Hurricane Katrina destroyed an estimated 60-70,000 homes along the Mississippi Gulf Coast -taking so much from us but depositing one Marianne Custo on our shore to attend the Mississippi Renewal Forum in October 2005.
Marianne Cusato stands about 5-foot-nothin’ with a headful of shoulder-length black curls that won’t stay in place when she talks. She has the nervous energy symptomatic of youth, raw talent, and unleashed want-to. Miss Marianne claims to be 31, but she’d be hard-pressed to buy liquor without an ID.
A Manhattan-based architect from Anchorage, Alaska, by way of South Bend (Go Irish!), Ms. Cusato talks so fast a Southerner needs subtitles. Say again? Pardon? She’s kind enough to repeat herself.
Repeatedly. In fact, she just did, telling us once more that we can’t call her an architect yet; officially, she’s a designer. Okay. Yes ma’am. She’s also got visual aids. That helps. She’s holding up designs for something she calls the Katrina Cottage.
Cute as the dickens. All beachy angles, peaks and front porches. Looks like something out of Adorable Coastal Living for the Incredibly Wealthy magazine. It’s not.
What the Katrina Cottage is, is an alternative to the FEMA trailer. No joke. And get this: It costs less. Where the woefully inadequate, tiny, yack-ugly, hospital-white trailer preferred by the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency runs us taxpayers about $75,000…Cusato thinks her cottage could be manufactured for about 45 grand. Or less. Plus, you can add on to it. So it’s a temporary solution with a lease for permanence.
The trick is getting all the red tape off these cottages so they can become become permanent – and folks in Jackson County are doing their best to unwrap the cottages there. Continue reading “The best kind of problem to have – one with a solution”