Housing insecurity is rising worldwide. Rooftops Canada partners with Canada’s co-op and social housing movement and sector allies to address this crisis head-on – defending rights, protecting families, and ensuring that everyone has a secure place to live in peace and dignity.  

For more than 40 years, we’ve worked with local partners in over 38 countries to defend housing rights, secure land and housing for families, train paralegals, and shape laws and policies that protect women’s equal access to housing. Grounded in international human rights and co-operative housing principles, we prevent displacement and support inclusive, community-led approaches to land and housing tenure security and local economic development.

What we do:  

Women’s Spaces: Implementing Equal Rights to Land, Housing and Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa is a five-year (2022-2027) project, co-funded by Rooftops Canada and its donors and the Government of Canada, that aims to enhance the implementation of women’s equal rights to and control over land, housing and livelihoods in urban environments in Angola, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.  

• Supporting over 4,000 households (20,700) people living in urban informal settlements with secure land and housing tenure, resources for urban agriculture, improved food security, and paralegal support.  

• 47% of supported households are female-led. 

• An additional 24,970 households (109, 860) are indirectly benefiting from improved knowledge, gender-equal national and local policy environments, and access to well-trained local authorities, civil society organizations, and other supports to secure their land, housing and livelihood rights.