A Cottage Solution to the Housing Problem

Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Ben Brown and Bruce Tolar have been working with leaders in innovative home and neighborhood design that satisfies safety standards in storm zones and, even more importantly, broadens choices for sustainable community development everywhere. Read Ben’s PlaceShakers posts on the topic here. And join Ben in this webinar to learn how lessons from the storm zone are being integrated into housing policy on community and county levels to deliver affordability locally.

A founding member of the USA TODAY and Coastal Living magazine editorial staffs, PlaceMaker Principal Ben Brown brings more than two decades of journalistic experience to community planning advocacy. He was communications director for the precedent-setting 2005 Mississippi Renewal Forum after Hurricane Katrina and for the 2010 Coastal Recovery Commission of Alabama in the wake of the BP oil spill. Ben is a lead blogger on PlaceShakers.

Bringing the experience of decades designing and building commercial and residential structures on the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas, Bruce Tolar was among those who shaped early designs for Katrina Cottages in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After the historic design charrette that produced recovery and rebuilding plans for coastal Mississippi, he formed a development team to turn cottage plans into real structures in real neighborhoods. He created the Cottage Square model community in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and, by 2012, had supervised the design, site plans and construction of some 80 units in three “pocket neighborhoods” in transit-oriented, infill locations along the Mississippi coast.