BorderLines 6 (Volume 2, Number 2, May 1994)

Housing the People of the Borderlands

In the last issue of BorderLines we examined the spread of substandard housing conditions in New Mexico, as neither markets nor governments meet the needs of low-income residents. But housing problems are not limited to that state, of course, and colonias may seem attractive to the homeless living in the cities, caves, and migrant encampments of southern California. This issue takes a look at conditions along the entire U.S. side of the border and at various approaches taken by federal, state, local, and non-governmental agencies to provide adequate housing at an affordable price.

The Imperial Valley of California is large-scale farming country, and thousands of low-income farm workers make their homes there--or try to. Celeste Cantu, the director of the Imperial Valley Housing Authority, estimates that the county faces a deficit of at least 6,000 units of affordable housing, and has no expectation of meeting this need in the foreseeable future. Part of the problem may be due to the county's distance from federal agencies in Washington. "Washington has tended to view housing as a northeastern or midwestern urban issue, so the border has been slow to get attention," Cantu said. They're not sure who 'those people' are, or if they're even 'our people'."

By some measures the problem is worse in California than in the other border states, but by any measure there is a general failure to meet the needs of families for decent housing at affordable prices. According to a database produced by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Census Bureau, the proportion of families experiencing housing problems (overcrowding, substandard facilities, or excessive cost) ranges from 22 percent in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, to 52 percent in Maverick County, Texas.

Federal, state, local, and non-governmental agencies are trying to address the problem, but no one is optimistic about providing adequate housing at an affordable price. Few are willing even to estimate the size of the problem; most housing programs have waiting lists of hundreds of families, and will not put people on their lists if they cannot be served within two or three years. Many advocates complain that they do not have accurate data on which to base their assistance proposals, although everyone recognizes the problem is vast.

A multitude of programs exist along the border to address the need for affordable housing. Large federal agencies such as HUD, Farmers Home Administration (part of the Department of Agriculture), and the Environmental Protection Agency (through its Colonias Program) are being utilized in almost every community. (SEE RELATED STORY) In addition, each state has its own agencies, such as the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the Texas Water Development Board. County and municipal housing authorities are often the implementing agencies for federal and state programs.

Nonprofit housing advocacy groups are where the government programs meet the people with housing needs face-to-face. The nonprofits combine funds from federal, state, business, and foundation sources and have developed many innovative programs as their staffs sort through the numerous and often conflicting requirements of the various programs. A review of some of these groups illustrates the skill and imagination being brought to bear on the housing crisis along the border.

Proyecto Azteca was founded in 1991 by farm workers in the colonias of the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Hidalgo County, Texas. Its program combines a self-help housing provision with a job training program, so that participants learn construction skills as they build their homes. In addition to developing a low-cost "Colonias Prototype House" design, the group has managed to obtain properties forfeited by bankrupt savings and loans for its self-help, rent-to-own project. Proyecto Azteca utilizes the services of Global Volunteers of Minnesota, which sent 30 volunteers in 1993 to work a week each on Proyecto houses. Jesus Liman, Azteca's director, hopes to complete 40 houses a year, but even meeting this goal will only make a small dent in the group's 300-family waiting list.

Tierra del Sol is one of the oldest organizations addressing housing issues in New Mexico and Texas. Formed in 1973, it has created over 3,000 housing units of all types, including self-help, single family homes, apartments and rehabs. It does everything from packaging financing and developing sites to training families in basic construction skills and adds around 450 units a year. Tierra del Sol uses private financing for some projects and also organizes self-help projects using federal and state funds. The group employs five construction supervisors, all former self-help clients, and relies on private grants, contracts with local governments, FmHA Technical Assistance Grants, and service fees to fund its efforts.

The Lower Valley Housing Corporation of Fabens, Texas, near El Paso, has built 55 homes since 1988 utilizing a self-help program where groups of four to ten families work together in the evenings and on weekends to build their homes. Director Nancy Hanson estimates that participants provide 65 percent of the labor, lowering their FmHA mortgage loans to $37,000 on houses with market values around $55,000. A major part of the group's work involves developing lots with full services so the houses can qualify for FmHA loans.

Sharla Brackney of the Yuma County Housing Development Corporation describes the self-help program she directs as a "...win-win idea. Low-income families work on their houses and pay their mortgages, just like anyone else." Participants build clusters of ten units, with each family putting in 40 hours of work each weekend. An FmHA grant funds the office, which develops the properties and helps families with the paperwork for the FmHA financing of their homes. The group has built more than 300 units, and is in phase two of a subdivision of over 200 lots.

Campesinos Unidos is a self-help program in Brawley, California, targeting low- and very low-income families. As in Yuma, FmHA loans and grants provide the core financing, in addition to a California Farmworkers Housing Grant. The group has 38 units in progress, with families putting in 40 hours of labor each week. Loan processor Maribel Anaya estimates there are 5,000 potential applicants in Imperial County alone.

