By Pele Peacock
After of day of physical labor, clean up, and of orientation/training, we got to put our legal education to work. Eleven of us have been assigned to a project assessing the legal problems facing residents of FEMA trailers.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is the organization that has provided trailers for New Orleans residents to live in while their houses are restored. The trailers are supposed to be a temporary place for people to live, but there are still 60,000 trailers housing residents. These people haven’t been able to get out of their FEMA trailers and into their pre-Katrina houses for various reasons.
Several federal and state programs have been developed to provide funding to restore homes, most significant being the Road Home Program. This program was developed from a Congressional grant of $8 billion to
Our mission is to conduct client interviews of FEMA residents in order to assess the legal issues facing the Katrina victims trying to get back into their homes and provide them with access to information and legal services to help overcome their legal obstacles. Assessing the residents’ legal issues is a difficult process because they are uninformed of their legal rights and they often believe there is no recourse for the problems they are facing.
We have been assigned a square mile area in Gentilly Sugar Hill where approximately 150 trailers are located. The area was completely flooded by Hurricane Katrina and, consequently, the homes must all be restored to habitable conditions. Unfortunately, the only work that most of the residents have been able to do themselves is gutting their homes; until the City of
We heard compelling and heart-wrenching stories of the residents of the FEMA trailers that are struggling in every way to just get back into their homes.
Some of the legal issues facing FEMA residents are:
- Access and Information to the Road Home program and other federal funding programs.
FEMA residents are rebuilding based of promises of federal funding, and then the federal funding isn’t coming through, leaving the residents with unmanageable debt.
- Corrupt Police Activity
- Breach of Contract Issues
- Contractor Fraud
- Insurance Issues
homeowners vs. flood coverage; which policy covers what;
getting settlement money
getting current insurance coverage
settlement issues: insurance companies are just paying the home owners mortgage off leaving residents with no money to rebuild the home and an unlivable home.
- Tenant Rights
- Criminal Law Issues
- Domestic Violence Issues
- Utility Company Problems
Many of the residents complain of being charged for the use of electricity and water during the time they were evacuated, while according to the residents, there were no water or electrical services available.
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