Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo today awarded $800,000 to help create affordable housing for 40 migrant farm workers and to provide another 27 homes for families living in severely substandard conditions in impoverished neighborhoods known as colonias in the Coachella Valley in California.

The grant award was announced by Mercedes Marquez, HUD Deputy General Counsel, on a visit that included Thermal, Oasis and Mecca, CA in Riverside County.

The assistance is part of $25 million that HUD is providing to poor rural and Native American communities across the nation to improve housing conditions and create jobs. A total of $5 million of the funds is set aside for a housing program known as the Colonias Initiative that enables farmworkers and other poorly paid workers and their families along the U.S.-Mexico border to move into improved housing.

"This assistance will quite literally transform the lives of people who are trapped in terrible poverty and living in conditions unfit for human habitation," Cuomo said. "It will benefit people who work hard in low-wage jobs that just don't pay enough to make decent housing affordable."

Colonia is a Spanish term for neighborhoods along the U.S.-Mexico border that are characterized by inadequate services, substandard shanty-type shelters without water and sewer service, poor or non-existent streets, and high levels of unmanaged environmental pollution. The infrastructure needs of colonias are estimated to be nearly $1 billion.