This post is quick and dirty and I’ll leave it to those so interested to google up the stories at the Sun Herald, the Seacoast Echo and WLOX.
First the residents didn’t want them but now cognitive dissonance over the initial decision to ban them has set in. The perceptions are pretty simple to understand, people that are sinking $50K into just their flood mitigated foundations aren’t too keen on having a $26,000 MEMA cottage as their next door neighbor. Dr Mac didn’t help things speaking out at the BSL City Council meeting; too many people remember how much money he got from the Farm.
Meantime and with the deadline to vacate the cottages looming, a few former cottage residents have replaced their cottages with true modular housing. Whatever fears the neighbors had about the cottages have been replaced with the stark terror of having an elevated glorified trailer for a neighbor. Throw in a healthy dose of freeloaders and out of town residents who used their cottages as weekend getaways and the toxic gumbo pot is complete. (I know I promised no links but this loser seems to think he is entitled to a free house without the bother of a mortgage.)
Meantime affordable housing advocates have sued the City of Waveland just as the City was poised to adopt something along the lines that Gulfport did last week to regulate the use of and under certain circumstances allow the cottages. Bay St Louis appears ready to do the same. No one wants to see the less fortunate forced off their land (except the loser who wasted his money trying to beat the system).
In any event this story is so smoking hot it is the talk of the town dividing friends and relatives alike. I think I’ll go hide out in Lamar County for a few weeks. 😉
And please Tommy no more trailers (modular houses). Allowing cottages with restrictions is a far better solution to this problem.
sop