MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY

Temporary Housing and Katrina

Cottages

How the government’s response to disasters has shaped

America’s architectural landscape.

Kelsey Fields

4/18/2012

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In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita pounded the Gulf Coast. Wind, waves, and

floodwaters destroyed homes and hotels. Unlike most disasters that the Federal Emergency

Management Administration (FEMA) responds to, such as ice storm, fire, and earthquake, the

2005 hurricane season left unprecedented numbers of Americans without housing. In response,

FEMA responded as the federal government had since World War I, with temporary shelter. It

was logical for FEMA to respond the same way to the 2005 disaster on the coast; however, this

drew the nation’s ire, especially when the temporary shelters were found to have high levels of

carcinogens like formaldehyde. Years later, protest has not died down, but continues from the

fact that many of the temporary shelters issued in 2005 are still in use nearly seven years later.

In reaction to the flaws found with FEMA’s temporary shelter response, the Alternative Housing

Pilot Program (AHPP) was initiated for the development of mobile and pre-fabricated affordable

shelters without the inherent flaws and social stigma of recreational vehicles (RVs) and mobile

homes. Thus, “Katrina Cottages” were developed and a new type of regional architecture was

born.

However, such change is nothing new. Rather, such change follows a pattern of

architectural development that has occurred in America for nearly a century. These “temporary”

structures often last years beyond their projected usefulness, serving as a reminder of historic

events. Although the new Katrina Cottage style is based on regional vernacular styles like the

development of many temporary housing solutions before it, the cottages will transform the built

environment. For this reason, it is necessary to establish a history of the use of temporary shelter

in America to provide a framework for analysis of these remaining structures.

Prior to World War I, the federal government did not directly provide housing for those

in need. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, and estimated 200,000 residents

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were left homeless. Congress responded by appropriating one time only emergency funds for

local government to use on tents, as well as food, water, and medical supplies (see photograph

one).1 However, Congress did not provide for more than temporary shelter. The City of San

Francisco’s Lands and Buildings Committee “eventually settled on a plan to build [three

different styles of] mass-produced cabins” that served as temporary housing. The city produced

approximately 5,600 of these cabins that they used in eleven camps.2 One such camp is shown

in photographs 2-3.

Direct federal involvement in temporary housing appears during the Great War. During

World War I, the country faced shortages in building materials. The same materials needed for

family homes were also needed for and thus redirected to the defense industry. This problem

was compounded by the migration of workers to the sites of new military bases and defense

industries. Furthermore, mortgage companies found their capital tied up in liberty bonds,

making mortgages for home building scarce. The problem was especially noticeable in the

shipbuilding industry. In 1917, Congress signed the Emergency Deficiencies Act, which

established a fund for the creation of a new fleet of ships. Soon after, the Shipping Board,

established to oversee the fund, created the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC). The EFC in

turn, oversaw the construction of housing for workers.3 However, this in-migration of workers

and shortage of housing was so widespread that it led Congress to create the United States

Housing Corporation in 1918.4 The corporation was responsible for building housing projects

for the in-migrant workers and set the foundation for governmental provisioning of housing.

While these housing projects were created to fulfill a specific wartime need and were not aimed

at providing housing for the low-income public, it did set the precedent for federal housing

response in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Ironically, the federal government did not provide temporary shelter for those made

homeless by the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Instead, the government supported the Red Cross

in its mission to help victims of the disaster by encouraging Americans to donate money to the

cause, but offered no direct assistance to victims or responders. This flood covered parts of

Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, for

months. The Mississippi River was at flood stage for 153 days. At the height of the flood, the

river was sixty miles wide in places and caused flooding up to thirty-feet deep. These conditions

left many Americans without shelter. In response, the Red Cross established 154 camps for the

displaced, housing them in large canvas tents from approximately April until September of

1927.5

Other factors were at work changing American society at this time and would influence

American response to housing and job shortages. Beginning in the decades after World War I,

the nation experienced an increase in automobile tourism that greatly affected the mobility of

Americans. During the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century, getting back to nature was

touted as necessary for “character-building.” It was further deemed essential to restoring white

“manliness” in the face of urban life, which was contrary to America’s frontier roots. This led to

the development of wilderness vacations for the wealthy.6 The advent of the Ford Model T

assembly line stunningly increased the ability of the general public to leave their urban homes.

This allowed them to “go even further afield in their search for recreation and readily travel long

distances during weekends and vacations to places of scenic interest where their favorite forms

of outdoor life may be enjoyed.”7 However enjoyable and character building these vacations

might be, it was difficult to pack necessary supplies and small comforts into the automobile with

the rest of one’s family. Those with ingenuity simply attached modified horse carts to their

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vehicles for extra storage, while those who had money to spare on luxuries had trailers built with

tents attached. Eventually the trend grew and many people made their own tent trailers or had

them built by local handy men and carriage makers.8

What started as a trend for those who could spend a little extra on travel, morphed into a

solution for housing shortages. The stock market crash of 1929 and the following depression

slowed down the manufacturing of those camping “house trailers,” but much less than some

industries as “homeowners who lost their houses were forced into an itinerate lifestyle by

economic conditions.”9 “By 1937…trailer production had become the ‘fastest growing U.S.

industry,’ with factory produced trailers supplanting homemade versions. By the late 1930s

approximately 400 companies were making almost 100,000 trailers a year,” making this

temporary housing option widely available.10

According to journalist Samuel Grafton, the mobility of the Model T and the trailer

resulted in the automobile becoming home to many Americans. This situation continued into the

early 1940s, where it was exacerbated by wartime shortages in building materials, defense

migrations, and a moratorium of non-defense construction. This resulted in an "important social

phenomenon" where “the American spirit" was adapted to "the demands of a rootless nomadic

life." Nevertheless, the housing solution thus derived from the earlier vacationing trend came

with misperceptions and negative connotations. Grafton points out that none of those that he

knew of living in trailer camps were not "depressed or unhappy," but he held that:

"Families on wheels, harassed by the uncertainties of the future, spending as little as they

can , consciously avoiding the letting down of roots, cannot and will not take any

responsible role in local life; they cannot and will not support local institutions; nor can

they feel any sense of participation in local problems. They do not vote. They are

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connected solely by the payroll to the town in which, by accident, they find themselves to

be. "11

This temporary housing solution came at a price for the mobile families and later the

federal government. Many residents and local governments held the belief that mobile families

have no connection to the communities they lived in. These communities often failed to support

the migrant workers by failing to build roads or provide sanitary water and sewage for the trailer

camps, leaving that responsibility to the government and defense contractors. This policy further

cost defense contractors and the government, as they also had to provide for the removal of

trailers and other temporary housing following the war, so as not to lower the area’s property

values. Of course, improvements to infrastructure remained.

