Context
The Shreveport Times had an article today about how the city council of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi is responding to requests to erect Katrina Cottages. Once again, I couldn't find this on the Times' website, but the same story appeared in many newspapers in Louisiana, so you can read a copy here.
Bay St. Louis is in Hancock County, Mississippi, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina itself. New Orleans, by contrast, was devastated by an engineering failure.
Commentary
I have recently become enamored of poverty-fighting program called Housing First. I believe it is astronomically difficult to make any progress in our current society without having a permanent address. Since I work in the Automation Department at the public library, I can give you two examples of what I mean:
1) These days many of our daily transactions (applying for jobs, performing schoolwork, communicating with friends and family) take place on the computer. The library provides free computer use if you have a library card. The easiest way to get a library card is to prove that you live in the parish, which means having a permanent address.
2) I teach computer classes to the public, which because of #1, can be a key to breaking the cycle of poverty. I don't even require a library card to enroll. I do, however, have a waiting list and I need to be able to get in touch with people when their names comes to the top. Which means I need an address or phone number. I'm absolutely willing to call one of the local homeless shelters to reach them, but given the transitory nature of those arrangements, it's really a crapshoot as to whether I can reach someone that way.
The basic opposition that the city council of Bay St. Louis seems to have to Katrina Cottages is, "these are cheap little houses that Katrina victims are going to live in permanently, and that's going to drive down property values in the neighborhoods where they set up." I'm afraid they lose me at the phrase "drive down property values." I have some sympathy for the idea that if you need to move, you're going to want to get enough money out of your current house to afford an equivalent one in a different place. However, when I balance "people who already have houses and want to make sure they get lots of money when they sell them" against "people who have no houses and need something to get their lives going again," I'm pretty much going to have to side with the latter.
What did you see today?
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