Colonia (border settlement)

In the United States, colonias are low-income unincorporated housing-areas located along the Mexico–United States border region that began to emerge with the advent of informal housing. Colonias consist of peri-urban subdivisions of substandard housing lacking in basic services such as potable water, electricity, paved roads, proper drainage, and waste management. Often situated in geographically inferior locations, such as former agricultural floodplains, colonias suffer from associated issues like flooding.. Furthermore, urbanization practices have amplified the issues, such as when developers strip topsoil from the ground in order to subdivide land, the resulting plains become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and disease. Traditional homeownership financing methods are rare amongst colonias residents, and therefore these areas 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 had shown that these communities formed when unscrupulous landowners illegally sold and subdivided rural lands, often to buyers who did not understand the terms under which this land was being sold. The contract for deed through which plots were offered by land developers often 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 2,000 colonias are identified within the U.S. The highest concentration is in Texas, with others in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Evidence suggests that there are more than 1,800 designated colonias in Texas, around 138 in New Mexico, 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, environmental, civil rights, and immigration laws.

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