NPR: Is This Better Than a FEMA Trailer?

Is This Better Than a FEMA Trailer?

Filed under: News

Found this in my hometown paper today. After Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency got a $280 million grant to see if it could design something better to live in than a FEMA trailer.

You're looking at what the state came up with, the so-called MEMA cottage. Now the agency is considering letting at least some of the cottage residents keep the little homes, because they're good housing in an area that sorely needs it. The numbers involved are relatively small. All told, the cottage program will top out at about 3,100. In coastal Jackson County, 139 cottages may be up for keeps.

One blog, Katrina in Mississippi, takes issue with the idea of spending so much on the question whether a MEMA cottage is better than a FEMA trailer:

MEMA just needs to talk with those who suffered or still continue to suffer the confines of a trailer and the mold and toxic formaldehyde issues with those trailers. . . . That $280 million would house a lot of people in cottages! Just get on with solving the problems and stop messing around!

Bonus: "Katrina Cottages" Wait to Become Homes.

Laura Conaway

11:29 AM ET | 05- 7-2008 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

Bay St. Louis, Mississippi doesn't want the MEMA cottages to become permanent dwellings; even thought they could easily be adapted to meet and exceed current building Codes. I understand that MEMA has stopped the delivering Cottages to BSL. The BSL city fathers appear to want to select who they want to lives there and don't care that some survivors became trapped in FEMA poisoned housing. My two Cedar Point lots are FOR SALE: make an offer.

Sent by JJ Fineran | 9:39 AM ET | 05-08-2008

The picture is a prototype of the Lowe's cottage which may be built in Louisiana. I know this is confusing because this prototype was made in Mississippi and sits in Mississippi, but the MS Cottage looks different than what is displayed. You can see the real MS cottage at http://www.mscottage.org/. This is the MS cottage website.

Sent by J Spellings | 12:02 PM ET | 05-08-2008

It looks like the old shotgun shacks that were popular in the deep south 80 years ago. I like it, much better than a Fema trailer.

Sent by Mike | 4:19 PM ET | 05-08-2008

I am concerned about my tax dollars sitting and rotting in the sun. I suggest the rent money used to store them be used to strip these toxic trailers and greened up using eco-friendly and biodegradeable products-it's not like they aren't available!!The companies producing these products would probably give a discount for the trade in publicity. I also think that it would be cost effective in the long run because at that point people would actually be enthused about living in them and/or buying them up. Good for the environment, good for the people.

Sent by Meredith McPherson | 9:55 AM ET | 07-11-2008

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