Housing and Economic Rights Advocates

HERA is the only California statewide nonprofit law office dedicated to addressing mortgage lending, servicing, foreclosure, collections and credit problems in California, with most of our services provided in the Greater Northern California area, Central Valley area, with growing services in Southern California and with our office located in Oakland. We have a broad asset building/preservation and anti-discrimination mission. We are unusual in our combination of service strategies, engaging in 1 education of individual consumers and communities of vulnerable residents targeted for a wide variety of predatory practices not just housing related 2 legal services for individuals as well as class actions benefiting many hundreds, sometimes thousands of people at a time 3 trainings for attorneys, government staff, housing counselors, adult protective services and other professionals on how to identify and handle abuses directed towards consumers 4 research on the scope and impact of such abusive practices 5 technical assistance and support to professionals on their cases 6 community organizing on consumer issues and 7 policy work. HERA also addresses almost all other forms of household debt and credit problems including medical debt, credit card debt, student loans, and homeowner association collections activity, as well as expanding our work on wrongful credit reporting. These kinds of practices can result in residents being denied credit, paying much higher interest rates on loans, higher insurance rates, and possibly being locked out of certain kinds of jobs.