On March 1, 1941, Congress passed Public Law Nine on Defense Housing and

Temporary Shelter. This law gave the President the power to assign government agencies to

“provide temporary shelter, either by the construction of buildings or otherwise…in localities

where by reason of national defense activities a shortage of housing exists.”12

Therefore,

government agencies constructed trailer parks, as seen in photograph four, to house the workers.

One such agency was the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The FSA was

responsible for ordering at least 4,000 trailers for defense purposes. The Palace Travel Coach

Corporation of Williamston, Michigan and Newport, Arkansas built some of these homes.

Palace was one of the companies to receive a contract with the FSA to create deployable

temporary housing for emergency response—that is to provide housing for refugees in case of

the destruction of American cities by Axis powers. These mobile homes, marketed later as the

1942 Palace “Expando,” were built on their own chassis and designed to be towed by a civilian’s

personally owned vehicle. It unfolded from both sides to form a triple wide home with four

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rooms and a shower. The process by which it unfolds can be seen in photographs seven through

nine.

Another agency tasked with providing temporary shelter Tennessee Valley Authority

(TVA), which was the cover organization for the development of the top-secret Oak Ridge

National Laboratory section of the Manhattan project. Oak Ridge was also developed in a

generally unpopulated area of Tennessee near the TVA’s Norris Dam site, and as such had a

sparse amount of buildings in which to house defense workers. This shortage of housing in rural

areas was common in TVA projects and need was often met with temporary frame cottages. The

TVA shipped approximately seventy-five of these frame cottages from the Pickwick Dam

construction site downriver to the Kentucky Dam site.13

Housing conditions at Oak Ridge were

not reported to the select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration as other defense

and TVA projects were, partly because construction of the community did not begin until 1942

and most likely partially because of wartime security concerns. Yet, historic photographs clearly

show the conditions of community brought on by the population boom and recollections of Oak

Ridge residents show that the site followed the pattern of other sites in Tennessee. According to

Jay Searcy, a 10 year-old at the time of his residence in Oak Ridge, some workers slept in

abandoned outbuildings, barns, cars, and even in tents, which was here his wife’s family lived,

before they were able to move into a trailer.14

Furthermore, the Army's response to the housing

concerns is discussed in the National Register Nomination for the remaining structures.

According to the nominations, reports showed that the Army responded to the housing

issue with nearly every method previously used by the TVA and at other defense sites. They

utilized the 181 farmhouses that were in the area prior to the military's condemnation of the land.

These briefly housed the administration of the project while new housing was constructed.15

To

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provide housing for the workers constructing the atomic processing plants and for the plants

future employees, they provided 1,071 trailers from the FSA program and constructed 980

hutment houses (essentially square wooden shacks with cut out holes for windows).16

It was

originally estimated that additional housing would be needed for 13,000 workers at the plants.

However, this number was immediately increased and another trailer camp was instituted to

provide housing for 2,000 workers.17

This included family units such as Cemesto, which is a mix of concrete and asbestos,

homes. Also constructed were pre-fabricated modular homes built by the Schult Corporation, a

trailer and pioneer mobile home company from Elkhart, Indiana. The Schult homes were

different from traditional trailers because they were not built on a chassis, but rather were

designed to be transported in eight foot by twenty-four foot sections by a large tractor-trailer.

The pieces were then set onto a foundation with a crane in the same manner as a modern pre-

fabricated home. This process can be seen in photograph five. They were nicknamed “flat tops”

because of their flat roofs and similar, if not identical, structures were used at future dam

construction sites. Furthermore, families were housed in duplexes some later and more

temporary of which were optimistically called Victory Cottages. In addition to the family

housing were ninety-three dormitories, barracks, 400 trailers in trailer camps, and hutment

housing. All totaled these structures provided housing for approximately 75,000 people.18

The

magnitude of the housing challenge is seen in the ultimate population housed here. The growth

in population made Oak Ridge the fifth largest city in Tennessee—a far cry from the small

number of people residing in the 181 farm homes previously inhabiting the property.19

Even though Public Law Nine and the Temporary Shelter Acts gave the President the

power to “provide temporary shelter, either by the construction of buildings or otherwise,” the

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government was not technically authorized to build permanent housing in defense areas even to

house returning veterans.20

This was likely for practical reasons. Constructing buildings was

more expensive as well as more permanent. Since the increase in population in these localities

was due to defense migration, as soon as the war was over, constructed buildings would be

abandoned as industry returned to normal employee numbers. The more cost effective answer

would be to use mobile homes and semi-permanent demountable housing, which was cheaper,

and could be moved to meet housing needs in other parts of the country or could be sold for

profit. In testimony given to the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration in

1941, it was speculated that between the Army, the Navy, the FSA, private defense industry, and

even individual defense workers, an estimated more than 85% of the 20,000 trailers produced in

that year were used for defense housing.21

Understandably, the development of these temporary housing solutions had a lasting

impact on the architectural makeup of the places in which they were constructed. Some of the

Schult flattops are still in-use today. This is because the homes were easy to move and as

government surplus, were sold cheaply to veterans and employees of Oak Ridge. They often

served as first homes for newlyweds after the war.

