Lot vacancy and property abandonment: colonias and informal subdivisions in Texas

Abstract

Property abandonment and lot vacancy are issues of growing importance given widespread demographic and economic changes in urban areas in the USA. This paper explores these issues in a different context, that of colonias and Informal Homestead Subdivisions in Texas. Housing and infrastructure conditions in these very low-income settlements are invariably poor. Given that the majority of these subdivisions are unincorporated, they face a variety of barriers to coordinated land and housing development that would combat high rates of lot vacancy and property abandonment. This paper documents changes in lot vacancy in these subdivisions from baseline 2002 to 2012, and analyses county tax assessor records to determine the extent to which property tax delinquency is a corollary of abandonment and long-term lot vacancy. The causes of lot and housing abandonment are discussed. Policy interventions such as Land Banking and Community Land Trusts are proposed as mechanisms to bring vacant lots back onto the market and prevent property abandonment by homeowners in unincorporated informal subdivisions.