About Rooftop

Who We Are

Rooftop is a nonprofit organization which partners with local interfaith congregations to provide emergency rental or mortgage assistance to individuals and families in Davidson County in order to provide housing stability, prevent homelessness and provide hope.

How It All Began…

In the fall of 2005, many congregations in the Nashville area began noticing a significant increase in the number of rental assistance requests from people outside the congregation. Congregations called The United Way’s help line to find out what resources were available for rental assistance and learned that the few agencies that offered assistance were running low on available funds. These agencies were suggesting that those in need of rental assistance call local congregations for help. In an effort to meet this challenge, representatives from 15 congregations met in January 2006 and decided to pool their funds to help those needing rental assistance and established Rooftop.

Due to the large list of people needing rental assistance, Rooftop joined with Metro Social Services to do the initial screening of clients. A trained psychiatric nurse who had worked with the homeless was employed for 10 hours per week to evaluate the clients after the Metro Social Services social worker did the initial screening.

Rooftop received its 501(c)(3) status from the Internal Revenue Service on July 27, 2006. The organization is chartered under the laws of the state of Tennessee and is governed by a board of directors.