimal infrastructure usually required (paved streets, water, sewers, drainage, and electricity). Many colonias had not been platted. Few or no building regulations had been followed. Most colonia lots were sold under a financing arrangement called “contract-for-deed.” This arrangement, often offered at high interest rates, allowed developers and buyers to avoid banks and formal lending agencies. This was important because most low-income buyers either had no formal credit histories or very poor credit histories. Contractfor -deed, however, allowed the seller to retain ownership of the property until the last payment had been made. If the buyer fell behind in making payments, the developer could reclaim the property, often within 45 days, without going through a formal foreclosure process. Unlike Richardson-final.indb 169 Richardson-final...

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