Colonia (United States)

In the United States, colonias are unregulated settlements that began to emerge with the advent of informal housing. Colonias are considered semi-rural subdivisions of substandard housing lacking basic physical infrastructure, potable water, sanitary sewage, and adequate roads. Colonias are unincorporated, unregulated, substandard settlements that are burdened by the lack of environmental protection. Colonia communities do not have access to traditional homeownership financing methods and therefore consist of ramshackle housing units built incrementally with found material on expanses of undeveloped land. Colonias have a predominant Latino population where 85 percent of those Latinos under the age of 18 are United States citizens. The U.S. has viewed border communities as a place of lawlessness, poverty, backwardness, and ethnic difference. Despite the economic development, liberalization and intensification of trade, and strategic geographic location, the southern U.S. border is one of the poorest regions in the nation. Most cases have shown that these communities formed when unscrupulous land owners inappropriately subdivided rural lands, offered plots through a contract for deed, and made false promises that utilities would be installed.

The majority of these communities have no water infrastructures and lack wastewater or sewage services Where sewer systems do exist there are no treatment plants in the area and untreated wastewater is dumped into arroyos and creeks that flow into the Rio Grande or the Gulf of Mexico.

More than 2000 colonias are identified within the U.S., and almost all of them are found in Texas, though they also exist in Arizona, California and New Mexico. Evidence suggests that there are more than 1,800 designated colonias in the state of Texas alone, somewhere around 138 in New Mexico, about 77 in Arizona, and 32 in California. These settlements are part of an informal sector or informal economy that is not bound by the structures of government regulations within labor, tax, health and safety, land use and environmental, civil rights, and immigration laws.

Section 916 of the National Affordable Housing Act (NAHA) defines colonias as any "identifiable community" determined by objective criteria that include the lack of potable water and adequate sewage systems, the lack of decent, safe, and sanitary housing, and an existence before the passage of the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act. According to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development the term colonias has a specific meaning within the U.S., referring to a community within the rural U.S.–Mexico border region with marginal conditions related to housing and infrastructure.

...
Wikipedia