Habitat for Humanity of the Mississippi Gulf Coast

The wide, white walkway on the gulf side of the Biloxi Bay Bridge is one place the Mississippi coast wakes up. Dawn brings the sun peeking up over Pascagoula to the east. Fishing charters slowly snake their way out to open water. A long, slow freight train takes the railroad bridge across the bay if you look inland. Walkers, well-behaved dogs and bicycles all exercise their way into morning over the water.

This is home for the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project, which builds 30 new houses, 48 new frames and rehabs 30 more houses this year. The host is a well-muscled arm that means Habitat for Humanity here called Habitat for Humanity of the Mississippi Gulf Coast – a new affiliate born after Hurricane Katrina to serve Harrison and Jackson Counties. This relatively new organization is building more homes faster all the time (more than 190 under way after Katrina) partnering with other nonprofits and keeping the pressure on going the distance along the coast.

The bridge here connects Pascagoula and the cities to the east with Biloxi and Gulfport. Carter Work Project volunteers will build in all three cities.

In Pascagoula, 20 new infill homes will go up in a several-block area near School Avenue and Pascagoula Street. Habitat is remaking that neighborhood, homeowner-to-be Barbara Magee will tell you.

Before Katrina, Magee said, “You wouldn’t go down those streets… Cops wouldn’t even go down there. Katrina just cleaned it out. Katrina cleaned out all the drugs, drug houses, the dealers. She didn’t discriminate. She got everybody.”

Thirty-five miles away, Juanita Page tells you that her neighborhood, the historic Forest Heights in Gulfport, is “going to come back better than ever. You’re just going to have a lot of things new.” Carter Work Project volunteers will rehab 30 of the once-tidy brick homes around Holly Circle here.

And in between, in Biloxi, are 10 new homes going up near Yankie Stadium where The Salvation Army has staged its now-legendary support of the Gulf Coast’s people and volunteers from all over for more than two years.

Habitat homeowners Mary and Carla Bunch and their six children will live next door to each other. It’s a sisterly start to community along Nichols and Roy Streets.

On the beach near the Biloxi lighthouse, which has survived since 1848, volunteers will build frames for 48 houses that the ambitious HFH Mississippi Gulf Coast affiliate will build before the year is out.

Yes, this battered coast still needs help. But don’t expect that much talk of loss among the neon of rebuilt casinos here.

These folks are survivors. They’re moved on. They talk of renewal. As a church sign down the coast in HFH Bay-Waveland proclaims: “Katrina was big. But God is bigger.”