Manufactured Housing Changes Minds, Mississippi Cottages

In this article from the Miami Herald, Britney Maloney informs readers of Hurricane Katrina inspired replacement housing that is not only safe and energy-efficient, but could conform to the building codes for permanent housing as well. The idea for this emergency housing originated at the CNU Mississippi Renewal Forum in October 2005, an event co-sponsored by CNU and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal. The 8-day, 125-planner forum developed plans for ten towns that had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina while taking in consideration the various elements of each site, the multiple needs for each site/town, all while remaining not only a form of affordable housing, but an efficient and attainable goal for the victims of Katrina.

In addition to individual cottages designed by new urbanists and built in places such as Pass Christian, MS, the Katrina Cottage model became the basis for a Federal grant to create a better replacement for the FEMA trailer. In Mississippi, according to the Herald, these manufactured cottages have increasingly become models of affordable emergency housing. Says President of the Federation of American Scientists Henry Kelly, "[they are an] absolutely superb line of housing," so superb that financial advisor Marty Wagoner of Ocean Springs, Mississippi decided to keep his cottage as a guest house after building a larger one for his family.
Read the full article in the Miami Herald.