Posted on 08/29/2007 11:45:20 AM PDT by Lorianne
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas: Along muddy roads invisible from the highway, some families crowd into battered trailers patched with plywood. Others jam into self-constructed dwellings that seem designed by Dr. Seuss — wood and tarpaper shacks attached to half-finished concrete-block rooms, wires and hoses snaking in.
The counties of South Texas are among the nation's poorest, and their jumbled subdivisions, known as colonias, home to 400,000 Hispanic-Americans, can certainly look the part. Since the 1950s, developers have carved small lots from mesquite woodlands and floodplains, selling them to workers with the promises that utilities, sewers and paved roads would follow. They rarely did, and for decades the colonias were seen as hopeless slums.
But now a different picture is emerging. After years of protests by residents, belated regulation by the state, and an influx of aid from government and private groups, more than two-thirds of the colonia dwellers in six border counties finally have access to water lines, safe sewage disposal or both, compared with a small minority just 15 years ago, according to a report by the state in December.
Through frugality and hard work, in a process known as incremental building that is rare in the United States but common in the Third World, families are transforming hovels into homes, one wall and window at a time.
While the jerry-built shacks may look crude, they are often the works in progress of determined parents willing to spend decades to create a heart for their extended families. Many start with used trailers and upgrade as their finances improve. Their determination perhaps explains why the colonias, despite infrastructure gaps and lack of amenities like parks and street lights, are not suffused with the bleak resignation evident in the most blighted urban centers or parts of the deep south.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
The words “legal” or “illegal” do not appear in the story. Just saying.
I'm pretty sure that every state in the union has laws which were specifically intended to prevent "incremental building". That Texas is permitting this to occur is *not* a good thing, as the writer seems to believe.
Besides that, I know damned well that if *I* started building a new garage in my back yard and stopped work at the tarpaper roof / moisture barrier stage, I'd be fined and possibly forced to demolish it. Then they'd deny me a permit if I went back for a second try.
Yeah, wasn’t there a legal American that just got sent to jail for having no permits?
Our government is really trying to do a job on bringing America down. We should vote them all out of office and start all over.
I’ve heard of this place before. It was something connected to a real estate article, like this place was the cheapest place in America to buy a house or something like that.
If I am not mistaken, the term colonias is pretty much reserved for illegal squatter settlements.
Odd that the reporter never mentions that most of the residents of these slums are more than likely "illegal aliens".
And, if they were "illegal aliens", they wouldn't be "Hispanic Americans", would they...???
I missed seeing it, but yeah:
*******
Drudge Report, 08/28/07
RHE man gets jail time for property fixes
By Megan Bagdonas
Staff Writer
He built a fence, a retaining wall, a patio and a few concrete columns to decorate his driveway, and now Francisco Linares is going to jail for it.
Linares had been given six months to get final permits for the offending structures or remove them as part of a plea agreement reached in January, when he pleaded no contest to five misdemeanor counts of violating the Rolling Hills Estates building code.
If he failed to do one or the other, Linares faced six months in county jail.
*snip*
*******
Just goes to show - American citizens are cut no slack at all - even if they have a hispanic surname.
These are all over the place along the Rio Grande. They are largely constructed out of leftover or stolen building supplies from the jobsites they work at.
People do incremental work her ein Alaska all the time. There are at least 4 different houses within 3 miles wher eI live that people are building their own houses, bits at a time. They don’t have to get a loan. They don’t have a bank telling them they need all sorts of insurance. They don’t have building inspectors telling them to tear everything apart to fix things. It’s the ultimate in Freedom. No government money involved, unlike this case.
The reporter claims they are legal immigrants but doesn’t offer any backup for that.
But he doesn't offer what "data" support his statement.
Actually, they would. Even if they are not inside the USA borders, they are still Americans. Canadians are Americans, as are residents of Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, etc.
'American' technically means anyone from North, Central, or South AMERICA.
Only inside the USA do we use the term 'American' to be synomous with citizens of the USA, exclusively.
I disagree totally. Ownership is the only thing that will lead to the pride necessary to maintain and improve property. It is nonsense to think that the only people that should be able to have a three-bedroom, two-bath home are those who have the cash flow to finance one.
Zoning laws which set minimum standards have a place in a free society, but it should not be a mechanism for outlawing lower income housing completely, as it has in much of my part of Kalifornia.
I am hopeful that global warming will transform the weather in Alaska into something I can cope with. Much else there is very attractive.
Yeah? Well while you all were roasting, we were having mid 70 to 80 temps. Absolutely wonderful weather.:-) I will put up with the really cold temps for a couple of months, just to live it up for another summer. Interestingly, it seams like the 1920’s and 1930’s had most of the record high temperatures here. Here is Fairbanks, the rest of the state is a little cooler in the summer, not nearly as nice weather.
I live here. They come across the border, buy 1/4 acre, build a shack, and give birth. They can do that in 2 weeks, much faster than they can be tracked and deported. Then, that “anchor baby” enables the parents to stay for life.
Which, I'll guarantee you, was exactly the sense in which the reporter was using the term.
Perhaps they aren't illegal aliens. Perhaps the colonias are inhabited by American citizens.
But I doubt it.
As a long-time resident of Texas, I confess I've never heard the term applied to any community except a squatter settlement of illegals. Nor did I hear the term used at all before about 1995.
I live in North Texas, however -- which is less impacted by the illegal problem. Swinney Switch would be better able to comment on the problem than I.
South Texas Colonias Ping!
(No mention of illegals, smugglers, kidnappers or Zeta assassins!
Yeah, only the ‘heart they are building for their extended families.’
FREEKITTY FER PRESIDENT ‘08!
Second, the reason these colonias developed is that, until the late 1990s, Texas counties had no zoning authority, so there was no way to prevent unscrupulous developers from selling these illegals little dabs of land, on time payments, with no water, sewer services, roads, ect. This was and is a huge focus of corruption in Texas that lost at least one congressman his seat when he was shown to be connected to these developers.
Third, federal taxpayers and state taxpayers have provided hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 10 or 12 years to go in after the fact and put in water, sewer systems and roads in these illegal immigrant hell holes. This is money that could have gone to infrastructure projects that benefit the entire population. WE are bankrolling the developers, and WE are paying the price. These unfortunate people are illegal, they are the moral equivalent of squatters, and we are being taken for suckers. I love it how this reporter parachutes in there 20 years later and discovers this problem.
See post 22.
Bingo!
Thank you kind Texas Lady. From one Texan to another, I ask you to share co-responsibilities as Prez in 08’. LOL
Together we stand!
Rio Grande City? Quite possibly the most drug runners and corrupt officials in the state per capita.
Right
My libertarian streak doesn't extend to permitting citizenship by illegal immigration or by being born to such illegal immigrants.
It's the corrupt socialism south of the border which denies normal incentives to the population to better themselves. It's equivalent to an act of war for Mexico to fail their people in such a dramatic way and for the US to pay the price for that failure.
Amusing how this idiot of a reporter is celebrating these disgusting colonias that are (were) illegal as heck but gradually were legalized on the taxpayers dime, paying to upgrade these hovel-towns
You have descried and exposed this whole colonia racket. It’s basically more money and more welfare from the taxpayers for these illegal Mexicans and the anchor babies they churn out
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