Photos: Lillian Salcido

The Texas Water Development Board estimates there are 339,041 people living in 1,436 Texas colonias.

Source: Water and Wastewater Needs for Texas Colonias: 1995 Update, Texas Water Development Board, Feb. 1995, page 8.

(above) A mother cooks a meal with water from a bucket in this one room house in south Texas. There are eleven family members living in this house with a dirt floor, no electricity or running water. Gaps in the boards on the walls can be seen.

(below) A flooded kitchen in a colonia home in Hidalgo County. Thirty-four people live in this house. The house floods after every moderate rain.

Photo: Alan Pogue

44% of colonia homes experience flooding problems.

Source: 1996 State of Texas Consolidated Plan, Texas Dept. of Housing & Community Affairs

(below) Mother, with three of her five children, looks into the home her family built from plywood in a colonia near Laredo.

Photo: Tom Lankes

Photo: Glynnis Laing

78,128 households in Texas lack complete plumbing or kitchen facilities. The cost of providing basic services to these homes is more than $1 billion.

Source: 1995 State of Texas Low Income Housing Plan, Texas Dept. of Housing & Community Affairs, p. 51.

(left) Young boy playing in the yard outside his home in a Texas colonia. The barrel is used to store the family’s water.

Photo: Colonias Unidas

44% of Texas colonias households rely on outhouses or cesspools.

Source: 1996 State of Texas Consolidated Plan, Texas Dept. o Housing & Community Affairs, p. 55.

Photo: Glynnis Laing

(above) In a South Texas colonia a family heats their uninsulated home with a drum filled with charcoal. Lacking electricity, the children do their homework each night by candlelight.

(left) Boy heads to outhouse behind his family's home