From the mid-1940s, the federal government had contracted with trailer companies to

create mobile housing to house refugees from disaster, such as the FSA contract discussed above.

However, initial emergency housing plans did not address natural disasters, but rather, issues of

war, such as the potential bombing of American cities by Axis powers. This would change in in

the 1960s and 1970s.

Over the decade between 1962 and 1972, Americans faced multiple natural disasters

including four large hurricanes and two great earthquakes. The largest disaster occurred in 1969.

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That August, America experienced a disaster described as the “greatest catastrophe ever to strike

the United States and perhaps the most significant economic weather event in the world's

history.”22

Category-five hurricane Camille blew through the Gulf Coast, killing more than 200

people. The Red Cross estimated that in Mississippi and Louisiana alone the storm destroyed or

greatly damaged some 21,310 homes and mobile homes.23

According to a hearing on the federal

response to the disaster, “Mobile homes were ordered with in an hour after Housing and Urban

Development (HUD) received final authority from the Office of Emergency Preparedness.”24

HUD delivered approximately 5,000 mobile homes, some of them fifty by ten feet, to the coast

to house temporarily those made homeless by the storm.25

These disasters prompted Congress to

create The Disaster Relief Act of 1974. This act established the forerunner to FEMA—the

Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, under the control of the Department of Housing and

Urban Development. Section 404 of this act granted the President the power to “to provide,

either by purchase or lease, temporary housing, including, but not limited to, unoccupied

habitable dwellings, suitable rental housing, mobile homes or other readily fabricated dwellings

for those who, as a result of a major disaster, require temporary housing.”26

That same year

Congress passed the "National Mobile Home Construction and Safety Standards Act,” which set

a national standard for the construction of mobile homes, making them the only structures in the

United States that meet a national building standard instead of local building code.27

This

acknowledged the use of mobile homes as permanent housing.

By 1979, President Carter issued executive order 12127 in an attempt to consolidate the

agencies and programs that were involved in disaster response. This resulted in the creation of

the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which now included the emergency

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housing program that had been part of HUD, as well as programs like the National Weather

Service Community Preparedness program and the Federal Insurance Administration.

Since the creation of FEMA, emergency response to loss of housing has included rental

assistance, tax breaks, direct payment of grant money to those having property loss and the use

of mobile homes and RVs. The disasters most devastating to housing stock tend to be

hurricanes, as they often cause flooding and spur tornadoes. Furthermore, rural areas tend to

require additional shelter to be brought in, as their generally is not enough vacant stock to house

those displaced by disaster. Examples of this include the 1983 Colinga, California Earthquake

and 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. Due to “the isolated locations of Coalinga, there were very few

available rental units—homes or apartments—which could be used for temporary housing. The

Federal Emergency Management Agency therefore brought in trailers to use for temporary

housing.”28

Hurricane Andrew resulted in twelve group site trailer parks that housed around

3,500 families, in addition to placements on private property totaling upwards of 5,000 units.29

One such group lot is seen in photograph eleven.

Disasters in more urban areas generally experienced localized loss of housing stock. For

example the 1987 Whittier Narrows Earthquake, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, and the 1994

Northridge Earthquake, all caused damage to mostly urban areas of California. In response,

FEMA sheltered those made homeless by the disasters temporarily in community shelters

established by the Red Cross and other non-governmental agencies. FEMA then enrolled these

homeless in programs to house them temporarily in rentable houses, apartments, and hotels while

insurance companies settled and homes rebuilt, or victims purchased new homes. The problem

with such FEMA policies is with its impact on low-income housing. Often low income housing

stock is more susceptible to damage in a disaster due to deferred maintenance on the property,

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either because the low-income owner has more immediate needs on which to spend the little

money they make, or because the landlord refuses to invest money in the upkeep of the low-

income property. Disaster compounds the low-income housing problem as many property

owners choose not to rebuild low-income housing thus reducing its overall availability. Even

HUD has been criticized for not rebuilding their low-income housing stock to pre-disaster

numbers. This leads to an increase in the number of homeless in a recovering disaster area.

To understand FEMA’s response to the housing need created by the 2005 hurricane

season, one must understand Dr. E. L. Quarantelli’s four phases of housing recovery. Dr.

Quarantelli founded the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware where he

conducts research on disaster issues, such as housing. His research leads him to development of

new methods for understanding and recovering from disasters. According to Quarantelli, each

phase is based on the duration of the disaster victim’s stay in the housing, and the manner in

which the victims establish/re-establish their “household routine.” It must be noted that this is

not a linear process, as disaster victims can be in any phase at any time. The first phase is

emergency sheltering. Emergency sheltering is often the shortest phase. This is where people

immediately take shelter, whether sheltering in place, like in a storm shelter, or moving to an

established community shelter for the period of the disaster, up to a period of about a week.

Temporary shelter, the second phase, often last for a few weeks, during which time the victims

of the disaster are unable to establish any sort of household routine. The third phase, temporary

housing, can last anywhere from a month to years. This phase offers enough permanence for the

re-establishment of a household routine. However, it is not a permanent form of housing, which

is the final phase.30

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The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act was enacted in

1988 to control federal aid provided to victims of disaster.31

Two sections of the act are of

particular importance to the FEMA response in the 2005 hurricane season. Section 403 provides

for general federal assistance to meet immediate threats to life and property. That is, section 403

provides for emergency shelter as well as rescue operations. These emergency shelters include

community shelters, like the one established in the New Orleans’s Superdome. On the other

hand, section 408 provides for temporary housing of disaster victims for eighteen months.

Congress caps the amount of money available for housing under section 408 each year at a level

determined by the consumer price index. For example, during the 2005 hurricane season, the

Stafford Act was capped at “$26,000 per family, regardless of whether you are a family of one or

a family of ten.”32

Section 408 indicates when mobile homes and RVs come into use.

