When a New York designer came up with a plan for a tiny cottage that could offer permanent shelter for Gulf Coast residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi officials pressed hard for federal funding. Why build a flimsy government trailer, they asked, when it was possible to build a sturdy, long-lasting cottage -- especially one as charming as the "Katrina cottage," designed in a Southern vernacular style, with a steep metal roof and a deep front porch?
But now that the "Mississippi cottage," a small shotgun-style house inspired by the original, is rolling onto the coast, things have become a little more complicated: The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency provides only the cottage -- not the land -- and cities have imposed rule after rule to keep qualified residents from settling into them. Local officials, it seems, fear that the brightly colored cottages will become permanent fixtures in their hurricane-ravaged neighborhoods. They say the cottages, which range from 400 to 840 square feet and cost as little as $34,000 to build, will hurt property values. And so the cottage that was designed to offer long-term shelter is now being used strictly temporarily -- and in many cases not by people who seem to need it most.
So far, more than 900 families on the Mississippi coast have moved into the cottages as part of a national pilot program to determine whether those units make better emergency housing than trailers. Yet while there is no shortage of residents who want to move in, many local officials are reluctant to concede that the cottages represent a step up. "The Mississippi cottage is a trailer -- except that instead of coming in through the side, you come in through the front," said Jim Thriffiley, president of the Bay St. Louis City Council, which has approved 69 applications for cottages and rejected many more. "We don't want the stigma of these homes in our community."
The battle stems in part from the fundamental question of whether the cottage is a transitional or long-term housing solution. In principle, the cottage can serve both needs, said Mike Womack, the executive director of the state emergency agency. Under the pilot program, the cottages are constructed off-site, wheeled in and strapped to concrete blocks as a temporary measure, their wheels left dangling in midair. The cottages are exempt from flood-elevation regulations. Yet Womack said there was no reason the structures, which have a 30-year warranty, could not provide a long-term solution. The agency had hoped to allow tenants the opportunity to purchase the cottages and convert them into permanent homes by elevating them to meet flood requirements, but that plan has been up to city councils. "We did not expect resistance to be this strong," Womack said.
While cities along the coast have imposed cottage restrictions, debate has been especially heated in Bay St. Louis. With most of the resort town's historic beachside homes gone, the City Council has been trying to prevent the cottages from taking root in what had been its most valuable neighborhoods. At first, council members stipulated that cottages be allowed only in commercially zoned trailer parks, but they relented after those who had lost their homes pleaded for cottages to live in while they rebuilt. Residents can now put cottages on residential lots -- but only if they already live in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer, own property and can demonstrate that they are actively trying to rebuild.
That excludes residents like Stacey Loftin, 33, who rented before the 2005 hurricane and has been living with her three children in a FEMA trailer in her mother's frontyard. Loftin was thrilled when a Mississippi official said she qualified for a cottage, but then the Bay St. Louis City Council told her she could not put a cottage in her mother's backyard. "I
Source: LAtimes.com