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PASCAGOULA, Miss.— Former President Carter said Monday that the federal government could alleviate some of the Coast’s affordable-housing burden by studying homeowners insurance issues along the Coast, and subsidizing the doubled and tripled rates for those who were affected by Katrina.

It would be a first step toward successful homeownership that not only transforms a first-time homeowner, but the community in which that family lives, he said.

“It’s like a reverse cancer,” Carter said in an interview with the Biloxi Sun Herald. “It spreads from one block to another, and eventually, everybody is trying to put their homes in better condition. When we go back six or seven years later, that community has been, in appearance at least, gentrified. That doesn’t mean that rents have gone up, but everybody is beginning to say that if Habitat folks who are poorer than I am can have that house looking like a mansion, I’m going to make my house look like a mansion too.”

The Carters are building homes across the Gulf Coast this week as part of their Habitat for Humanity Work Project. By week’s end, 60 families in Mississippi will have new or rehabilitated houses, and 48 frames will be set aside for new homes to be built by year’s end.

Each homeowner must put in hundreds of hours of labor, called sweat equity, to own a home. In return, each family gets a 20-year, interest-free mortgage.

For children, the first steps in their new homes are so exciting, said Rosalynn Carter. Perhaps it is getting to choose their paint colors. Sometimes, it’s the joy of having their own rooms for the first time. She also appealed for more volunteers to help build later Habitat homes.

When asked where he plans to take the Carter Work Project, Carter discussed Myanmar, which was hit by a cyclone last week. Efforts to aid victims have been hampered by an uncooperative government.