FEMA uses mobile homes and RVs to fulfill Quarentelli’s third phase temporary

housing. According to FEMA, mobile homes and RVs are the “last resort for temporary

housing” for use when there are not enough rental units to house the disaster victims.33

Therein

is part of the negative response to FEMA after Katrina. Never before had a disaster destroyed so

many rental and housing units. Victims, as well as the large numbers of FEMA, repair, and

support crews that filled the area quickly filled the few units that were immediately available. In

an attempt to meet the housing needs of the victims, FEMA even contracted with cruise ships to

provide temporary housing. However, the most logical housing response was to move

immediately to the “last resort” of mobile homes and RVs.

FEMA generally disperses trailers as temporary housing in four ways, as individual

trailers on private property (seen in photograph twelve), as individual trailers in a commercial

park, as a multiple trailer addition to a commercial park, and as a newly developed trailer park.

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Furthermore, mobile home trailers, are only placed on high ground, whereas, RVs are allowed to

be placed in flood plains, as residents can theoretically move the RV quickly to higher ground in

the case of another disaster. Immediately locals who were able to return to their homes

complained about the trailers. Their complaints were eerily similar to the complaints to the

federal government about trailer parks in the 1940s. Individual trailers in neighborhoods where

most housing could be repaired were thought to lower property values of the neighborhood, in

addition to being against many neighborhood association rules.

Furthermore, the trailer parks were believed to increases in crime, such as “drug use,

loitering, and theft,”34

even though studies conducted on the victims of the June 1972 Rapid City,

South Dakota flood showed this to be untrue. Victims of the flood who were temporarily housed

in trailers were conclusively found not to be “more frequently arrested for public intoxication…

[they also did not] make more visits to the community mental health center or the state welfare

office, and they were not more frequently delinquent on their personal property taxes.”35

In

addition, previous studies had already shown how the development of trailer parks, located away

from services and populated with no regard for the preservation of community, resulted in social

issues. One such issue being the “racial tension” found in trailer parks created from the mixing

of people unfamiliar with the customs of others. Furthermore, dividing communities between

multiple trailer parks “destroys the victim’s natural helping networks…isolate[ing]” them in the

park.36

In addition to the social issues involved with the creation of FEMA trailer parks, the use

mobile homes and RVs came under fire for having dangerously high levels of formaldehyde.

This was attributed to the speed with which the RVs were produced to meet the demands of the

disaster and lack of ventilation that the materials and finished products receive in the humid Gulf

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Coast. Nevertheless, the issue caused concern and led to an investigation into the way FEMA

manages its mobile home and RV programs. Prior to 1995, FEMA operated two storage

facilities for mobile homes and RVs for deployment. Since that time, FEMA no longer

maintains storage facilities. Instead, if the department needed any trailers, they relied on on-site

(or near to site) purchasing to provide for those in need.37

Because of the generally low numbers

of units needed, this demand was easily filled. However, the 122,000 units needed in 2005

greatly outnumbered the available units. Additionally, before FEMA could send the newly

constructed mobile homes and RVs to the disaster area, they had to approve an applicant for

section 408 assistance. This requires that an inspector conclude that the applicant’s “primary

residence is unlivable” and that they are “experiencing financial hardship and there are other

related difficulties in the aftermath of a declared disaster event.”38

Many victims of the

hurricanes did qualify for 408 assistance, but with the widespread flooding in the area, inspectors

had difficulty getting to the areas they were supposed to inspect.39

This led to a backup in the

system that resulted in a secondary problem, where was the government to stage the new units?

One such staging site was established at the municipal airport in Hope, Arkansas. The

problem with this staging area was that FEMA contracted for new RVs to be produced at a rate

of approximately 120 units a day. They similarly ordered a large number of mobile homes. As

discussed above, the mobile homes are not eligible for placement in areas identified as flood

plains. Because of the large numbers of units ordered (with formaldehyde problems), and the

inability to use some units due to flood zone issues, FEMA simply parked many of the units at

the site in Hope, Arkansas, leaving them to “rot and waste away” years after they were ordered

with no plan for their use.40

Eventually, a bill was enacted that allowed FEMA to sell the surplus

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mobile homes and RVs to the public. All of which has an impact on the architectural style of not

only hurricane damaged areas, but around Hope, Arkansas and other locations near storage areas.

In the hurricane damaged areas, FEMA mobile homes and RVs are numerous.

Furthermore, experience has shown that some victims lived in this housing for over a decade.41

These housing options, made available for purchase to their occupants, are often the more

economical solution than rebuilding the victim’s home. This results in an increase in mobile

homes as the architectural type in an area. Furthermore, during the BP (British Petroleum) oil

spill crisis in the Gulf, cleaning companies housed their crews in surplus FEMA mobile homes

and RVs.42

Additionally, in areas near storage lots, FEMA sold their surplus units at very

affordable prices, resulting in purchases to replace older mobile homes and for use as vacation

homes. These mobile homes and RVs, although designed for the purpose of temporary housing,

previously shown that they can survive with proper maintenance for more than fifty years.43

Therefore, it is important for historic preservationists recognize their historic importance.

More importantly, architects in Florida and in the Gulf Coast readily recognized that

these trailers endure. They were also interested in quality of life of the people who were stuck

living in identically plain homes, not of their choice. With this in mind, architects from the

region met October 13, 2005, at the previously scheduled Mississippi Renewal Forum hosted in

Biloxi, Mississippi. Here city planners, architects, and engineers spent a week addressing the

issues of post disaster rebuilding. One-hundred and seventy participants met to discuss the issue

and a dozen architects presented their ideas.

