Arivaca now a ‘Colonia’

TUCSON—It’s a name more associated with the other side of the border: colonia, a haphazard, substandard neighborhood with inferior, often unsafe housing, no potable water, no sewers, rough roads and inferior drainage.

Colonias in Mexico, in Nogales, Juarez and other border cities, are often populated by the migrant employees of foreign-owned assembly plants called maquilas; they are crowded with corrugated tin and throw-away wood huts, and typically lack services of any kind.

While such is the typical portrait of a colonia, the Pima County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday didn’t hesitate to officially designate the Arivaca Townsite southwest of Green Valley as one, a move that will make the hardscrabble borderland neighborhood eligible to receive federal funding meant to improve the infrastructure there.

“This makes them available to receive special funding from Housing and Urban Development as well as other federal funding,” said board chairman Richard Elias before the unanimous vote.

According to Pima County’s Community Services Department, in Arizona “colonias encompass communities of all types and sizes, both incorporated and unincorporated, that meet the federal definition of lacking sewer, wastewater removal, or decent housing.”

There are some 16 designated colonias within Pima County, all eligible for federal funding from HUD and the USDA’s Rural Development program.

The border region is the only place in the U.S. where colonias exist. The program began in the early 1990s in California, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona, with both HUD and the USDA earmarking funds specifically for such “nonmetropolitan ... communities within 150 miles of the US-Mexico border that lack sewer, water or decent housing,” according to HUD.

HUD estimates that about 5 percent of Arizonans live in a designated colonia.

Tim Hull is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.