11 The Mintz Levin 2008 Pro Bono Report Almost four years have passed since hurricane gales destroyed or damaged much of the housing on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Thousands of families–—many of them low-income –—are still without permanent housing and many others yet struggle to rebuild their homes. For these Gulf Coast residents, the help promised by the government has failed to materialize or has fallen short of the promised relief. Dorothy McClendon, for one, saw her Gulfport home ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Disabled and poor, Ms. McClendon was living in a FEMA trailer not equipped for her disability. She faced losing that trailer, even though her home remained uninhabitable. Rangisma Dilworth moved from one temporary living arrangement to another after Katrina destroyed her apartment complex. Together with eight other family members, she stayed temporarily in her daughter’s home, unable to find affordable permanent housing in Biloxi. Despite the nearly $5.5 billion in federal disaster relief funds that Mississippi has received, Ms. McClendon, Ms. Dilworth and many others like them remain in need, caught between Katrina and unresponsive governments. When Mississippi decided to divert nearly $600 million of the remaining Katrina recovery funds to redevelop and expand the commercial port in Gulfport, Mintz Levin, working with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Mississippi Center for Justice, took on a major piece of litigation to stop it. Brought on behalf on the Mississippi NAACP, the Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center, Ms. McClendon, Ms. Dilworth and two other individual plaintiffs, the suit charges that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Devel- opment (HUD) approved Mississippi’s plan without conducting the review required by law. Community Development Block Grants, such as those Congress allotted to Mississippi, must Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Mississippi Center for Justice be used to further fair housing; at least 50% of the funds must benefit low-to-moderate-income households. Yet, again and again, Mississippi has received waivers of this requirement from HUD, so that as little as 20% of relief dollars have been allocated for those purposes. The suit, filed against HUD in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks to enjoin HUD from approving the use of these funds for the port expansion project. The Mintz Levin team working on the HUD suit includes Martha Koster, Larry Schoen, Jim Wodarski, Andy Nathanson, Noah Shaw, Yalonda Howze and Amanda Carozza. The suit is the latest Mintz Levin effort since Hurricane Katrina to assist the indigent citizens of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Over the past four years, Mintz Levin lawyers, partnering with the Mississippi Center for Justice and Mississippi Legal Services, have represented homeowners facing foreclosure, as well as individuals and non-profits seeking FEMA relief. They have also drafted model pleadings to help low-income renters and helped to write a resource guide for disaster laws, distributed nationwide. Today, Hemanth Gundavaram continues to work with Mississippi homeowners threatened with loss of their homes. And in fall 2008, in a hopeful sign for recovery in Biloxi, the Moore Community House, assisted by Helen Guyton to reverse a denial of FEMA relief, finally got a building permit to begin construction on a new child development center.