California · 501(c)(3)
Make it legal to build. Protect the homeowner.
California needs more housing, and the families building it need more protection. We help cities legalize the right kinds of homes, and we help homeowners when a contractor breaks their trust.
Make it legal to build.
Movable tiny homes, modular and manufactured housing meet ordinances written before they existed, and even legal housing like ADUs lacks the guardrails to keep it safe. We help cities close that gap.
Protect the homeowner.
Fraud gets charged one family at a time, which is most of why it isn't. We aggregate losses across counties into a pattern investigators can act on.
Which one are you?
I'm a homeowner
I'm a sub or supplier
I work in government
Research & publications
All publications →Where the work shows up: short posts, findings, and analysis, added regularly.
Analysis · July 2026
Enforcement outcomes in California contractor licensing complaints
What happens to a complaint after it is filed, how often it results in action, and where the process loses people along the way.
Findings · June 2026
A small number of operators, a large share of the harm
Concentration analysis across documented cases, and what it implies for how agencies prioritize.
Documentation · May 2026
Documented losses across nine California counties
Aggregate totals, methodology, and the limits of what county-level counts can and cannot show.
Who we are
Roof Over My Heart works on both ends of the same problem. California has spent years making it easier to bring new kinds of housing to market (movable tiny homes, modular and manufactured construction), but the protections that kind of building requires haven't kept pace. And where a housing type is already legal, like accessory dwelling units, the guardrails around financing, quality, and consumer protection still lag behind. The new housing isn't going up through developers with lenders and lawyers. It's families spending their own equity, with no one standing between them and the contractor.
We know that gap firsthand. Our founder was defrauded by a contractor, and only afterward discovered how many other families the same contractor had harmed. By then her own case was over, but learning how many others were caught in the same pattern is what turned a private hardship into this organization.
Andrea Montano
Founder & Executive Director
"I learned how the system works the hard way. No family should have to."
So we work both ends. Upstream, we help cities and counties write the rules and standards that let this housing be built legally, with the safeguards a major project normally comes with. Downstream, we help the homeowners and workers who were cheated anyway, and we document the patterns that help agencies stop the people doing it. When housing is legal and protected, it's far harder to steal from, however a family chooses to pay. That's why one organization does both.
How we work: the C.A.R.E. approach →
Support this work
Roof Over My Heart is a registered 501(c)(3). Contributions are tax-deductible. There's more than one way to help.