Board Spotlight: Meet Ainsley Chapman
Ainsley Chapman runs Evangel Hall Mission, a housing and homelessness organization in downtown Toronto. She has spent more than a decade in Canada's nonprofit housing sector, and she sits on Rooftops Canada's board.
We asked her what draws her to Rooftops Canada’s work — and why Canadians should care about housing challenges and solutions around the world.
Can you tell us a little about yourself and your professional background?
I’ve spent my entire career in the nonprofit sector. For the past 11 years, I’ve worked specifically in housing and homelessness, and I’m currently the Executive Director of Evangel Hall Mission, a housing and homelessness agency in downtown Toronto.
Housing is a major part of both my professional and volunteer life. I also serve on a number of boards of directors. Outside of work, I do a lot of cycling and advocate for active transportation and better cycling infrastructure. I’m also the mother of two teenage girls.
What does Rooftops Canada’s mission mean to you personally, and what inspired you to join the Board?
I was especially inspired by Rooftops Canada’s work on women’s land and housing rights.
When I look at how difficult it can be to navigate housing in Toronto, both as someone working in the homelessness sector and as a parent of two teenage daughters, I see how devastating it is to be without a home or to live with precarious housing.
Like every parent, I want my daughters to grow up in a world that is better than the one I grew up in, with more opportunities and fewer barriers. Then I think about women around the world who are still struggling for something as basic as access to land and housing rights. As a woman, a mother, and a feminist, that connection is very powerful for me. Rooftops Canada’s work is not simply a short-term or “band-aid” response. It is challenging and changing the systems that create inequality.
What excites me is that the work goes beyond supporting women, building capacity, or giving people tools. It is about changing the fundamental systems of oppression that prevent women from accessing land, housing, and security. That is what creates long-term, sustainable change.
Why should Canadians care about Rooftops Canada’s international work?
In Canada, we are facing our own systems of oppression and major inequalities in access to housing and housing security. Those struggles are very real, and I will never stop fighting for greater social and economic equality here.
At the same time, when we look at what is happening internationally, the circumstances facing many women are devastating. Women may be unable to own land or may become homeless or vulnerable to exploitation simply because a husband dies or a marriage ends.
For someone to lose their housing security for no reason other than being a woman is deeply unjust.
For me, supporting Rooftops Canada is one way to use the privilege I have as a Canadian to help create systemic change. Many of us benefit from access to education, employment, legal rights, and other forms of security. That gives us a responsibility to support programs and movements that are changing lives internationally.
We can continue challenging injustice in Canada while also using the resources and opportunities we have to stand with people in other countries who are fighting for the same basic rights.
What are you most hopeful about for the future of housing in Canada and globally?
I think we are beginning to shift our understanding of what housing is and what it can be.
More people are starting to challenge the way housing has been treated as a commodity. There is a growing awareness of what happens when housing is driven primarily by profit and of how that affects people’s ability to access something as basic as a clean, safe home.
My hope is that this awareness translates into action. I hope we begin pulling housing away from a system that treats it primarily as an investment and instead begin treating housing as a right.
That shift is needed both in Canada and internationally.
What message would you like to share with Rooftops Canada’s supporters?
I think Rooftops Canada has been flying under the radar for a long time.
The organization and its partners have done incredibly powerful work, not only changing individual lives, but also challenging and changing the structural systems of oppression that affect access to land and housing.
We have an opportunity to be much prouder and more vocal about what we are accomplishing. This is work that we are all doing together.
Rooftops Canada cannot create this impact through one government grant or one source of support. The work is possible because of a growing groundswell of people who are contributing in different ways, whether through donations, volunteering, sharing information, or helping others understand what is happening internationally.
We are more than a collection of strong projects. We are part of a powerful and growing movement for housing justice.
I am incredibly excited to be part of it, and I hope everyone who supports Rooftops Canada feels that same sense of pride and excitement.