provided by the private bar was most valuable. Most of the cases were successfully concluded and resulted in settlement of their claim, or satisfactory resolution of their problem. A few of these cases are still pending.

In addition to the services provided by the organized bar in accepting referral of cases, the Bar Association undertook to man and did man additional outreach centers in three target areas in Corpus Christi. This effort was initiated by a member of the Legal Aid Society's Board in cooperation with the President of the Bar Association. Our secretarial staff was engaged in recruiting private attorneys to staff these various centers. They set up a schedule for each center, and thereafter reminded the scheduled lawyer the day prior to his commitment to staff such center. Apparently his activity was premature, or there was a break down in communications with the residence of the target area, because the number of people to use this service was disappointing and it was discontinued after about a ten-day trial.

During the period from August 3, 1970 through December, 1970, our program opened approximately 846 files which involved hurricane related matters. Since the first of the year we continue to have clients referred to us daily by the Small Business Administration. These SBA matters appear to be increasing, we have had a total of 265 since January 1, 1971. During the first two weeks in May, we have had 81 of these referrals. An explanation of this increase may be found in the fact that for a period of several months from December through January the SBA was out of money and it was delaying the closing of any loans. In February they began again to close disaster loans, and the demands made on our program by SBA lenders has been increasing. Graph III would tend to reflect this increase in traffic at the central office.

Much more could be said about what our program contributed in the way of a resource, not only to the victims of the hurricane who were poor, but to those who were in need of counseling at a very difficult time. In the interest of time I will conclude by saying, that ours was the first Federally Funded Legal Service Program which was in being and located at the site of the disaster. Because we were there, we provided the nucleus around which the legal services effort for the hurricane victims was organized. I am satisfied that OEP, the Red Cross, SBA HEW, HUD, and all the other agencies concerned with administering to the needs of the victims of hurricane Cecilia, will bear witness to the fact that their job was made a little easier because of our presence.

It is hoped that the performance of our program following this disaster will provide one more reason why the Legal Service Program should be continued. Thank you for letting me make this presentation. If you have any questions, I will be more than happy to try to answer them.

TOTAL APPLICATIONS FOR LEGAL SERVICES JUL 1966 THRU FEB 19717 AS SHOWN BY MIS REPORTS

1970

71

Mr. FORD. We invite all of you gentlemen, including Mr. Shireman, to proceed with your statements, supplemented by whatever you have to say to us.

Mr. SHIREMAN. Well, gentlemen, as the statement reflects, I am the Director of a Legal Services program that is modestly federally funded, located in a medium metropolitan area of south Texas, and I might comment that we are the hometown and county seat of Representative Young. John Young is our Congressman, and from the standpoint of disclaimers, I think I should disclaim that if this is lobbying, then I am here representing myself as an individual, and not the Legal Aid Society, because I don't want to create any problems for the society with the Internal Revenue.

If I can contribute anything to you gentlemen-and I understand you have before you at present four pieces of legislation that at least involve, in some way, legal services, two of them having to do with extending the Economic Opportunity Act, and the other two pieces of legislation that were discussed this morning, H.R. 6360 and H.R. 8163. I'm not here to take a position one way or another on any of these pieces of legislation, but I thought it might be of some relevance and value for you to talk to the director of a program who has an inordinately large caseload and learn how we have tried to manage the Government's money and tried, at least in some summary way, I guess, to provide legal services. For that reason, I want to talk to you a little bit about that, and then I think it would have relevance to you to understand what a federally funded legal services program means if it exists when a natural disaster strikes an area, because this is the experience of the Nueces County Legal Aid Society. We were in existence on August 3 of last year when Hurricane Cecilia made its landfall in Corpus Christi, and we very promptly became a disaster area. So I'm going to direct my remarks first to an overall view of our program, and then to what we did generally to meet the requirements for legal services during the disaster.

Our function encompasses all of Nueces County and the county population-I believe it is about 284,832 under the 1970 census. We have 204.525 of those citizens situated in our county seat, Corpus Christi. We have, according to the poverty community statistics, 40,356 families living within the target area. The population of that target area is about 89,100 people, so that Nueces County-and I think some other statistics say that we are one of the poorer counties in the United States. We have at least 30 percent of our population living in the target area in the poverty community. Our problem from the minority standpoint is that there are more Latin Americans, MexicanAmericans than Negroes. I would say that 43 percent or 44 percent of our population is Mexican-American and about 7 percent is black, and the balance are white Anglos, of which some are poor, too.

We have been in existence since 1966-and I, in the presentation, will give you some figures as to what has been contributed by the Federal Government to our program from the period September 1, 1967, through April of this year. There was a little more appropriated, but we have actually spent about $188,000 over that length of time, and for that you have had-the Federal Government has had and the people of Corpus Christi and Nueces County have had, during most