Here in Dallas, at Legal Aid of Northwest Texas (LANWT) efforts are underway to help evacuees of Hurricane Katrina get the government aid they need, so that those who want to may return and rebuild. But not all of the legal aid they seek is hurricane-related. For many evacuees, their private lives go on, and they seek legal help on more pedestrian matters. Among the evacuees hosted in Texas, some seek divorces, or resolution of custody disputes, in addition to wrangling with insurance companies and FEMA for reconstruction funds. C.S., the legal aid attorney at LANWT/Fort Worth who handles Katrina matters, handles almost any kind of legal matter relating to Katrina evacuees. C.S. went to law school in Louisiana, and so is familiar with the bizarre legal system of LA, which befuddles all of the TX-trained lawyers here.\r\n\r\nAccording to an article in the Dallas newspaper, there are presently more New Orleans-registered voters in Houston right now (45,000) than there are in New Orleans (40,000). No word on how many are in Dallas, but their problems are the same. Many of those evacuees, who were granted housing on a limited basis by local housing authorities, have been caught in the middle of a financial dispute between those authorities and FEMA over who will pay for what housing, and when. Upon moving into local apartments, the evacuees signed 12-month leases, only to find that their housing assistance would only be valid for 3 months. At the end of their assistance, they are now struggling to break free from the leases so that they may return home.\r\n\r\nIn other cases, they seek housing assistance directly from FEMA, which is overwhelmed with such requests and cannot grant timely assistance to everyone. Renters are stuck trying to pay the rent however they can, sometimes months late. Those who can find jobs locally, but others are nto so fortunate. In some cases, the renters resort to \"self-help\" in getting their rent money, but this only complicates their problem--once they pay, landlors know that they can get the rent if they really need to, and landlords are less lenient when given excuses.\r\n\r\nConcurrent with all this, evacuees also seek funds from FEMA to replace property lost in Katrina, such as sofas, kitchenware, chairs, etc. A variety of technicalities can frustrate such attempts. If two applicants for aid have the same address, such as in a duplex situation, or if there is a trailer home at the same address as a house, FEMA will deny aid to the second applicant. In turn, the applicant has to demonstrate that although they share the same address, they are separate household. In other cases, the property damage to their home is so severe, that an inspector cannot or will not enter the home to evaluate the property damage, and so denies their application. LANWT helps applicants file for appeals to get an inspector to do a more thorough examination of the damage. As a volunteer, much of the work I do involves wrapping my head around the applicant\'s case, divining the real reason they were denied assistance, and writing an appropriate appeal letter.\r\n\r\nWe also handle intake matters, interviewing new applicants for legal aid and sizing up their legal problem. This sound straightforward enough, but it can be complicated by a problem no one foresaw when putting evacuees in proper housing: in some of Dallas\' outlying neighborhoods where these evacuees are housed, there are no buses connecting those areas to the city center.\r\n\r\nOriginally posted: http://bls-shn.blogspot.com/2006/03/stars-at-night-are-big-and-bright.html