the INCREMENTAL house

20k house Last year, I took a trip to Hale County, Alabama.  My goal was to connect with Pam Dorr, the director of HERO (Hale Empowerment and Revitalization Organization).  We arrived one spring day just in time for lunch, and she suggested we get some catfish at the local gas station, Mustang Oil. Soon, the four of us has ballooned into 10 people.  We ran into the local judge, and some long term and short term locals soon joined us, including a filmmaker from Maine, and a psychiatrist from California who has set up a live-in farm as an alternative to an institution.  Heading into the gas station, it seemed like catfish and oil would make strange bedfellows.  But, I was quick to discover it was a good one, and that Hale County was full of such unlikely combinations.

Look closely, there is a still a Katrina Cottage there Rebuilding a bit differently. A whole new aesthetic is developing..... I also spoke with Ben Brown, who works with Placemakers, an urban design/planning firm who has been engaged in the process in Mississippi . He described some of the challenges that are now being exposed on the gulf coast. As they have had a severe housing crisis there for the last three years, they have a jump on what the rest of the country is experiencing now. The strange thing is that while most would consider that the Katrina Cottages were only temporary housing, and then envisioned to be used as storage sheds detached from the new main house, they are now marketing them as middle class housing. Their premise is that if people still want high quality housing that has a sense of scale and style, they will have to downsize bigtime, and they think the Katrina Cottage is just the way to do that. This whole endeavor has shifted from some emer...