bordercoalition.org

The Border Low Income Housing Coalition (BLIHC) is a grassroots coalition that responds to the severely substandard conditions found in colonias along the Texas-Mexico border. It consists of 350 low-income border residents, housing providers, advocates, government officials, and lenders, united in the pursuit of socially and economically just community development policies. 
The Coalition is led by colonia residents, who have experienced first-hand the unnecessary suffering in border communities that lack basic infrastructure such as water, wastewater, electricity and sewage services. The BLIHC is devoted to the belief that through a unified coalition of border residents, change is possible.

The BLIHC has a history of successfully challenging the State of Texas and its elected officials to improve living conditions in border colonias. Since it’s founding in 1993, the BLIHC has secured the allocation of over $50 million in public funds and has played a pivotal role in reforming the State’s housing agency.

The BLIHC devotes itself on an array of community development issues, including housing, infrastructure, water quality, public health, and democratic, accountable governance. Gloria Romo, the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service’s (TxLIHIS) community organizer, is striving to reorganize the BLIHC through her organizing efforts in Laredo-area colonias. From our office in Austin, TxLIHIS is making the Coalition’s work accessible to the public, press, and policy-makers.
This website tells the story of the Border Coalition: of its meager beginnings, its challenges, its astounding victories, and its outlook for the future.

(2005)

source:
http://www.bordercoalition.org/page9/page9.html

Hernando De Soto: The Other Path_self-organization

Hernando De Soto: The Other Path

Ch.2: Informal Housing (p.26-29)

Informal organizations:

1) elected democratic organ to first execute the invasion, then:

Basic aim: to protect and increase the value of the property

acquired

- negotiating with authorities

- preserving law and order

- provide services

- registering properties in the settlement

- administering justice

- public works

- committees to undertake specific tasks (obtaining

water supply, sewage system, electricity, roads, and

sidewalks)

- budget based on income from settlers' dues less

expenditures, public works, complying with bureaucratic

procedures, fund for bribing – all approved by general

assembly

- public works often carried out by residents (cost

reduction)

2) Cooperatives, Associations set up to buy agricultural land

illegally (to avoid expropriation)

Basic aim: to bring interested buyers together in a legal

entities (then buy land or stage invasion)

- identify land

- formalize contracts with owners

- critical mass + sufficient money

- professionals involved – 'speculators' (inf. estate brokers)

- technical assistance – drawing up plans for infrastructure,

Transportation

- drawing up plans of houses

(Meeting with Cecilia and Edna, 15th October 2013)