New Door to Affordable Housing Opens

The Johnson's recently became the recipients of a donated manufactured home to replace their existing home in Montgomery, MD.

This home is the first of many designed by architect Steve Mouzon who also created the now infamous Katrina Cottage which he called a "FEMA trailer with dignity." The home was generously donated by Housing International, Inc., and given to the Johnson's through a local housing agency when their current home fell under sever need of repair amidst financial struggles.

We may have just discovered a new tool for tackling afforable housing, and doing so with style.

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New Door to Affordable Housing Opens
By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 29, 2006

When Phyllis Johnson and her daughter, Zabrina, got a look inside their free new home yesterday, they delighted in the large windows that will let the sunlight pour in. Unlike their current home in Silver Spring, the ceilings weren't crumbling, the floors didn't sag and the eaves weren't rotting.

What the Johnsons didn't see: They had become the face of what some architects, developers and urban planners hope is the future of affordable housing born out of Hurricane Katrina's devastation.

The Johnsons received a "Katrina Cottage," a house designed to be built quickly and relatively inexpensively for New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents displaced by the 2005 storm. Designers said the same houses, made to be more attractive and of higher quality than most subsidized housing, also can be used nationwide for lower-income residents. The Johnsons' new two-bedroom, two-bath home is the first of its kind outside the hurricane zone...

Read the full article by clicking on this link.

Photo courtesy of Washington Post