Heat wave hardest on nation's poorest communities

[TBF]

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
© 2011 The Associated Press
July 18, 2011, 6:03PM

HORIZON CITY, Texas — The cinderblocks that make up Maria Teresa Escamilla's new home will do little to shield her from the triple-digit heat that has been scorching West Texas. She has no electricity yet, and the roof is not properly attached, leaving the interior exposed to the elements.

Escamilla has been living in an air-conditioned apartment that she can no longer afford. But when the lease ends in two weeks, she has to move — a day she dreads because it means she'll have no escape from the searing temperatures.

"This is what I have to look forward to," she said. There will be no air conditioning and an unbearable number of mosquitoes at night.

With much of the nation in the grip of a broiling heat wave, few people are hit as hard as the poor, and few places are poorer than the ramshackle communities along the Texas-Mexico border known as "colonias."

The misery was widespread Monday, with the worst conditions blanketing a broad band from Texas to Minnesota and Dakotas. Seventeen states issued heat watches, warnings or advisories. And the heat index easily surpassed 100 degrees in many places: 126 in Newton, Iowa; 120 in Mitchell, S.D.; and 119 in Madison, Minn.

The high temperatures were nearly certain to persist for the entire week. Forecasters expected the extreme discomfort to spread soon to the East Coast.

In towns large and small, the withering heat was cruelest to those who could not afford air conditioning.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7658723.html#ixzz1SVtIONn8

More about Colonias:

The colonias has the largest concentration of people living without basic services in the United States. Colonias exist up and down the Texas side of the border. The Colonias, which means neighborhood in Spanish, resulted when developers bought tracts of farm land and sold them unimproved to mostly poor, Mexican-Americans along the U.S.-Mexico border region. Most colonias people people live without basic services taken for granted in the rest of the United States. These unincorporated, isolated settlements often lack water and sewer systems, electricity, health facilities, paved roads, and safe and sanitary housing.

Read more: http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/colonias.htm

[Starry Messenger]

1. recommend.

[yardwork]

2. Kicked. Recommended for reading.

[cutlassmama]

3. K&R

[madrchsod]

4. third world america...

[Igel]

5. Third world moving to America.

It costs money to put in sewers and water lines, and that usually requires a bond of some kind. They don't organize one, they don't have a funding source for essential services. They don't apply to have roads built. They exist with very low property taxes.

The colonias are strange. They don't spring up overnight. The landowners gradually cobble their place together themselves--now a wall, next month a door, some time later the toilet or some windows. The housing codes aren't enforced, in general they're in the middle of nowhere, and without permitting the inspectors don't now to show up. Then, when the county does something about them it's a giant racist mess because, after all, it's Latinos that are reproducing along the border how things were done in rural Central America. Any "enforcement" punishes only Latinos and creates an outcry. Even if they knew the system in the US/Texas, it's unlikely they'd be bothered to observe it.

Perry, IIRC, was supposed to have a big push to bring utilities and services to a lot of the colonias. I don't know if Texas has actually produced operational plans and then started to execute them.

[TBF]

6. Thanks for your comments Igel -

I am relatively new to Houston (moved here 7 years ago) and this is the first time I even saw mention of the colonias so I had to look up more about them.

I grew up in the midwest where buildings may be built to code, but they are also suffering this week because in the far north states like Minn, Wisc & Michigan A/C is not automatically installed in houses (particularly if folks are not wealthy they won't have it). They don't need it most of the year, so they use fans and maybe be an A/C unit for a room or window if they get a heat spell. They even close the municipal swimming pools if it's over 90 degrees or so because it's a "heat emergency" (go figure).