The Symbolic Vacancy of Katrina Cottages

by Shannon Moriarty

Published June 16, 2009 @ 08:48AM PT

Imagine if all of your worldly possessions, your home, your community was ravaged and uprooted by a hurricane. Imagine if, years later, you are still residing in an emergency trailer, unable to afford the improvements to your property. Imagine if you've applied for housing, only to have your numerous requests denied. 

Now imagine that the window of your trailer overlooks a field packed with brand new, empty cottages designed specially for the Gulf Coast region.  

The storm may be long gone, but the afternmath of Hurricane Katrina still affects thousands of people. Today, thousands of households remain precariously housed in emergency housing or through government vouchers that will soon expire (3,038 families are housed in emergency trailers and 14,901 households receive rental subsidies). When both of these programs are phased out, there still is not an adequate stock of permanent, affordable housing to meet the demand.

But here's the frustrating part: brand new and unused cottages are sitting vacant, caught in a bureaucratic tangle of mismanagement. According to the Washington Post, the unused cottages are "the latest example of a trouble-plagued Gulf Coast housing recovery that has subjected the Federal Emergency Management Agency to harsh and prolonged criticism and led to charges that states are diverting federal rescue funds or failing to deliver on promises to restore long-term affordable housing."

Here's more from the story:

At 74, Johnson would like nothing better than to move one of the nearly 700 vacant cottages onto his land, where he now lives in a temporary trailer provided by the government. The cottages -- with picturesque white fences and wide front porches -- are designed to be set on a permanent foundation and can withstand winds of 150 mph.

Johnson's daughter helped him apply for a cottage, but the request to the state has gone nowhere. Instead, Johnson faces renewed uncertainty this summer about where he will live and whether he can ever rebuild a life on the 10 acres he helped his family buy in the 1940s.

The unused cottages are the latest example of a trouble-plagued Gulf Coast housing recovery that has subjected the Federal Emergency Management Agency to harsh and prolonged criticism and led to charges that states are diverting federal rescue funds or failing to deliver on promises to restore long-term affordable housing.

This is an interesting juxtaposition with a recent trend; homelessness is on the rise and, at the same time, one in nine housing units are vacant. It's deeply unsettling and downright infuriating. 

If you ask me, what the Gulf Coast needs is a Miami-inspired movement to cut through the red tape and do what we all now is right: move people! What else is one to do when our bureaucratic systems are failing people?