POLICY: Katrina

The Mississippi Center for Justice, Mississippi’s only statewide, nonprofit public interest law firm, has resurrected a home-grown capacity for statewide, nonprofit legal advocacy where, before, the individual legal needs of low-income people and communities of color were addressed by a committed but overwhelmed few. Public per capita funding for civil legal services in Mississippi remains the lowest in the nation – about $10 per poor person, or less than half the national average.

MCJ’s most recent – and greatest – challenge has been responding to the massive and continually-emerging housing-related legal needs of low-income people and communities left in Katrina’s wake.

On September 8, 2005, ten days after the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, MCJ convened a meeting attended by some 40 lawyers representing the full spectrum of Mississippi’s justice community – bar associations, legal aid providers, law schools, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office and others, who came together for a first organizational meeting at the Mississippi Bar Center. The meeting exposed the myriad legal needs that arose in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane – and the daunting reality that the services will be needed for many years to come. Foremost among these, and certainly the most dire, was providing an immediate response to the housing-related legal needs of low-income Hurricane Katrina survivors in Mississippi. MCJ’s unique philosophy of brokering and maintaining effective regional and national partnerships allowed it to undertake this dauntingly complex work.
Problems attending Katrina’s destruction of residential housing include evictions by landlords who can raise rent in an impossibly tight market, anticipated foreclosures due to the inability to make overdue mortgage payments, insurance disputes, unscrupulous contracting practices, predatory financers’ failure to forbear on loan collection, inordinate pressure from developers for the quick sale of property, difficulties getting and maintaining FEMA benefits, and a host of other legal problems. Particularly vulnerable to such depredations are the Gulf Coast’s low-income communities. They comprise a population that tends to single heads of household concentrated in minority communities located on geographically-vulnerable terrain. For the past eight months securing pro bono legal assistance for this segment of Katrina’s victims has been MCJ’s most significant challenge.

MCJ’s goal is to provide legal assistance to help resolve the housing-related problems of all low-income citizens displaced or made homeless by Hurricane Katrina. Its emerging, housing-related legal response to Katrina consists of three essential components:

First, MCJ has established a Katrina Recovery Office at Biloxi and staffed it with attorneys and a pro bono legal service coordinator who all have significant legal services experience and expertise in the area of housing.

Second, MCJ, in partnership with the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyers Project, has developed legal assistance delivery system to quickly coordinate and effectively deploy the many offers of pro bono assistance from lawyers in-state and around the country who are eager to assist but need a way to connect.

Third, MCJ is promoting the sustainable and just rebuilding of low-income Gulf Coast neighborhoods by advocating for affordable housing that combines the new FEMA elevation requirements with costs that permit their purchase by the region’s displaced low-income population. Specific attention is being paid to economical construction solutions, alternatives to elevated structures, and energy efficiency. MCJ is also advocating for mixed use communities that increase access to basic consumer needs and decrease dependence upon automobile transportation; it is actively recommending strengthened public transportation to key service centers such as hospitals and medical clinics. Biloxi-based attorneys are also advocating before the Governor’s Renewal Commission’s Affordable Housing Subcommittee and before county and local boards where the building and zoning decisions are made.

On the Gulf Coast, and across the state, MCJ’s goal – to make Mississippi “the social justice state” – and its method – to generate and provide legal support to social justice campaigns – together constitute the intervention MCJ has sought to make in Mississippi’s landscape of social justice activism.  MCJ applies the lessons of Mississippi’s rich history of social change to craft innovative social justice campaigns, put legal advocacy in service to community leadership, and open pathways out of poverty and discrimination.  To work effectively and efficiently, MCJ looks for partnerships with leaders in social justice law. By brokering legal talent, MCJ it in-house staff resources are being leveraged to maximum effect.