The leader of this forum was architect Andrés Duany, who with five other people

founded the Congress for the New Urbanism in 1993. The New Urbanism supports eco-friendly,

multi-use, community development. Duany called for those assembled to brainstorm “well

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designed, safe, small, affordable homes that …articulate the southern vernacular style…for less

than the live cycle cost of temporary FEMA travel trailers and mobile homes.”44

One result was

the Katrina Cottage, small, shotgun style cabin designed by architect Marianne Cusato

(photograph twenty-two). Shotgun style is typified by its linear arrangement of rooms placed

back to back from the “gabled-end entry.” This style is “associated with New Orleans, the Gulf

Coast and the rural South…for workers’ and tenants’ housing.”45

Following the forum, Duany,

Cusato, and other New Urbanists continued their work to “provide design that would make better

use of this funding for the current housing needs after Hurricane Katrina and for future

disasters.”46

This was achieved through a contract with Lowe’s Companies Home Improvement

Warehouse, Inc. to develop packages of fifteen different plans and materials for the construction

of these small cottages, in much the same manner that Sears, Roebuck and Company sold their

kit houses in the twentieth century.

Additionally, Gulf-Coast legislators on the Congressional appropriations committees

supported this push for alternative emergency housing for their constituents. In June 2006,

Congress passed the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War

on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery. This act authorized two additions to the Stafford Act.

Section 2403 called for funding FEMA to develop “alternative housing pilot programs [ the

AHPP program] in the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes of the 2005

season.”

Twenty-nine different programs applied for AHPP funds including the Governor’s Office

for Recovery and Renewal for Mississippi. Eventually, five different projects in four different

states were granted funds from the $400 million dollars appropriated for the program.47

One of

the big differences between FEMA trailers and AHPP Cottages is that they are largely designed

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to be both temporary housing and a permanent home. Mississippi was awarded two grants

equaling $281,318,612—over half of the total funds appropriated. This led to some controversy

between FEMA and Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-Louisiana) as evidenced by her questioning of

FEMA representative Gil Jamieson and AHPP “primary selecting official” MG (ret.) John R.

D’Araujo, Jr.48

This has led FEMA to reiterate that “awards were determined by the scope of the

five proposals that received awards, not perceptions of housing needs.”49

The smallest of the projects in scope, not funding, was the Texas project. It created a

“pre-fabricated, panelized house…called the Heston Home” that is pictured in photograph

fourteen. The home is designed to be trucked into hard to reach areas and installed in less than a

day by a crew of four builders. The resulting structure is projected to last twenty years. While

the project was authorized to construct ten units, only six of them were installed as in-fill in East

Texas before the program ended.

The second smallest program is the Bayou La Batre, Alabama project (photos fifteen and

sixteen). Here, the town of Bayou La Batre sought permanent housing solutions that would not

be destroyed in future hurricanes. As a result, the community of 100 AHPP project houses was

constructed north of the original city at an eighty-foot elevation to protect it from flooding and

storm-surge. These houses are one-to-four bedroom modular homes, constructed in a similar

manner to the Shult flat-top homes of 1940s Oak Ridge. Builders bring each section of the home

in on a truck and set them on a previously laid foundation by crane, resulting in a permanent

home. However, the single bedroom unit can be temporarily placed and can be removed from an

area to serve as temporary housing. The houses are reminiscent of the bungalow style, “typically

[a] snug one-and-a-half story home with a wide overhanging roof, deep porch and a simple

interior with built-in cupboards…”. The Alabama AHPP homes have recessed porches on the

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gable ends of the homes. Furthermore, designers adopted built-in furniture as a cost effective

alternative to provide for the needs of disaster victims.50

The Louisiana and Mississippi projects both influenced multiple communities, such as

Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, Louisiana as well as Ocean Springs and

Waveland Mississippi. These projects essentially continued with New Urbanism designs from

the Mississippi Renewal Forum. They are characterized by interpretations of regional vernacular

architecture designs and eco-friendly materials.

The Louisiana project units are built on site from pre-cut packs of materials, essentially a

Katrina Cottage. These cottages are based on regional vernacular designs such as the shotgun

house and bungalows, but on a much smaller scale. The resulting housing attempts to provide

owners with, a quickly and cheaply constructed “kernel” of a home that can be added onto in the

future, in much the same way that traditional vernacular homes are expanded. An example of

this is illustrated in photograph twenty-four. Although some of the units are used as in-fill, in

New Orleans, communities such as Tremé (recently brought to fame by the HBO original series

of the same name). Additionally, ninety-five larger bungalow style homes were built in New

Orleans’s lower ninth ward at the historic site of the Jackson Barracks, which serves as the

headquarters of the Louisiana National Guard (photograph twenty-one). Other communities

have developed new neighborhoods of cottages in the New Urbanism style thus transforming the

architectural environment.51

That is, the neighborhoods contain cottages situated on small lots to

create high-density neighborhoods that are “walkable, diverse, transit-oriented communities…”

that the Congress on New Urbanism holds are more eco-friendly than common post-World War

II suburban sprawl. 52

Fields 19

The ideas of the Congress on New Urbanism are clearly influenced by the environmental

movement of the 1970s and its resurgence in the in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Global

Warming became a widely discussed issue in mainstream media. In addition to the attempt to

reduce greenhouse gas emissions by creating a “walkable” neighborhood that takes advantage of

public transit options, New Urbanism designs are greatly influenced by the tiny house

movement. In 1987, Architect Lester Walker compiled a collection of photographs and drawings

of tiny houses for their architectural beauty. Among the featured tiny houses were the 140

square-foot 1906 houses, built by San Francisco following the earthquake. In 1998, architect

Sarah Susanka published the book The Not So Big House. In it, she discussed the problem of late

twentieth century “starter castles.”53

That is the desire to buy large houses with formal spaces

that often go unused. Instead, she gathered the works of multiple architects, including herself

and her husband, to show that a smaller house, with more useful space was a better investment

than the larger home with formal, unused space. Since then, the tiny house movement has taken

off, with numerous designers creating tiny, functional houses, the most influential of which is

Jay Shafer, founder of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. According to journalist Alec

