In the 1990s, Congress required states along the Mexican border to set aside a portion of their HUD-allocated Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to alleviate poverty and improve housing in the colonias. Other federal agencies, including the EPA and Department of Agriculture, also have projects that deal with the colonias.

FIGURE 3.1 House in the colonias. SOURCE: Alina Simone, Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service.

HUD’s goal in its colonias project is twofold:

• understand the conditions within the settlements to identify emerging issues and challenges, and to inform PD&R and HUD’s responsibilities in the colonias, and

• to carry out this research without doing extensive on-the-ground fieldwork as a demonstration of the potential usefulness of GIS approaches to urban problems.

Monitoring the colonias along the U.S.–Mexico border is being undertaken in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), through an interagency agreement. This agreement seeks to develop a