Last year, after fire destroyed their home outside Canton, Miss., Willie Anderson and seven of her children moved into a rented shack. The place was a horror, with no electricity or running water, rotting walls papered with newsprint, and gaping holes in the tin roof that allowed the rain to pour through. "Once a snake came up under the stove, and we got big rats in there all the time," recalled Anderson, 47, a big, strapping woman in a flowered blouse. "I couldn't wait to get away."
The family's ordeal finally ended in August, when a trailer truck carrying a hip-roofed...
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