Wilkinson’s examination of the movement, three types of people seek tiny houses. The first

group includes “young people who see a tiny house as a means of owning a place while avoiding

property taxes…” and debt. The second group consists of “older men and women who have

either sold or walked away from a house they couldn’t afford.” The last group is those

“determined to live environmentally responsible lives—to live ‘lightly.’”54

The problem that

proponents of tiny houses and that designers of the Louisiana and Mississippi projects faced is

that often such houses are illegal to live in, as they fall under the building codes for their lack of

square footage. Building codes are often based on code established by the International Code

Fields 20

Council, which decrees, “a house must have at least one room of a hundred and twenty square

feet and that no habitable room be smaller than seventy feet,” limiting the smallest conforming

house to 261 square feet.55

The Mississippi ‘MEMA(Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) cottage’ project

is a cross between Jay Shafer’s tiny houses, which are constructed on trailer platforms to skirt the

issue of building code and Marianne Cusato’s original Katrina Cottage design. This project

earned over half of the total funds for AHPP grants, as it was thought to be the most viable

solution to emergency temporary housing that could serve as the foundation for a permanent

housing solution. One of the problems that MEMA faced was that some of the communities had

even larger code requirements than the 261 feet desired by the International Code Council,

requiring 1,000 or 1,200 square feet and on larger lots in an attempt to restrict the types of

housing available in the area to control appraisal values of their housing stock.56

The resulting

cottage is essentially a tiny shotgun house on wheels that meets necessary building code.

Furthermore, the structure can be removed from the trailer and set on a permanent foundation.

MEMA focused their AHPP project on re-constructing neighborhoods in two of the hardest hit

cities in that state Waveland and Ocean Springs. The Ocean Springs community was built on the

site of a forty-year-old mobile home park that was damaged in Katrina. The park still had

several trailers that HUD had issued in the aftermath of Hurricane Camille thirty-six years prior

to Katrina.57

The second project in Mississippi is the Green Mobile/Eco-Cottage project. This was the

last project to be completed with AHPP funds. Essentially, theses are one-to-two story

prefabricated cottages constructed to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)

standards. The original design of the Green Mobile was modernist and was deemed “too

Fields 21

modern,” as such the design was “generally rejected by community leaders…[and] deemed

unsuitable for their region.”58

MEMA then contracted with non-profits Mercy Housing and

Habitat for Humanity, to redesign and construct the cottages. Neighborhoods of Eco-cottages

were constructed in Ocean Springs, Waveland, and in Pass Christian, which was one of the

hardest hit communities by Hurricane Camille. The eco-cottages are designed to withstand 145

mile-per-hour winds. The two-story cottages are designed in “Creole” town house style,

featuring a “gabled roof and a one-or two-story gallery on both the front and the rear.”59

Both

styles from this project are illustrated in photographs nineteen and twenty.

The problem with temporary housing is the same as the problem with the preservation of

mobile and pre-fabricated homes. First, there is a longstanding aversion to trailers and

temporary housing because of the normally low-income status of their inhabitants. In his study

on post World War II trailer living, Andrew Hurley asserts that generally those who remain in

such “stop-gap” housing as trailers often do so as they cannot afford to move into ‘permanent’

housing.60

This appears to hold true for those who remain in disaster relief housing for multiple

years. Furthermore, the stigma that holds that temporary houses, trailers, and even homes with

small square footage will negatively impact the property values of the surrounding area results in

a fierce “not in by back yard” sentiment that results in the removal of such housing.

Secondly, historic preservationists hung up on architectural importance often exclude

factory built homes from the study of vernacular architecture. Even preservationists looking at

the recent past, ignore theses ‘temporary’ shelters as historically important and architecturally

important vernacular home styles. Some only consider the handmade additions to the structure

as vernacular. These pre-fabricated, modular, and other forms of factory-built housing are an

expression of vernacular style.

Fields 22

These homes are undeniably linked to important parts of our national history including

war and natural disasters. Furthermore, even though the occupants are often low-income, their

history is just as important and worthy of preservation as mining company towns and tenant

houses built for tenant farmers These newly constructed temporary-to–permanent homes should

be studied in the context of previous ‘temporary’ structures and trailers and historic

preservationists should look to preserve these unique landscapes in the future.

1 National Archives, “San Francisco Earthquake, 1906” Web Page.

http://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/sf/. (accessed online 05/02/2012).

2San Francisco Public Library, “Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of San Francisco Refugee

Shacks (SPASFRS) Finding Aid,” http://sfpl.org/pdf/libraries/main/sfhistory/archives-and-

manuscripts/SPASFRS.pdf (accessed online 05/02/2012).

3 John L. Tierney, “War Housing: The Emergency Fleet Corporation Experience,” The Journal of Land &

Public Utility Economics, 17 no. 2 (May, 1941), pp. 151-164.

4 Joint Committee on Housing, “Study and Investigation of Housing: Hearings on the need for housing,

costs and supply of building materials, building codes and zoning laws, administration and operation of existing

federal housings laws, organization and operation of federal, state and municipal government agencies concerned

with housing; private and government housing finance, and other phases of the field of housing.” 80th

Cong., 1st

sess., 1948, Part 1 Preliminary Discussion at Washington, DC; 10. Here after referred to as Joint Committee on

Housing Hearings 1948.

5Nancy Hendricks, “Flood of 1927,”Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.

www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2202&media=print.

6 Paul Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness

Movement. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 22.

7Ibid., 19.

8Al Hesselbart, The Dumb Things Sold—Just Like That!: A History of the Recreational Vehicle Industry in

America, (Benton, Kentucky: Legacy Ink Publishers, 2007), 6.

9Hesselbart, 7.

10

Sutter, 33.

11

House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, National Defense Migration:

Hearings on H.R. 113, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 1941, 4274-5 Here after referred to as National Defense Migration

Hearings 1941.

12

Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act, 1941, Public Law 9, U.S. Statutes at Large 55 (1941-1942): 14.

Fields 23

13Carroll Van West, Tennessee’s New Deal Landscape: A Guidebook, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee

Press, 2001), 237.

