About

Housing, Consumer & Energy Project

The Housing, Consumer and Energy Project works to preserve homeownership, improve access to safe and affordable housing, and protect tenants and homeowners from harmful practices and scams. The Project is also dedicated to protecting North Carolina’s consumers from abusive business practices.

OUR GOALS

Reduce the loss of homes to foreclosures and unfair practices, and end predatory mortgage lending

Create an adequate supply of safe, decent, and affordable housing

Increase, maintain, and enforce protections and rights for tenants

Ensure protections are in place to prevent usurious loans and unfair or deceptive practices by banks, consumer finance companies, and fintech companies, and stop payday lenders from returning to North Carolina

Litigate cases that enforce North Carolina’s existing consumer protections

Create affordable access to utilities, transportation, and energy efficient homes and other services

LEGISLATIVE ADVOCACY

Over the past thirty years, we have helped to ensure North Carolina has some of the best consumer protections in the nation; our advocacy efforts on housing are so widely known and respected that there is a statewide award that bears our former director of advocacy’s name. We work on consumer issues such as:

Financial Consumer Protections

Homeowner Rights and Protections

Tenants’ Rights and Protections

Access to Affordable Housing

Access to Transit and Essential Services

Energy Efficiency

LEGAL WORK

We pursue high-impact cases that seek to protect and expand the rights of consumers, tenants, and homeowners. We have litigated many landmark class action cases, which have resulted in the recovery of millions of dollars for North Carolinians and the extension of important rights. We also help persons with low incomes preserve their homeownership and live in healthy communities by defending against the loss of their homes due to foreclosure, scams, and other threats. Highlights of our work can be found on our “Litigation Successes” page.