the UN report on the campaign, which rightly decried the suffering and the lack of timely warnings of the demolitions (which was illegal), did note that the government was right on the legal points about standards and planning. Nearly all the demolished dwellings had been illegal. Thus, this infamous Zimbabwean example provides insights into how complex the relationship can be between housing standards, residential planning laws and the availability of affordable housing. Earlier it was argued that housing standards are a double-edged sword, but this example shows how there can be even more sharp edges to their impacts. They can be used as a weapon by governments to evict those whose housing is ‘not up to standard’ if and when the state deems it expedient.
Housing standards and the colonias on the borders of Texas and Mexico
Along the border between Texas and Mexico there are many small residential settlements termed ‘colonias’ that house urban people on the US side. These have had somewhat ambiguous status, including whether they are rural or urban, under whose jurisdiction their management should fall (the ‘rural’ counties or the cities), and the legality of many of the plots and houses on them more generally. On the Mexican side, there are many larger colonias, but their existence is relatively ‘normal’ there. These settlements are an exceptionally useful example of the issues under discussion: the impact of housing regulations, standards and embedded societal expectations on the cost (and therefore affordability) of housing. Furthermore, they provide an unusual comparative GN versus GS example that helps to further illustrate the arguments proposed in this book about the similarities in key processes underlying housing affordability issues in rich and poor countries across the world. They also challenge any presumption that, besides the difference in wealth between these regions, housing outcomes in the GS are worse because their institutions, accountability and capacity are inherently more problematic than in the GN.
These settlements have been extensively studied by Peter Ward of the University of Austin in Texas.24 Most of his work has been on housing processes in Latin American countries, which helps provide depth to his comparative analysis and a critical perspective on North American norms. On both sides of the border, many houses in the colonias have (or originally had) questionable ‘legality’ in much the same way as many of the houses in the peri-urban ‘holding camps’ of Harare in Zimbabwe. While on the Mexican side some colonias involved illegal invasions onto land, both in Mexico and Texas their first residents more often occupied subdivided land provided via some sort of deal, often done by intermediaries, with local landowners. In many parts of the GS this might be tolerated. However, for the American authorities, it was a significant problem that this land was not zoned as being part of the nearest town. Services such as water, sanitation and electricity, as well as compliance with various urban building codes, tend to be required for houses to be accepted as legal in the American urban context. Since these settlements did not comply, the houses built fall short in terms of acceptable standards and can be deemed ‘illegal’, just as in Harare.
By the mid- to late 1990s, there were over 1,500 colonias along the Texan border, housing around 368,000 people. In 2018 it was estimated that about half a million lived in this type of settlement.25 The residents were there because of the housing dilemma: their incomes were insufficient for them to occupy legal housing within the city. Taking up subdivided land on farms in the hinterland – even if its tenurial status was uncertain and they knew they were being exploited by dodgy developers – and gradually building homes, even if these were non-compliant and had no piped water or electricity, was all they could afford and allowed for some sort of family life. On the Texas side, most of the residents are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. As Ward explains, ‘Few Mexicans or first-generation Mexican-Americans working on the Texas border earn enough to afford housing at market rents or qualify for traditional home financing … many of these workers [at the end of the 1990s] earn as little as between $5,000 and $10,000 a year.’26 He also explicitly links the issue of (important and necessary) ‘standards’ and the unaffordability of housing. Thus, residential land within a Texan town must have ‘paved roads, curbs, drainage, and hookups for water, sewer, and utility services … These requirements, while beneficial to public health and safety, have the effect of excluding low income people from the urban housing market.’27 Similarly in Mexico, the laws and regulations governing urban land development and housing mean that ‘almost without exception’ the market price of urban land is ‘beyond the reach of most poor families’.28
When the Texan colonias first began to emerge, the subdivision and sale of farming land close to border cities was legal enough as the local ethos in Texas, possibly more than almost anywhere else in the world, would be to support the rights of landowners to do as they wish. By selling subdivided plots, farmers could get at least double their value as agricultural land but still sell at prices ‘that very-low-income people could afford’.29 Often the farmers sold to developers who then sold the plots on. The conditions of sale were highly exploitative at first, under the terms of the ‘Contract for Deed’ system that was widespread in the USA. This meant that, although initial payments to start the contract could be extremely small, the land could be forfeited back to the seller at any point if any payments were missed, even if the buyer had been paying regularly for years. Land title was available only once the full purchase price had been paid. This could not be regarded as ‘security of tenure’. Several improvements began to be introduced after 1995, however; for example, once 40% of the price or 48 monthly instalments had been paid, the contract conditions changed to those for a proper mortgage, with far more protections for the purchaser. Originally, the plots were also sold without any services – ‘unimproved’. This was also legal at first, and anyway, rural counties, under whose jurisdiction the colonias fell, had few powers to enforce building codes. However, again in 1995, there were legal changes in some counties where colonias were developing, which meant that developers had to get county approval for subdivisions and, crucially, had to supply water, sewerage and drainage to them. This ushered in the double edge of the sword of decent, regulated standards because, of course, this would have made any new plots too expensive for the poor people who were the only ones ‘interested’ in buying in these distant spots that remained unintegrated into the towns. Indeed, ‘stopping the proliferation of new colonias’ was the aim of the new laws.30
On the Mexican side of the border, colonias were very much larger, much more common and representative of low-income urban housing ‘solutions’ across the country, although at root caused by the same issue of unaffordability – it was just that the scale of the problem in a country with much lower typical incomes was very much larger. As Ward argues, they ‘respond to a common logic’.31 However, in line with processes across much of urban Latin America from around the 1970s, gradually they tend to be integrated socially and politically into the nearby municipalities, crucial infrastructure (water, electricity, etc.) is extended to these areas, and tenure is regularised. In many ways, local authorities and political processes are much better at dealing with colonias in Mexico than in Texas, and the outcomes for their residents are more positive in terms of addressing the issue of housing affordability. One key difference between the two sides of the border – one that is of special relevance for the theme of this chapter – relates to approaches to and understandings about the significance of building standards. Colonias, with their lack of ‘proper’ infrastructure for clean water, sanitation and electricity, and their often poor-quality housing that did not meet urban standards, were an embarrassment in Texas, representing ‘Third World conditions in a First World country’.32 In Mexico they are seen as an ordinary, if not ideal, housing solution for the working poor and it is assumed ‘that the government is required and expected to provide water and sewer services’.33
In common with historical colonial attitudes to low-income settlements around the ‘European’ cores of the main cities of Africa and Asia that ruled and channelled the products
