Students will help low-income disaster victims in the Rio Grande Valley and Gulf Coast protect their newly-reconstructed housing by drafting wills and applying for homestead property tax exemptions. Families who have been successful in accessing government assistance to construct new homes face significant rises in taxes that will make holding onto these new assets extremely difficult if they are not successful in qualifying for various levels of tax exemption this year. And without wills, their titles will become clouded by intestate succession, placing these hard-won assets in jeopardy of deterioration and future abandonment.
In this phase of the project, students will be briefly trained on the general benefits of estate planning and of obtaining homestead exemptions and will then telephone hundreds of eligible families to explain these benefits. Because families have waited more than five years to access government relief to rebuild uninhabitable homes, and are somewhat mistrustful of unknown callers offering assistance, students will be trained on how to persuade callers to stay on the line and how to build trust through careful and persistent communication.
Organization
Texas Title Project
The Texas Title Project assists low-income victims of Hurricanes Ike and Dolly in clearing title to their properties to achieve relocation and/or rebuild. The Project is funded by the General Land Office and is based in the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law.
Project Details
- Project Start Date
- November 5, 2014
- Approximate hours of work requested
- Students should expect to spend three hours at the evening clinic (dinner provided) and then follow up with assigned clients for the next week; this may require 3-8 additional hours over the week following the training, performed at times consistent with students’ schedules but mostly in the early evenings.
- Training
- Students will be trained during the work session on November 5, 5:30pm–8:30pm.
- Skills used
- Community education/outreach; oral communication skills
- Project location
- The November 5 work session will be in TNH 2.124; for post-clinic follow up, students will work off-site at location of their choice
- Address
- 727 East Dean Keeton, Austin, TX 78703
- Number of student volunteers requested
- 50
- Class year preference
- 1L, 2L, 3L, LLM
- Required skills
- Spanish highly valued but not necessary; students who speak Spanish will receive preference for up to 30 of 50 volunteer slots
- To Apply
- Submit email stating interest and detailing language skills to Prof. Lucy Wood at lwood@law.utexas.edu