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Today's Weather Climate Averages. More Voting Stats. Since , it has had a population growth of Learn More The National Average is Home appreciation the last 10 years has been 2. The average school expenditure in the U. There are about More Education. Start Your Review of McAllen. Members receive 10 FREE city profile downloads a month, unlimited access to our detailed cost of living calculator and analysis, unlimited access to our DataEngine, and more. Enhanced Cost of Living Calculator Now includes childcare, taxes, health, housing for home owners vs renters, insurance costs and more when you upgrade to premium.
Log In Sign Up. Median Age Download This Place. November, March and February are the most pleasant months in McAllen, while August and July are the least comfortable months. Pros Cost of living Economic growth Pleasant winters. Cons Growth and sprawl Low educational attainment Crime rates.
Schools: See Local Schools. Housing Market in McAllen. It's a good time to buy in McAllen. Home Appreciation is up 2. A mixed bag, but ultimately falls short. Pros: Daytime traffic is pretty decent, when using Interstate 2. Home prices are cheaper, when compared to the national average Read More.
The best way to describe McAllen is that Try Now. The Texas state government took little interest as the plots were sold off without access to clean water or electricity, with no paved roads or sewerage systems. Mostly they were sold to Mexican migrants working as crop pickers. The buyers were in no position to complain. Too poor to be of interest to the banks, their only sources of financing were the developers themselves.
The buyers had no title to the property until years later, when all payments had been made. If they missed a payment they could, and often did, lose everything: the land, the house and the money already paid. That practice has been outlawed in recent years but large numbers of colonia residents still live with the legacy of exploitation.
For some the only source of drinking water is to buy it by the drum or bucket. Half of all homes do not have clean water from a tap or connection to the sewage service.
Even where sewage systems exist, the local authorities often refuse to hook up homes that do not meet building standards because the owners are too poor to make the necessary improvements. Texas health department figures show that the colonias have a higher rate of diseases such as hepatitis A, dysentery and cholera.
Tuberculosis is twice as common along the border as it is in the state as a whole. When she came to the US she left behind her eldest daughter, who was already married, and three children she had buried after their deaths in infancy.
Azuara was keen to underline that her family had survived entirely through their own labour. She has neighbours who claim food stamps and housing grants but there are others in the street who share her struggle. A good number of families in the colonias are a mix of undocumented and legal residents or citizens. Sometimes the divide is across a marriage or between parents who came from Mexico and their children born in the US giving them automatic citizenship , meaning at least one person in the household qualifies for benefits.
But Azuara has had nothing from the state. She has worked at two of the few jobs she can get without papers, although both are dependent on demand. About half of the year has been spent in the fields picking crops. Once they were old enough to work, her children joined her. A lot of dirt. You get really tired.
You start early. You wake up early.
You work at night. When there is no picking to be done, Theresa does piece work in a laundry. There is no public transport to the colonia and for years Theresa had no car so she trekked to work. Now her daughter has a car. But Texas does not issue driving licences to undocumented immigrants. Theresa, who does not speak English, tries to pick her employers with care after being ripped off by a few who refused to pay for her work because they calculated she would not go to the authorities for fear of being deported.
But they used us. They took advantage.
She said the organisation saw a steady stream of people exploited by unscrupulous employers. We get restaurant workers. We get hotel workers. A lot of the cleaning in the hotels is done by undocumented [people]. A lot of the cooks and dishwashers in restaurants. A lot of construction hires — undocumented. Working in the fields carries other dangers. I would say, no, and they would say, get on the truck. The last time was They dropped me off over the border at 11am. I was back in the US by 3am [the next day]. She was not always deported. Sometimes border patrol officers applied their own criteria.
Six or seven years ago, immigration stopped and asked me, what do you ask the government to give you? I said, nothing. No food stamps, no cheques, nothing. I said I get my money with sweat.
The Mexicans born here are more strict. Theresa has been deported 10 times and has always made it back to the US within days and sometimes hours. This ritual is not without its complications, including the loss of work. Go inside. And they did.
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We do not have a [state-subsidised] public hospital. The closest hospital we had was up in Galveston, but they closed their doors after hurricane Ike. Things began to shift two decades ago after the Texas state legislature dedicated funds to upgrading the colonias , but required any new development to provide infrastructure.
Change did not come swiftly. It was finally installed just two years ago. Other colonias are still waiting. Cass said that planning laws in McAllen, the largest city in Hidalgo County with , people, were for a long time intended to keep poor people confined to the colonias , where they could be ignored. They want low-income people to maintain their municipal buildings and their golf courses and to work in their hotels and restaurants, but they do not want them living in their city.