The North Carolina Tenants Union launched in April 2024, six months before Hurricane Helene flooded Asheville. Jen Hampton, who coordinates housing organizing for Just Economics of Western North Carolina, spent that spring doing door-to-door outreach in apartment buildings across the city. Knocking on doors. Asking about rent increases, about repairs landlords refused to make, about eviction threats.
She knew they'd need collective power before the next crisis. She didn't know it would come so soon.
By October 13, two weeks after the storm knocked out water and power, Hampton stood outside the Buncombe County courthouse with fifty other residents. Eviction proceedings were scheduled to resume. Thousands of people were still displaced. The water wasn't safe to drink. Their signs read "No evictions in a disaster."
"It's really bleak, and I'm really scared. I just don't know what Asheville is going to look like by spring."
She wasn't scared of another storm. She was scared of the rents.
The Work That Builds Power
Before Helene, almost half of renters in Buncombe County spent at least a third of their income on housing. Hampton, who'd recently moved out of public housing herself, watched landlords refuse rent assistance with no consequences. Watched tenants try to fight evictions alone and lose. North Carolina has no rent control, no just cause eviction laws, no requirement that landlords accept federal vouchers.
"Landlords and property owners are very organized at the state level and even at the national level to keep us from gaining rights that we could have."
Her logic: get organized too, while there's time.
The WNC Tenants Network spent spring and summer building tenant associations in individual buildings. Meetings in apartment lobbies. Connecting people who thought they were alone. Teaching tenants their limited rights under North Carolina law. Nick MacLeod, executive director of the NC Tenants Union, put it simply: "Almost always, when a tenant tries to fight their landlords on their own, they lose."
Organized tenants have leverage. The ability to coordinate. To negotiate collectively. To force landlords to respond.
In Winston-Salem, tenants at Crystal Towers public housing spent years organizing and won $30 million in repairs after stopping the housing authority from selling their building. That's what Hampton was building toward: sustained organizing that changes conditions rather than just helping individuals navigate an unjust system.
Helene damaged over 126,000 homes across the region.
What Happened After
Water stayed unsafe for nearly two months. Twelve thousand people filed for unemployment. Renters discovered a legal reality that shocked even those who'd been organizing: in North Carolina, you can't withhold rent even if your apartment is unlivable.
Eviction rates nearly double in affected counties in the two years after extreme weather, while rent prices jump 4 to 6 percent immediately.
The courthouse protest made news, but behind it, organizers were doing slower work. Demanding a 90-day eviction moratorium. Calling on state officials for rent relief—even though the city itself lacked authority to pause evictions. Building tenant associations in buildings where organized renters could negotiate directly with landlords. Documenting violations that individual tenants couldn't fight alone.
Hampton knows what the research shows. Some researchers predict Helene might accelerate climate migration to Asheville, with developers buying damaged properties cheaply to redevelop into denser, more expensive housing.
She's working against that timeline. Pushing for rent control and just cause eviction protections at the state level—fights that will take years. Organizing enough buildings that landlords have to negotiate. Building infrastructure that will matter when the next storm hits.
Because the next storm will hit. Recent analysis found that parts of the region could experience a once-in-100-year flood every 11 to 25 years now.
The Bet on Collective Action
Hampton's choice to organize rather than just help individual tenants comes from watching individual approaches fail. A tenant with mold can complain—the landlord doesn't have to fix it. A tenant facing eviction can show up to court—without a lawyer and with North Carolina's tenant-hostile laws, they'll probably lose. A tenant can search for a better apartment—but if the whole market is broken, individual mobility doesn't solve anything.
"Just because you're poor and living in public housing doesn't mean you deserve to live with a lack of dignity and respect."
She's talking about broken heating and water damage. But she's also talking about who gets to decide what happens to a city as climate change reshapes where people can live.
Organizing is slower. It requires convincing exhausted people that collective action is worth the risk. Building power that might take years to translate into wins. Fighting at the state level against organized landlord lobbies.
But it addresses the actual problem: renters have no power in a system designed around property ownership.
By spring, Hampton expects the full scale of displacement to be visible. Some people will have left. Others doubled up in overcrowded apartments. The rental market even tighter. But she also expects the union to be stronger. More members. More buildings organized. More tenants who understand they have more power together than alone.
Hampton's betting that collective action now can change what the next storm looks like. Not the weather—what happens after.