This paper describes and discusses community-driven land tenure initiatives to address the issue of access to land in urban areas in the Philippines. This includes countering actual and threatened displacements from market-driven land, housing and urban development policies, mega-infrastructure development and disasters. The paper begins with a review of the relevant Philippines land and housing policies and their implications. It then describes the experience of the Homeless People’s Federation of the Philippines with three different land acquisition strategies (direct negotiated purchase, the Community Mortgage Programme, and usufruct schemes) in responding to the need for land and housing and to threats of, or actual, displacements.