Legal Collective Update

The legal collective currently has numerous projects on the go.

HUD Lawsuit
The Common Ground Legal Collective supports the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The lawsuit charges that HUD is discriminating against low-income black residents by refusing to reopen housing units undamaged by Hurricane Katrina, failing to repair other units and planning to destroy most of the public housing available in New Orleans without plans to replace them. The suit also declares that HUD is violating the rights of public-housing residents by evicting them despite their legal and valid leases, and of violating international law guaranteeing the right of displaced people to return home.
Currently Common Ground has just finished compiling a database of former public housing residents, documenting whether they want to come home. HUD’s records show that only 60% of public housing evacuees want to come back to New Orleans while Common Ground’s data shows that 90% of evacuees want to come home.

Road Home Package
The legal collective is compiling a guide for residents that are Road Home applicants to consult while in the process of getting compensation.

Know Your Rights Handout
The collective is creating a “Know your rights in a courtroom” leaflet for the community to raise awareness of citizen’s rights.

Verifying HANO’s list of available subsidized housing
Volunteers are currently compiling a database from a 900+ list published by the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO). Volunteers are checking availability and conditions to determine what is truly available and liveable.

Supporting the Worker’s Justice Coalition
Supporting the www.neworleansworkerjustice.org , an organization that advocates for and organizes with migrant workers. The collective is researching companies that have been reported as taking advantage of and exploiting migrant labour.

Legal Clinic
The legal clinic, which runs on Saturdays between 12pm-3pm, continues to be extremely busy, assisting an average of 12 people per session. They have helped an estimated 300 people with legal advice, advocacy, representation, appeals and a wide variety of legal issues.

Volunteers
The legal collective welcomes groups of law students to volunteer with them. Georgetown University and American University are the current groups of law students volunteering with the Common Ground Legal Collective.