14

Jay Searcy, “My Nuclear Childhood,” on Manhattan Project Heritage Preservation Association, updated

August 2005, http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS-C/OR-JSEA/ORP-JSEA-01.html. (Accessed April

14, 2011.) This is a reproduction of an article that ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer on August 9, 1992. It is

reproduced on the website with their permission. It should be noted that this is the reminiscences of a 60-year-old

that is informed by many outside sources of information of varying degrees of accuracy. As such, his version of

history should be critically examined in the matter of facts, such as numbers and dates. However, his accounts do

serve to illustrate examples of other facts found in more reliable sources.

15

“Historic and Architectural Resources of Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” National Register of Historic Places

Multiple Property Documentation, July 24, 1991, E5.

16

Ibid. E15.

17

Ibid.

18

Ibid. E14.

19

Ibid.

20

Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act, 1941, Public Law 9, U.S. Statutes at Large 55 (1941-1942): 14.

21

National Defense Migration Hearings 1941, 7306.

22

Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Chantal Simonpetri, and Jennifer Oxelson, “Thirty Years After Hurricane Camille:

Lessons Learned, Lessons Lost,” (Boulder: University of Colorado, 1999)

sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/camille/report.html. (Accessed online 05/01/2012).

23

Ibid.

24

Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Relief of the Committee on Public Works, Federal Response to

Hurricane Camille., 91st Cong.2

nd sess., 1970, 22,63.

25

Transcript “Mississippi Cottage Project” Community in the Aftermath Lecture Series, National Building

Museum, April 15, 2009. www.nbm.org/assets/pdfs/hud_mscottageproject_4-15-09.pdf.

26

Disaster Relief Act of 1974, Public Law 93-288, §404, U.S. Statutes at Large 88 (1974): 154. Emphasis

mine

27

National Mobile Home Construction and Safety Standards Act, Public Law 93-383, U.S. Statutes at

Large 88 (1974): 700.

28

Marjorie Greene, “Housing Recovery and Reconstruction: Lessons from Recent Urban Earthquakes.”

Proceedings: 3rd

United States/Japan Workshop Urban Earthquake Hazard Reduction, Earthquake Engineering

Research Institute, 39b (Feb. 1993). desastres.usac.edu.gt/documentos/pdf/eng/doc3429/doc3429-contenido.pdf

(Accessed Online 04/05/2012.)

29

Mireya Navarro, “New Housing for Hurricane’s Last Victims,” New York Times, February 27, 1995 and

FEMA, “The Holidays- Warm, Dry and Different” press release 1292-134, December 6, 1999.

30

Brenda D. Phillips, “Sheltering and Housing of Low-Income and Minority Groups in Santa Cruz County

After the Loma Prieta Earthquake,” in The Loma Prieta, California, Earthquake of October 17, 1989—Recovery,

Fields 24

Mitigation, and Reconstruction ed. Joanne M. Nigg. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1998.) D 18-

19.

31Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act Public Law 93-288,, as amended 42 U.

S. C. 5121-5207.

32

“BEYOND TRAILERS: CREATING A MORE FLEXIBLE, EFFICIENT, AND COST-EFFECTIVE

FEDERAL DISASTER HOUSING PROGRAM, ” Hearing before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery

of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, 110th

Congress, 1st

session, 24 April 2007. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008.)

www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110shrg35527/html/CHRG-110shrg35527.htm. Accessed Online 03/21/2012.

33

Davis, Belinda Creel and Valentina A. Bali, “Examining the Role of Race, NIMBY, and Local Politics in

FEMA Trailer Park Placement. Social Science Quarterly 89 no. 5 (December 2008), 1179.

34

NIMBY 1179

35

Hall, Philip S. and Patrick W. Landreth, “Assessing some Long Term Consequences of a Natural

Disaster,” Mass Emergencies 1 (1975), 59.

36

Hall and Landreth, 61.

37

Francis X. McCarthy, “FEMA Disaster Housing and Hurricane Katrina: Overview, Analysis, and

Congressional Issues,” CRS Report for Congress. (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 2008.)

38

“FEMA Disaster Housing and Hurricane Katrina: Overview, Analysis, and Congressional Issues,” 25.

39

“FEMA Disaster Housing and Hurricane Katrina: Overview, Analysis, and Congressional Issues,” 16-17.

40

“Beyond Trailers”

41

New Urban Guild, Katrina Cottage Web Page “Mission,” www.katrinacottages.com/home/mission.html.

Accessed 07/26/2011.

42

Ian Urbina, “Banned Trailers Return for Latest Gulf Disaster,” New York Times, June 30, 2010. Accessed

online. www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/us/01trailers.html.

43

Katrina Cottages Web Page “History,” katrinacottagehousing.org/history.html 07/26/2011

44

Ben Dupree, “Community in the Aftermath,” National Building Museum Lecture Series, November 18,

2008.

45

Rachel Carley, The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architcture, (New York: Owl Books, 1994),

116.

46

“History”

47

Alternative Housing Pilot Program, Federal Emergency Management Agency, pamphlet “5 Projects, 4

States, $400 Million, 4years.” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2007)

www.fema.gov/pdf/about/programs/ahpp/ahpp_pamphlet.pdf. (Accessed online 04/25/2012)

48

“Beyond Trailers,” 43-45.

49

Mikhael Schlossman, “The Alternative Housing Pilot Program: Conclusions and Recommendations”

Community in the Aftermath Lecture Series, National Building Museum, April, 26, 2011.

Www.nbm.org/media/video/ahpp-solutions.html.

Fields 25

50

Transcript “Bayou La Batre,”Community in the Aftermath Lecture Series, National Building Museum

Lecture Series, November 3 2009. www.nbm.org/media/transcripts/hud_bayoulabatre_panel_11-3-09.pdf

51

Transcript “The Louisiana Cottages and Carpet Cottages Project,” Community in the Aftermath Lecture

Series, National Building Museum, November 11, 2008. www.nbm.org/assets/pdfs/community-in-the-

aftermath_11-18-08. And “Treme: About the Show,” webpage www.hbo.com/treme/index.html#/tre

me/about/index.html.

