Tent Homes, Wave of the future?( no pun intended)

 In light of the recent Hurricane Sandy and it's aftermath, I remembered this small town of Ocean Grove New Jersey and it's tent cottages  developed in 1869 as a Christian Camp Community http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Grove,_New_Jersey

 https://www.google.com/search?q=tent+homes+ocean+grove+new+jersey+images&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=rL4&tbo=u&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=QiOlUKzEK4Hs2QX0oIH4Bg&ved=0CC8QsAQ&biw=1366&bih=595
Perhaps these types of dwellings would be easier to insure, and replace if need be.  I remember a time when it was considered cool in popular culture to have a shack on the beach. Curious how people in 1869 seemed to have more common sense even before the days of global warming, than those people of  today, perhaps they still remembered the Biblical quote about building your house on the shifting sands. 95 percent of my relatives live in New Jersey, they are all safe and basically okay(despite being without power for over a week), even their homes, luckily. I found that in  this disaster, the blogosphere was more helpful in obtaining information than the local authorities. Thank Goodness that there is a blog in my mom's hometown that was able to be updated in terms of power , gas and food issues.I had to relay information to her via cell phone, since I live in Idaho USA. I have now realized that in a major crisis one needs cash and not credit when power goes out in order to buy any essentials like food or gas.I kept thinking of the Mad Max II Road Warrior movie quote from Gyro Captain something to the effect of "it's all about the petrol mate"  One of my relatives said to me that the shore will never be the same since those days at the beach we remember, but in my mind, N.J. hasn't been the same since I was a kid, in many ways, as there are almost twice as many more people, cars, and buildings. The farms and wild wooded places I remember are now subdivisions  and shopping plazas.I often wondered why I was so inclined to go back to the land in rural America and aim for self sufficiency, despite one of my cousin's sarcastic comments about living in the boondocks. I have my own woodlot and cut my own firewood for heat, and grow a lot of my own food. I now see how big urban systems break down, quickly and leave people unable to take care of themselves. So maybe, my hybrid life of retro/ modernism
 spinning yarn on a foot powered spinning wheel while listening to lectures at the European Graduate School http://www.egs.edu/on the web, is not such a strange lifestyle choice after all. Sorry for the devastating loss of the Hurricane victims and many New Jersey-ans, nature can be rather callous,  it is up to us humans to find balance between progress, business, and  nature. Perhaps the marketplace i.e. insurance marketplace will be one of the arbiters. Here's a poem I wrote concerning the situation

              Chess Match
the houses swallowed up the land
the sea swallowed up the houses