In northern San Diego County, Steve Feher is addressing a somewhat different housing problem, that of the rural homeless. Feher is the executive director of Ranchos, a newly formed group which is trying to build on-farm dormitory housing for homeless farm workers. As a part of the project, clients also participate in a job training program. "The ultimate solution is to get people into better paying jobs [but in the meantime] we're trying to get housing where the people work," says Feher. "It's not so good for families with children who need to go to school, but we're trying to accommodate the majority, single male population. . . . We cannot afford to stand by and do nothing. I'm not going to wait for permanent housing for everyone."

Feher's willingness to work on partial solutions created controversy last year when he was working with Esperanza International. Esperanza promoted a plan to upgrade conditions in the squatter camps with temporary housing and water and latrine facilities. Although a City of San Diego ordinance allowing the upgrades was passed, implementation was halted by a court ruling that the city failed to perform a proper environmental impact assessment of the project.

Neighbors concerned about property values aren't the only ones who oppose the project, however. Farm worker advocates such as Claudia Smith of California Rural Legal Assistance are concerned that accepting substandard living conditions could set a precedent and institutionalize conditions that are known to be hazardous to health and safety. Others have expressed concern that focusing on short-term camp upgrades might deflect attention from finding long-term solutions.1

Creating a legal double standard is problematic in practice as well, since U.S. municipalities cannot legally provide one level of service to part of the community and a second level to another. If zoning and building codes require paved streets, sidewalks, street lights, and water and sewer hook-ups, then any extension of services must be to that standard. This puts growing communities in an "all or nothing" bind--if they can't afford the whole package, then nothing at all is built. On the other hand, lenders (including FmHA and HUD) won't lend on properties which lack at least water and sewer services, excluding many colonias residents from eligibility.

This bind contributes to the sense among many housing advocates that a shortage of funds for housing is less an issue at the moment than accessing and utilizing what funds are available. In Texas the governor's Border Working Group found that the state FmHA office returned $36.7 million in 1990 and over $50 million in 1992 to the national office. With thousands of families in need of better housing the state could not qualify enough people to use the available funds. In other cases bureaucratic pettiness is the obstacle. In Dona Ana County, New Mexico, a $1.5 million wastewater system slated for a colonia was delayed for three years by "political wrangling" according to Keith Hinds of UNM's Environmental Finance Center.

Another obstacle to participation is the "first-time home buyer" clause in many programs' enabling legislation. As Apolonio Montahano of the Dona Ana County Housing Authority asks, "How can people in a shack in a colonia not be eligible? But if they own the shack, they're not first-time buyers." In addition, most colonia residents purchase their lots under contracts of sale. With these contracts, buyers have no equity until the note is completely paid off. Without a deed they are ineligible for a mortgage.

Hinds is circulating a concept paper illustrating how a minor modification of a HUD program could have large results. Hinds points out that colonias have to obtain grants to finance water and sewer systems because debt-financed facilities have monthly bills that are too high for low-income residents. The colonia therefore needs an EPA or HUD grant of $1 million or more to build a modest system. If HUD's Section 8 program, which provides assistance with housing, gas, and electric bills, were extended to include water and sewer bills, families could afford the higher fees of a debt-financed facility. Hinds estimats that writing down water bills might cost $50,000 a year for 400 families. A $1 million annual outlay could thus leverage 20 privately built, debt-financed wastewater facilities immediately instead of building one per year. With this infrastructure in place, colonia residents would then be eligible for building funds.

Despite the energy and innovation that housing advocates are bringing to this issue, however, none is in a position to attack the root causes of inadequate housing: an economy that responds to market signals rather than social needs, a widening income gap, and a declining public concern for social equity. "The problem is economic in nature. Investors can make more money building high-end housing," argues El Paso housing official Andrew Hare. As long as the public believes that the "stick" of poverty is essential to maintaining an efficient economy, government programs will only nibble at the edges of the housing problem.

"At issue is safe, decent housing regardless of skin color or legal status," San Diego County Housing Analyst Mike McGuigan told researcher Todd Eisenstadt. "In the United States people should be entitled to decent housing."2 But despite HUD's increased interest in the border, there is little reason to expect the federal government espouse such a goal, much less put forward an effective program for meeting it. "There hasn't been a major federal commitment to housing since the Reagan administration" came into office, says Lynn Wehrli of the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority. "And I don't see any major change coming."

1. 1 Todd A. Eisenstadt & Cathryn Thorup, Caring Capacity versus Carrying Capacity: Community Responses to Mexican   Immigration in San Diego's North County, Monograph Series no. 39 (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1994),   pp 14-15.
2. 2 Ibid., p. 15.