WWL-TV

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. - Mary Thornton's Katrina cottage is built to look like a classic shotgun house. Inside, it's over 800 square feet.

"I love my home. It's very cozy.  It's cute,” she said.

And in her neighborhood, Bayside Park near Bay St. Louis, there are a lot of Katrina cottages. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, MEMA, put the cottages in. But their funding from FEMA will soon run out, so they won't be managing the cottages anymore, and they're offering to sell them to the occupants.

Thornton wants to buy it, but for now zoning rules soon won't allow them here. But Friday's ruling to call the cottages a modular home should change that.

“It's wonderful that I know that I'm gonna be a homeowner again,” she said.

“I think that a very, very large number of these units fit in perfectly in the communities in which they're located.  There are some of the units that don't fit in,” said Mike Womack, the director of MEMA.

He says Friday's ruling means roughly half of his state's 2,300 Katrina cottages will be allowed to stay where it is.

Each individual cottage owner may have to jump through their own hoops with things like neighborhood covenants and elevation requirements.  But for everyone who may potentially own a Katrina Cottage, the decision to call them modular will come as good news.

“After today, I can restart my life again,” said Thornton. “I been in a Katrina state of mind for the last three and some odd years, and now I can begin a new life after Katrina.”

The process isn't over yet. Local governments will still have to sign off on letting the modular homes stay.

“There may be some cities along the coast that ultimately say nowhere but mobile home parks,” said Womack. “And if that's their decision, then we fully support that. But we're hoping that most communities will allow them in certain neighborhoods.”

Womack says MEMA they're working with each potential homeowner individually and they're selling the cottages to the occupants based on their incomes, so some people will get homes for less than a thousand dollars.