ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
It's been a couple of months since heavy rains flooded Baton Rouge, leaving a swath of southern Louisiana under water. More than 150,000 individuals and families have registered for disaster assistance with FEMA.
While the water has subsided, some of the ripples from the disaster are only becoming apparent now. Many of those problems involve legal disputes with landlords, contractors or receiving government assistance. Laura Tuggle is executive director of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services and joins us now. Welcome.
LAURA TUGGLE: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: What are some of the specific problems that you have seen since the flood?
TUGGLE: Really a wide variety of problems. One thing that a lot of people don't realize is the importance of civil legal aid to disaster recovery. So we like to say, first the boot's on the ground, and then the suit's on the ground.
And the kind of things that we see in the immediate aftermath - landlord-tenant disputes, evictions. We see property owners that are having trouble getting approved for FEMA benefits or other recovery benefits because they have unresolved family heir property issues. And we're already beginning to see contractor disputes even this early on after the recovery.
SHAPIRO: Tell me about the landlord-tenant disputes. I can imagine while people are repairing their homes, rental properties are in high demand. That must drive up rates, and are people just getting evicted because they can't afford the higher rent. Or what's going on?
TUGGLE: Sometimes we have no-cause evictions in the state of Louisiana after the...
SHAPIRO: So you can get evicted for no reason.
TUGGLE: ...After the original term of your lease is over. And so many people, especially lower-income people, may be on a month-to-month lease, or maybe they never even had a written lease. So when disaster strikes, even if your home wasn't flooded, when the market becomes at a premium, you're probably going to be served with an eviction notice.
SHAPIRO: You said you're seeing problems involving home ownership questions and who the heir might be. Explain what that is.
TUGGLE: When somebody passes away, a lot of families just informally leave property to the rest of their family members without legally going to court to have it determined who is placed into possession. But whenever there's a flood or a hurricane, post-disaster, having that clear title is usually an eligibility threshold requirement for FEMA assistance and...
SHAPIRO: So if you can't prove that you legally own the house, you might not be able to get the federal funds necessary to repair the house.
TUGGLE: Right. It always takes a non-lawyer to make it make sense to regular people.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) When I was in Baton Rouge just after the flood, I saw a lot of homemade signs for contractors. There were whole neighborhoods that were gutted. What kinds of problems are people having with the contractors that they've hired to work on their houses?
TUGGLE: Well, the sad news is that we're already getting a number of calls from folks that have hired someone, and that particular contractor may have taken on too much work and just isn't getting back to them quickly enough. We've also had complaints from folks that have hired a contractor and given them whatever funds they've managed to scrape together, and the contractor is just not doing the work or is bringing shoddy materials. And so it's really going to run the gamut.
SHAPIRO: Your organization has been around for years. You're also active in New Orleans. Is there a lesson from the experience post-Katrina that you think applies to the experience now in Baton Rouge these 11 years later?
TUGGLE: People that are helping with the longer-term disaster recovery really realize that this is going to take a long time. This is not going to be a one-year recovery or a two-year recovery. This is going to be quite a long time, which is a difficult message for people to hear because everybody wants to recover right away. People are realizing what a long-term recovery this is going to be, and it's going to be really expensive.
SHAPIRO: Laura Tuggle is executive director of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. Thanks for joining us.
TUGGLE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.