Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Soham D. Naik
The FEMA appeals project was a wonderful program designed to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina obtain federal, disaster-relief funding. The project, put together by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law, the Mississippi Center for Justice and the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyers Project, connected attorneys in the private sector with victims of the hurricane who were denied disaster assistance from FEMA.
A small group of us at Kirkland & Ellis in New York, under the direction of our colleague Shiva Farouki, participated in the FEMA appeals project by assisting individual victims with their appeals. I had the good fortune of assisting a resident of Gulfport, MS. The roof and hallway of her home were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, but her initial FEMA application for federal disaster relief was denied. My client had no insurance for her home. The hole in her roof and the damaged hallway had remained unrepaired. After a number of conversations with the federal employees at FEMA and my client, I filed an appeal, which included a contractor's estimate for the cost of repair. The appeal was successful, and in December of 2006, my client was awarded $9,087.76, including $5,106.64 for home repair, $1,578 for rental assistance and $2,403.12 for personal property.