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Greetings.

Since mid-September, just a couple of weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, AARP Foundation Litigation has been rotating a steady stream of legal volunteers to Mississippi.  So far, six AARP lawyers have spent 1-2 weeks each working at the Mississippi AARP office in Jackson, the disaster recovery centers on the Gulf Coast, and the Mississippi Bar Young Lawyers Division phone center in Jackson.  Managing Attorney Stu Cohen, who spearheaded this remarkable effort, has arranged for the volunteers to have a continuing presence here through the end of this month.  They have assisted hundreds of Katrina survivors with a wide range of disaster-related legal needs, including a preponderance of insurance and landlord tenant problems.
 
I’ve had the privilege of meeting most of the AARP legal volunteers and hearing their compelling stories.  Julianne Lapham, a young lawyer recently admitted to practice in California, took me up on my request to write about her experience, and I'm pleased to share her report with you below.
 
During this Thanksgiving holiday week, all of us at MCJ and our community and legal partners say THANK YOU to the very many of you who have given so generously of your time, your talent, and your treasure to the Gulf Coast recovery effort.
 
Take care,
Martha

Reflections of Julianne Lapham, AARP legal volunteer
 
Mississippi truly is the state of southern hospitality. Even after Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippians have kept the traditional spirit alive.  My first taste of this famous hospitality was when I was welcomed at the Jackson Airport by AARP employee Walter Howell on October 3, 2005.  I was incredibly grateful for his presence, as I was not sure what to expect.  Back home in Los Angeles, the local news generally covers only the negative stories, so I have to admit I was a little nervous about being there by myself.  Walter was very thoughtful and kind in showing me around the area, which put me at ease.
 
The next day, I attended an AARP Mississippi All-Staff Meeting.  Here I met with Sherri Davis, Nancy Wood and the rest of the current Mississippi office staff.  Although the meeting obviously had additional objectives, the beginning centered around a discussion about the upcoming AARP K.A.R.E.S. RV Trip.  Sherri Davis had just discovered that AARP was able to get two large RV’s which would sleep up to eight volunteers, this being incredible news considering the shortage of all rental vehicles in the southern states.  Hearing about it for the first time, I discovered that the goal of the RV trip is to have AARP volunteers reach out to communities and individuals where FEMA has not already placed a Disaster Recovery Center (DRC). Reflecting on this now, after having spent multiple days in the coastal region, I believe that this RV trip is extremely necessary.  If an individual or a family member cannot reach a DRC center, due to a lack of transportation or physical mobility, they may have received very little, if any, assistance.  I believe this is probably very true for many older citizens who are not able to easily get around. 
 
On this first day, I was also able to work out of the Mississippi State Bar Office.  Having spoken to Tom Osborne, an AARP Foundation attorney who had spent the prior two weeks in Mississippi, I was able to understand the role of being a legal volunteer and could “hit the ground running” in my effort to help out.  I spent the rest of the day making follow-up phone calls to people who had contacted the Mississippi Legal Assistance Disaster Hotline for help.  My very first phone call was a foreshadowing of what I would see for the next ten days.  Without ever even seeing this couple, I was able to hear the sheer exhaustion in their voices.  It had been five weeks since the hurricane hit the area and still they had no answers.  Their question had been insurance related, but their story was more important.  It was a couple in their late seventies whose home was destroyed in the hurricane and they were now living in a FEMA trailer on their property.  The wife had chronic emphysema and the dusty environment as a result of the hurricane had only aggravated her condition.  When I asked the man if he considered moving somewhere else, somewhere a little safer, his answer at first was quite shocking to me.  He told me that he and his wife were older, that they could not get jobs in a new location and start afresh, that Mississippi was where their roots were, where they had lived their whole lives.  He told me that Mississippi was their “home.”  By the end of my trip, I was able to fully understand what “home” meant. 

Sitting at the FEMA DRC in McComb the very next day, I consistently observed two things from the hurricane victims: politeness and patience.  As a resident of Los Angeles, these are two words that I knew existed but had no idea what they meant until I went to Mississippi.  The span of my own patience usually lasts no longer than a few minutes. So, I was completely amazed at how someone could sit down in front of me after waiting at least an hour in a long line, tell me that they had lost everything in the storm, and still say “thank you” even after letting them know that I would not be able to help them today.   I think that if this type of natural disaster happened in any other state, than one where people still have manners and call you “sir” or “ma’am,” those who needed help might just jump over the table or start yelling when you told them “no” - myself included. It is this overwhelming courtesy that makes it that much more heart wrenching to not be able to solve their problems immediately.  It was at this DRC that I realized the citizens of Mississippi are going to need a lot of help for a very, very long time and will be incredibly grateful for every little piece of it.
 
The help that will be needed is greater than just monetary contributions.  It will be about taking a moment to listen to real people’s stories and trying to understand how you can connect, how you can really help.  For instance, no matter which DRC location I was at, from Hattiesburg to Purvis to Biloxi - I encountered clients who were illiterate.  The people affected were as broad as the problem.  The clients were of all ages, ethnicities and from both sexes.  It was prevalent, however, that there is a socio-economic factor – both as the cause of the illiteracy and the consequences that will be created from it.  How can someone sign an insurance settlement agreement which is meant to replace their lost personal and real property when they cannot even read their policy? Who is going to protect these people from being taken advantage of, at their most vulnerable moment?
 
