[StBernard] From trailers to Katrina cottages

[Westley Annis]

>From the Clarion Ledger in Jackson MS


BILOXI - Renee McDaniel is not unlike many residents on the Mississippi Gulf
Coast: Her home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, her family is packed
into a government-issue trailer and her insurer paid just enough to replace
the battered roof on her house.

The numbing discomfort of trailer life isn't likely to end soon.

Only a quarter of the trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency in three coastal counties will be replaced this year with
cottage-style homes. And those homes will be distributed through a lottery.

For the McDaniels, a cottage - if they're lucky enough to win one - would
make life seem normal again.

Bids on the cottages will be awarded to manufacturers by the end of this
month, the same time frame the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has
allotted to hold the lottery.

Congress set aside $400 million for a temporary housing pilot program, and
the federal government solicited bids from five states. Mississippi had the
top two bids and is receiving $281 million for the construction of 4,500
cottages to serve as alternative homes for those in trailers. The cottages
are expected to withstand sustained 150 mph winds, or a Category 4
hurricane.

"Travel trailers are just too small, and they are inherently unsafe," said
MEMA Director Mike Womack. "There is a safer, more livable alternative that
will be roughly the same cost (to the state) as the travel trailer."

Currently, about 80,000 people are living in about 23,000 FEMA trailers in
Mississippi. Every month, about 1,000 trailers are abandoned as families
move into alternative housing. By the end of June, Womack anticipates there
will be about 20,000 trailers remaining on the Coast. By some calculations,
that's roughly 71,000 people living in trailers.

The cottages will come in two primary models.

The Park Mobile is the smaller of the two, at 340 square feet. A two-bedroom
Mississippi Cottage is 700 square feet, the three-bedroom model is 850
square feet; both will include a stacked washer-dryer unit and central air
conditioning.

"It could easily fit into some neighborhoods," Womack said of the
Mississippi Cottage.

Residents can live rent-free in the cottages for at least two years before
they would have to purchase them at market prices.

A limited number of cottages will be ready for occupancy sometime after the
June 1 start of the six-month Atlantic hurricane season. The remainder could
be ready as early as October, barring any storm catastrophes, Womack said.

McDaniel, an assistant high school principal, husband Tim and daughters
Dakota, 19, and Cheyenne, 12, share a 250-square-foot FEMA trailer.

She and Tim sleep on a convertible sofa in the living area, Dakota and
Cheyenne share the master bedroom. Like many of those living in trailers,
the McDaniels use the room with the bunk beds as a closet and pantry -
clothes are shoved in the bunks along with pots and pans. She cooks outside
because the kitchen is too cramped.

She's not sure when their two-story wood-frame house, which remains the only
one still open to the elements in their Biloxi neighborhood, will be
rebuilt.

McDaniel, who didn't have flood insurance because her house was not in a
flood zone, received $14,000 from her insurer. It's a story familiar to
thousands of coastal residents who are fighting insurance companies,
claiming they are owed money from damage that was supposed to be covered in
their policies.

Furthermore, the McDaniels' contractor, only days before he was scheduled to
begin work on their storm-battered home in November, was diagnosed with
cancer.

"When he got cancer ...," Renee McDaniel said as she shook her head in
dismay, her voice trailing off as her eyes welled with tears. "I'm just
hoping I'll be in my house by Christmas."

It's been more than 19 months since Katrina lashed the Mississippi Coast the
morning of Aug. 29, 2005, and McDaniel can still see directly through her
house - nothing but a roof and wood beams are standing.

As she descends the steps of her trailer, she's reminded of the storm surge
that encircled her house and chased her family to the top of the stairs.
There they stayed for seven hours, watching the swollen Biloxi River pour
into their living room like a bathtub filling up.

"The house was shaking and rattling," McDaniel said. When the water
subsided, several small boats and pieces of a pier lay on her front lawn.

Two months later, the FEMA trailer arrived as a blessing. McDaniel could
have taken her family elsewhere, to a rented home or an apartment, but "If
it's living in a trailer on my land, I would rather do it."

Today, the trailer seems like a curse.

If the McDaniels win a cottage in the lottery, it would help right their
lives again.

"It would be closer to a home than this trailer is," she said. "It would be
like pulling up to a real house. It would look like normal because these
trailers don't look normal, not when you are in a neighborhood."







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