Spotlight: Disaster Relief
After a hurricane makes landfall, storm clouds quickly dissipate, but the recovery process for homeowners can take years. In the midst of what is predicted to be an above-average Atlantic hurricane season, our Disaster Relief Project is helping remove legal barriers that disaster survivors may experience during the recovery process, as well as providing estate planning services and information to help North Carolinians better prepare for the future. 

In addition to clarifying titles and ownership issues, the Disaster Relief Project helps survivors of natural disasters by advocating for clients in benefits application and appeals processes, standing up for survivors who were victimized by fraudulent contractors or bad-actor landlords, assisting community groups that provide long-term recovery, and more. 
Donald Brimmer's story
 In 2018, Hurricane Florence damaged Donald Brimmer’s home beyond repair. When he tried to get assistance to rebuild his home, Mr. Brimmer kept running into the same problem: he couldn’t prove ownership of the land he had long lived on because he inherited it from family who passed away without a will. This method of inheritance, although legally just as valid, often does not provide the documentation that many organizations, including FEMA, require to proceed with repairing a home. As a result, families who have lived on the same land for generations find themselves unable to prove it to the satisfaction of authorities in charge of distributing aid. Mr. Brimmer worked with an attorney from Legal Aid’s Disaster Relief Project to formally document his ownership, and recently, he received the funding needed to build a new house.

While the Disaster Relief Project’s work usually ends when the legal issue is resolved, members of Legal Aid’s Disaster Relief Project recently volunteered their time to join Baptists on Mission and other local organizations to help with the early stages of building Mr. Brimmer's future home. The New Bern Sun Journal featured an article about Mr. Brimmer and the rebuilding of his home.
Racial justice and natural disasters
 Lesley Albritton, managing attorney of Legal Aid’s Disaster Relief Project, and Jesse Williams, Skadden Fellow and staff attorney with the Disaster Relief Project, discuss ownership requirements and accessing disaster assistance in more detail in their article “Disasters Do Discriminate: Black Land Tenure and Disaster Relief Programs,” which was published in the American Bar Association’s Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law.
Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity.
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