Abstract
This paper examines some of the ways in which dwelling structures, household organization, and aging are managed by low income owners in Texas border colonias and in informal homestead subdivisions (IfHSs) in Central Texas. Using original household survey data it analyzes how homeowners in these peri-uban self-built and/or self-managed dwellings cope with the life course, aging, declining physical mobility, rising chronic morbidity. In Texas, colonias and IfHSs are largely Hispanic (Mexican origin), comprise quite spacious lots (1/2–1 acre) which, in combination with the flexibility and low-cost nature of self-help dwelling construction and management, offers multiple opportunities of household extension, cross generational multi-lot sharing among kin related poor households (adult children usually), and/or residential care for aging parents or grandparents. The chapter documents the principal housing problems reported by residents in two central Texas neighborhoods and explores some of the links between housing conditions and most commonly reported ailments and mobility challenges that elderly household owners face. While the data show ongoing investment and do-it-yourself (DIY) efforts to reduce those housing problems, it is elderly households who have very low incomes and poor mobility that are most seriously affected and have higher vulnerability to chronic ill health outcomes and ongoing poor housing conditions.
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- 1.
This contribution will focus exclusively on the USA. However, many of the insights relating to informality, self-help housing, caring for the elderly, household and life course dynamics, trans-generational asset transfers and inheritance come from Mexico (see Ward et al. 2014; www.lahn.utexas.org, Varley 2008).
- 2.
Today the population is estimated to be closer to half a million, as vacant lots in existing colonias have been settled. Nor is this a solely Texas phenomenon: colonias are found extensively in New Mexico and Arizona (Donelson and Esparza 2010), not to mention the extensive IfHSs found outside of the border in Texas and elsewhere (Ward and Peters 2007).
- 3.
Postal (mail) survey response rates are sometimes notoriously low (Babbie 2002, p. 259) but may also be raised very substantially depending upon: the nature of the survey (postal or e-mail—the latter becoming increasingly widely used (Gosling et al. 2004)) and whether it targets a relatively captive and receptive constituency (for example a home institution’s students or faculty). Other features that shape response rates are: if respondents are recompensed in cash or kind; the number of “tickler” reminders sent after the first call; instrument readability and design, etc. The sort of housing mail-back surveys that we are describing here rarely get above 6–7 % response, although Babbie (ibid) and others argue that only when one gets above a 50 % response rate can one have confidence in the material. Moreover, here it should be remembered that we are dealing primarily with a very low-income Spanish-speaking population many of whom have limited education and literacy, and previous experience had also suggested that a 9–10 % response rate would provide valuable insights, albeit not for extrapolation purposes (Ward and Carew 2001). Our mail survey invitation to respondents allowed for in-house consultation and while the unit of analysis was the household and the dwelling, it could be completed by a surrogate adult on behalf of the owner. Thus we were gratified to achieve a 15 % return which we considered relatively high, and was largely the result of having the community leaders’ support and participation, and a constituency that was engaged and interested in improving housing and community infrastructure. Naturally this can create problems of biased responses, which is another reason why we also sought to conduct parallel random face to face interviews using the same instrument. In the event the differences between the two types of survey were relatively small (see LBJ School of Public Affairs 2010).
- 4.
The instrument was two sided: odd pages written in Spanish, evens in English. It was self-administered except for the face-to-face interviews. All the IRB protocols were observed, and a letter was retained or left with each respondent (www.lahn.utexas.org [Texas Housing Studies, Sustainability Project—Instruments]).
- 5.
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/ia-intro.html. “An Introduction to Indoor Air Quality”.
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewer for a helpful critique, and Mr. Noah Durst, Dr. Lissette Aliaga and Ms Edna Ledesma for their assistance in fieldwork and in preparing Figs. 15.1 and 15.2 of this chapter. The Policy Research Institute of the LBJ School of Public Affairs is thanked for funding support to develop the intensive case study instrument (see also Ward et al. 2014), and for fieldwork support in Rio Grande City. The author was the director of the 2010 survey of Housing Conditions, Sustainability and Self-help in two IfHSs in Guadalupe County, Central Texas (see LBJ School of Public Affairs 2010).
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Ward, P. (2015). Texas Self-Help Informal Settlement and Colonia Housing Conditions, Aging, and Health Status. In: Vega, W., Markides, K., Angel, J., Torres-Gil, F. (eds) Challenges of Latino Aging in the Americas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12598-5_15
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