BAY ST. LOUIS, MISS. - When a New York designer came up with a plan for a tiny cottage that could offer permanent shelter for Gulf Coast residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi officials pressed hard for federal funding. Why build a flimsy government trailer, they asked, when it was possible to build a sturdy, long-lasting cottage — especially one as charming as the ‘Katrina cottage,’ designed in a Southern vernacular style, with a steep metal roof and a deep front porch? But now that the ‘Mississippi cottage,’ a small shotgun-style house inspired by the original, is rolling onto the coast, things have become a little more complicated: The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency provides only the cottage — not the land — and cities have imposed rule after rule to keep qualified residents from settling into them. Local officials, it seems, fear that the brightly colored cottages will become permanent fixtures in their hurricane-ravaged neighborhoods. They say the cottages, which range from 400 to 840 square feet and cost as little as $34,000 to build, will hurt property values. And so the cottage that was designed to offer long-term shelter is now being used strictly temporarily […]