52

“The Louisiana Cottages and Carpet Cottages Project,”

53

Sarah Susanka, The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live, (New Town,

Connecticut: The Taunton Press, 1998), Introduction 3.

54

Alec Wilkinson, “Let’s Get Small,” New Yorker 87 no. 21 (2011) online article.

web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.mtsu.edu/ehost/delivery?sid=b7c47733-5995-40de-a907-cb0c86099b78

55

Wilkinson.

56

Transcript “Mississippi Cottage Project” Community in the Aftermath Lecture Series, National Building

Museum, April 15, 2009. www.nbm.org/assets/pdfs/hud_mscottageproject_4-15-09.pdf.

57

Transcript “Mississippi’s Green Post Disaster Housing Community in the Aftermath Lecture Series,

National Building Museum, June 3, 2010.

www.nbm.org/media/transcripts/community_in_the_aftermath_nbm_hud_panel_060310-2.pdf

58

Office of Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security, “Future Directions of FEMA’s

Temporary Housing Assistance Program,” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, December 2011), 15-

17.

59 Carley, 114.

60

Andrew Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in Postwar

Consumer Culture, (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 203.

Fields 26

Photographic Appendix

Disclaimer: Photographs are reproduced for educational purposes only. Images are under

copyright and may not be published or reproduced without contacting copyright holders.

Photograph 2

Camp Richmond Refugee Camp built in

San Francisco for victims of the 1906

earthquake.

Some of these temporary cottages still

stand in San Francisco as kernels of

expanded homes.

Photograph 3

“Of the 5610 refugee cottages built,

over 5310 were moved from the camps

starting 1907 (sfpl photo)”

Photographs 2-3 taken from the

Western Neighborhoods Project

Website

http://www.outsidelands.org/shacks/mo

reShackPhotos.php

Photograph 1

A tent camp at Golden Gate Park

housing those made homeless by the

1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

Photo from the National Archives

http://www.archives.gov/

Fields 27

Photograph 5

Photograph provided by

the RV/Mobile Home

Hall of Fame showing a

temporary Schult “flat-

top” under construction at

Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Photograph 6

Photograph of flat-top

that was donated and

returned to Oak Ridge,

Tennessee’s American

Museum of Science and

Energy. The Thaddeus

Fitzpatrick family had

used it as a summerhouse

between 1948 and 2008

they donated it.

Photograph 4

Photograph provided by

the RV/Mobile Home

Hall of Fame showing

unidentified government

trailer park c. 1945.

Fields 28

Photograph 7-9

To the left:

These photos from the Library of

Congress show the Palace “Expando”

trailer that was ordered by the FSA to

provide temporary housing in case of

disaster and was used to house defense

workers during World War II.

Photograph 10

Below:

Trailers that house those constructing

Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Note the Palace Expando homes

second and third from the right

Photograph from the American

Museum of Science and Energy

Fields 29

Photograph 11

FEMA trailer camp in

Florida after Hurricane

Andrew .

Image MDH0017 of the

Florida Photographic

Collection Florida Memory,

Miami Dade County Health

Department Collection

Photograph 12

Over 400 FEMA trailers

occupy this single group

site after Hurricane Katrina

in Baker, Louisiana.

Note how similar the two

previous camps are to the

one shown in photograph

one.

Photograph 13

Shown here are FEMA

trailers on private lots in

Kenner Louisiana, serving

as temporary housing while

victims repair their homes.

Photos 12 and 13 from

Francis X. McCarthy

“FEMA Disaster Housing:

From Sheltering to

Permanent Housing”

Congressional Research

Service Report.

(Washington: Government

Printing Office, 2010), 9.

Fields 30

Photograph 14

A completed Heston Home that was

used in the Texas AHPP project.

Photographs 13-15,18 from

www.nbm.org/media/video/ahpp-

solutions.html.

Photograph 15

The Bayou La Batre, Alabama AHPP

project “Safe Harbor Estates”

Photograph 16

Installation of one-half of a modular

home in Bayou La Batre. Not the

similarity to the Schult company “flat-

tops” in pictures 2-3.

Fields 31

Photograph 17

Photo of a completed MEMA Cottage

Community from

www.mhmarketingsalesmanagement.co

m/home/industry-news/industry-in-

focus/786-mema-cottages-loved-and-

hated-five-years-after-hurricane-

katrina.

Photograph 18

Another look at a MEMA community

from the same source.

Photograph 19

The original MEMA Green Mobile

design that locals found to be too

modern.

Fields 32

Photograph 20

The re-designed MEMA Eco-

Cottage, two-story design based on

local vernacular townhomes. In

the middle background of the

picture, one can see infill of the

single-story models in the MEMA

cottage design.

Photograph from

blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-

press-news/2011/08/ocean_

springs_cottages_at_oak.html

Photograph 21

A number of pre-fabricated

Katrina Cottages being built at

Jackson Barracks in New Orleans.

Photograph from

www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2

010/10/jackson_barracks_welcome

s_back.html.

Photograph 22

Katrina Cottage site built in the

original design by Marianne

Cusato

Photograph from

katrinacottagehousing.org/location

.html.

Fields 33

Photograph 23

Katrina Cottage 697 (so named for its

square footage) designed by Eric

Moser, it is a kit home compiled by

Lowe’s.

Photograph from

katrinacottagehousing.org/location.ht

ml.

Photograph 24

Above is an example of the expansion of a Katrina Kernel House designed by Marianne

Cusato and Eric Moser. It starts with a small 336 square foot home. As the resident lives in

the home they can work on a 600 square foot addition that includes a larger kitchen/ dining

area and two additional bed and bathrooms.

Fields 34

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Fields 37

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