SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA LEGAL SERVICES APPEAL FOR HELP

Our program and the clients we serve have been severely impacted by Hurricane Katrina. We have received many offers of help. Many of you are looking for the right place to put their donations and have asked for more information about us and what our needs are.

Who Are We - Southeast Louisiana Legal Services is the largest Legal Services Corporation funded program in the state. One-third of Louisiana’s poor lived in our service area before the storm hit. The program serves the City of New Orleans and the six parishes most severely impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Four are in Metropolitan New Orleans and the other two, Washington and St. Tammany parishes, are north of New Orleans. The program has more than 50 staff members, half of whom are lawyers. The legal staff is outstanding. Many are recognized as experts on Louisiana poverty law issues. Half a dozen have received the Louisiana State Bar Association’s lifetime Career Public Interest Award, more than any other program. The program operates six statewide public interest projects in addition to handling thousands of cases for local residents. The program operates under both the names Southeast Louisiana Legal Services and New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation. Our websites are slls.org and nolac.org. All of our services are free.

What Effect Did Katrina Have on The Program

• The program had five offices. Three are up and running - Hammond, Covington and Marrero. One office appears to be a total loss - Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish - but no one is allowed in that parish now so we do not have reliable information. Our largest office is in downtown New Orleans. It suffered light damage but we are not permitted to return until a damage assessment of the entire building is made and the electricity is restored.
• Of the 50+ staff we have, 3 staff members are unaccounted for, three weeks after the storm. Staff presently live in five different states. More than half of the staff are presently unable to return to their homes. More than a third have reported flooding occurred in their homes and many of those homes will be a total loss.
• The program probably has clients in 49 of the 50 states. So far it has found less than 5% of its 3,000+ New Orleans area clients.
• The program had worked to successfully to increase its local funding base. However, this made us particularly vulnerable when the storm hit. We expect a loss of $300,000 in our funding in 2005, which is 9% of our budget. Half of that comes from funding sources being underwater, and the other half from being unable to perform services on grants targeted to people in the evacuated areas.

What Has The Program Done As A Result of Katrina - We are confronted with a different situation in delivering services. A majority of the 300,000 people who were eligible for our services are temporarily outside of our service area. By the same token the number of poor people from our service area probably doubled in the week the hurricane hit. A lot of people lost their jobs that week, and the unemployment and other benefits they get fail to raise them above the poverty line.

• • The other three Legal Services programs in Louisiana have opened their doors to our staff. Our lawyers are presently working in Shreveport, Lafayette and Baton Rouge. Another lawyer is working in Houston with the evacuees there.
• We are putting staff to work where they can find housing. These places are the same areas where our displaced clients are. We are encouraged by authorities’ efforts to let as many as possible return to their homes in the evacuated areas. However, staff who have school-aged children cannot return now because there are no schools open. Even when schools do open, most will be reluctant to move back before January. They have already enrolled their children in the schools where they evacuated to.
• Because many courts are presently closed, staff have been going to shelters, unemployment offices and libraries talking with evacuees and local victims about their legal problems. Their initial problems include loss of jobs; evictions for trumped-up reasons (the motivation here is probably that intact housing can now be rented at a premium); people who have lost their identification and need it replaced; and some family law problems. On September 19th, we began staffing a legal desk at the Slidell FEMA Recovery Center. We continue to look for other opportunities to reach out to storm victims wherever they may be found.
• We are preparing for a huge influx of legal problems primarily related to applications for assistance to FEMA both for immediate, emergency aid and for housing and other long- term help to rebuild their lives.
• The program opened its Hammond office to a group of volunteer lawyers who will help with eviction problems and insurance questions.
• Five of our lawyers in Shreveport, who together cover the broad spectrum of poverty law, have agreed to serve as a “call center” for lawyers outside the state who need specific information on Louisiana Law when they are assisting victims.

What Do We Need In Order To Help People

The first thing we have learned is that our needs change every week. Our top priority the first week was getting out payroll. The second week it was finding staff. The third week it was how best to help evacuees. Despite the uncertainties we are dealing with we know that there are a few things we need.

We need money - Before the storm ever hit the program was working diligently to maintain services. What was a $4 million budget had received a $400,000 loss from LSC related to changes in the census. The Department of Justice failed to renew a Domestic Violence grant providing about $300,000 a year to represent victims. IOLTA had to reduce our funding by about $60,000 a year because of declines in their receipts. We had made up some of the lost funding, we had saved some through staff attrition, but we had also spent our management reserve maintaining services. In short, SLLS had no money for emergencies. Now we are faced with another significant loss in funding, just when we have to prepare for a huge surge in demand.

We need “special” volunteers - At the moment there is this enormous need out there and the next two months will bring many appeals of denials for government help. When the courts open up again our already full caseload is going to occupy existing staff with little left over to serve the new need out there. We need volunteers. But the program is in crisis and that means that we are unable to provide the sort of guidance that we normally provide volunteers. If you want to volunteer you must resourceful. You must be a self-starter. You must be comfortable with confusion. You must figure out where you are going to stay. All our efforts in locating housing are focused on our own staff’s needs. We can offer you training on disaster relief law. We can offer you help in addressing complicated legal problems. We can answer your questions about Louisiana law. We can tell you where you will find people who need your help.

Our staff needs help - We have a staff committed to helping the victims of this disaster. But, the truth is that 100% of us are victims ourselves. The stories you hear about the losses suffered apply to our staff as well. About a third of us returned to normal with the settlement of small insurance claims and restoration of our electricity, water, and telephone. Another group will be returning to their homes in the next month or have started new lives in places not hit by the hurricane. Some are missing and we don’t know what their needs are. Too many left their homes together with large extended families and too few possessions, only to have suffered a total loss of everything they left behind. While staff have been kept on our payroll, these families invariably had more than one wage earner and many of the others lost their jobs. The program has established a special fund for staff financial needs.

What We Will Do With Money You Give Us

Unless you specify that you are giving money for staff needs or some other special need, all of the money received by us as a result of this disaster will go to pay staff doing outreach legal services to victims.