Disaster Legal Aid for Communities in Puerto Rico

Nine years after Hurricane María, we are still accompanying survivors. That sentence says a great deal about what recovery has looked like in Puerto Rico. Families are still fighting to repair their homes, secure assistance, resolve ownership problems, and remain in the communities where they have built their lives. Survivors of hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and other disasters continue to carry consequences that do not disappear when the emergency end or when the rest of the world stops paying attention. 

For Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, just recovery has never meant simply rebuilding what was destroyed. It means making sure people have the resources, rights, and power to decide what recovery looks like for their families and communities. It means fighting displacement. It means protecting the right to stay. And it means refusing to accept a recovery that leaves behind those who were already most vulnerable.

Puerto Rico is experiencing the undeniable consequences of a changing climate while our basic systems are increasingly fragile. Communities face water insecurity, an unreliable electrical system, rising costs, and public institutions that struggle to respond to everyday needs, much less another major disaster We cannot tell people to prepare for the next hurricane while ignoring the conditions they are being asked to survive every day.

That is why our disaster legal aid work goes beyond individual cases. What survivors teach us through legal accompaniment becomes part of our advocacy. We are fighting for access to disaster and public assistance, housing protections, responsible land-use and permitting decisions, stronger essential services, meaningful community participation, and public institutions capable of protecting people when crisis comes.

This September, these struggles will come together at our seventh Just Recovery Summit. Nearly a decade after María, communities and advocates will ask a fundamental question: Recovery for whom? Because decisions being made today—about housing, water, energy, public assistance, planning, infrastructure, and development—will determine who can survive the next emergency, who will be able to recover, and ultimately, who gets to remain in Puerto Rico. We still believe another recovery is possible. We believe it because communities across Puerto Rico continue organizing, resisting displacement, caring for one another, and demanding better.

Your donation helps us stay in this fight. It allows us to accompany survivors long after disasters disappear from the headlines and to turn their experiences into advocacy for lasting change.

Support our work today. Help us defend the right to recover, the right to remain, and a just recovery built by and for our communities.