While at the Hattiesburg DRC a woman and her young daughter sat in front of me asking questions about an insurance claim.  The mother received an $800 settlement check from an insurance adjuster. She honestly believed that this amount was unfair, and wanted to dispute it, but had already cashed the check, placing it in her savings account for “safekeeping.” I informed her that by endorsing the check she was agreeing to the settlement amount and must now go forward with the insurance company’s appeal process. Her young daughter, probably around ten years old, looked up to her mother and said “I’m sorry mama that must have been in a paragraph I didn’t read.” I almost cried. A ten year old is reading an insurance policy to her mother and attempting to understand its contents? I went to law school and I am not even sure what everything in the contract means. This burden should never be placed upon a small child, and I presume that this story has occurred a lot more than once.   
 
I discovered that sometimes the only help that was necessary was a basic explanation of a person’s legal rights.  People that came and sat down in front of me at these DRC’s just needed to be reassured that they were doing the right thing. For instance, I would tell someone that they should never feel forced to sign anything.  A person did not have to sign an insurance settlement agreement immediately if he did not think that it was fair.  Another woman wanted to make sure that she could call and complain about the amount the insurance adjuster offered her.  She was terrified that if she called to complain, the insurance company would not give her anything. Amazingly, sometimes all that was needed, as Jay Sushelsky, another AARP Foundation attorney, and I discovered is that the only thing these people really wanted is a sympathetic ear, someone to tell their story to and listen to their concerns.
 
In addition to questions regarding insurance claims and policies, the majority of legal questions that I came across concerned landlord-tenant issues. People wanted to know if they still needed to pay rent, even when the living conditions were not habitable (i.e., leaky roof, mold on walls, and broken windows).  For example, one woman informed me that even though she continually cleaned the walls and floors of her trailer with a solution of bleach and water, the mold kept coming back.  Most of the mold, especially in areas that are a few hours north of the gulf coast, is a direct result of the rain that came a few weeks after the hurricane (and the holes in the roofs that let the water leak in). The answer to the question concerning the payment of rent, according to Mississippi law is “yes.”  As long as you are still living in the dwelling unit, as a tenant you have the duty to pay rent.  There is always the option of terminating the lease, but this brings about an entirely new set of problems - the main one being that if you want to stay in the area, or even in the same county, there is no place else to live.  Amanda Jones, the President of the Mississippi Bar Young Lawyer’s Division, discussed with me the fact that the landlord-tenant law is effective in every situation except an emergency.  These laws do not help tenants in an emergency as severe as this one, because there is such a drastic shortage of housing.  So many of these residents are forced to choose between the option of paying rent for less than acceptable living quarters or basically become homeless.  
 
Before I came to Mississippi, the solution to this problem seemed so simple to me and others I had discussed it with. Why don’t these people move away? Perhaps to a different county, or another state? I am sure they have friends or relatives that live somewhere else.  I discovered that although this is one theory, it is way more complex than that.  First off, many of these people have very limited financial resources.   Some lost their jobs as a result of the hurricane, while others are just struggling to get by with all the additional expenses caused by the disaster.  One woman told me that after having to pay to have a tree cut off of her roof and removed, she did not have a dime left on her credit card.  It is very expensive just to relocate from one place to the next, let alone afford new housing.  Second, and most importantly, these people do not want to relocate.  The area that they live in is where their family is, this is where their children go to school, and play with friends. This is where they go to church, where people understand them, it is their “home.” 
 
This fact became even clearer to me while sitting at dinner with Jay Sushelsky and Martha Bergmark, President of the Mississippi Center for Justice.  The topic of human nature became part of our discussion.  We talked about how it is human nature in a time of great crisis to “want to go home.”  We learn this phrase even as small children.  You are having a bad day at school or at work, and all you want to do is just go home.  Why? Because as the saying goes, “home is where the heart is,” it is our place of comfort.  We are often the happiest at home.  Every person has a different definition of what they may call home, especially for those people who may have lost the actual structure of their house to the hurricane.  But, even when the physical house is missing, it is where people have their “roots” that they call home.  Ironically, like the couple on my first phone call in Jackson, the last couple I spoke to in Mississippi was in the beachfront city of Long Beach, Mississippi.  Jay and I were down there taking some photos for the AARP Bulletin.  Here, we spoke with a couple whose house had completely vanished.  It was totally gone - all that was left was a pile of debris. They were an older couple as well, and they were also now living in a trailer.  The woman told me that her grandfather had built that house, her father was born there, that all of her children were raised there and that now this was all that was left.  Even in the face of all of that devastation, she kept a positive spirit and informed me that all she wanted to do…that she could not wait to… rebuild her “home.”        
 
Martha Bergmark, who is a native Mississippian, reaffirmed this basic fact.  She explained that her closest friends who were able to get back to the place that they called “home” after the hurricane, were the most able to flourish in this time of crisis. Not those who relocated. This is because they were around their friends and family who were going through the same thing, they were back in their community. People feel better, they do better, they survive when they feel at home.  As volunteers we need to understand that for all the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi is still their home.  They want to stay in Mississippi, they are willing to work hard to stay there, and that they need our assistance to make this possible.  I believe that it is now our time to help out, to repay the generous hospitality that they have so many times already given to us.