ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Ill. – Free legal help is available to individuals in St. Clair County who were impacted by the July 25-28 floods. Lawyers can answer questions and address concerns about FEMA benefits, home repair contracts, property insurance claims, landlord or tenant problems, disability-related access to assistance, and more.
A hotline is available to connect survivors to free legal services who cannot afford an attorney. Survivors can call 877-342-7891.
Low-income people impacted by the disaster may qualify for free legal help with issues like:
- FEMA and SBA financial benefits
- Home repair contracts and property insurance claims
- Re-doing wills and other important legal documents destroyed in the disaster
- Price gouging, scams, or identity theft
- Landlord or tenant problems, or threats of foreclosure
- Disability-related access to federal, state, and local disaster programs
Survivors can call the hotline at 877-342-7891 during the following times:
- Monday – Thursday 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
- Friday 9:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
The Disaster Legal Services (DLS) program works with state and local partners to provide free legal help for low-income disaster survivors. The service is a partnership between the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division and FEMA. The Land of Lincoln Legal Aid will be providing support.
Disaster recovery assistance is available without regard to race, color, religion, nationality, sex, age, disability, English proficiency, or economic status. If you or someone you know has been discriminated against, call FEMA toll-free at 833-285-7448. If you use a relay service, such as video relay service (VRS), captioned telephone service or others, give FEMA the number for that service. Multilingual operators are available (press 2 for Spanish and 3 for other languages).
For disaster updates from FEMA, follow @FEMAregion5 on Twitter, and turn on mobile notifications. Visit the disaster webpage at fema.gov/disaster/4676.
For disaster updates from the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA), follow @ReadyIllinois on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and turn on mobile notifications. http://www.illinois.gov/iema/ continues to be a go-to, single source to help Illinois residents easily find information and disaster-related resources.
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FEMA’s mission is helping people before, during, and after disasters.