Adaptable homes
Explore replicable approaches to adaptable housing across the life course—including modifications that can make a home safer and support home sharing as needs change.
2026 Community Challenge · Housing Choice
More options to stay in the community you love.
Giving Seniors a Voice and Southeast Uplift are turning promising housing ideas into understandable, practical pathways for aging in place and aging in community.
Why this matters now
A quieter side of Portland’s housing crisis.
Older adults are the fastest-growing segment of Portland’s homeless population. At the same time, rising housing and everyday living costs are pushing more people toward the edge of losing the homes and neighborhoods they know.
Aging with dignity requires more than one kind of solution. It calls for adaptable homes, understandable housing choices, community support, and services that work together.
A local partnership takes action
From ideas on paper to pathways people can use.
Giving Seniors a Voice joined with Alan DeLaTorre—an urban gerontologist and Senior Councilor in Tiffany Koyama Lane’s District 3 office—to pursue an AARP Community Challenge grant. With Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition, the project received funding to help Portlanders understand practical, affordable ways to remain in their homes and communities as they age.
- Grant
- $13,438
- People reached
- 4,760
- Age 50+
- 28%
- District reach
- 21Neighborhoods
Four areas of focus
More ways to age in community.
Middle housing
Make pathways to accessory dwelling units, cottage clusters, tiny homes, and other middle-housing choices easier for neighbors to understand and consider.
Small backyard homes
Share lessons from Portland design initiatives and case studies focused on sustainable, affordable backyard housing for older adults.
Services that work together
Identify better ways to align government, nonprofit, and trusted private services that help people remain safely connected to home and community.
What we are creating in 2026
Useful information—made clear, local, and shareable.
A free opportunity guide
Practical housing choices, home modifications, ADUs, home sharing, repair, weatherization, and local support resources.
A short educational video
An approximately five-minute visual guide showing how existing properties can adapt to different housing configurations under current policies.
An online resource hub
One accessible place for the guide, video, AARP Livable Communities materials, local government information, and trusted service links.
Two community conversations
A Mount Tabor pilot event followed by a wider Southeast Uplift gathering to share ideas, collect feedback, and shape next steps.
Start local. Learn together. Expand.
Mount Tabor is the pilot.
The first community event will be hosted with the Mount Tabor Neighborhood Association. What the team learns there will inform a second gathering with Southeast Uplift, the district coalition serving 21 District 3 neighborhoods.
The long-range vision is a model other district coalitions and neighborhoods can adapt—helping more Portland residents move from complex zoning language and scattered resources toward practical possibilities.
Learn while we build
Useful AARP doorways.
01
AARP Oregon
State news, events, advocacy, caregiving information, and resources for people 50+ in Oregon.
Explore resource ↗02Livable Communities
Practical tools for housing, transportation, public spaces, civic participation, and communities that work for every age.
Explore resource ↗03Missing Middle Housing
AARP resources that help communities understand smaller-scale housing choices that fit within existing neighborhoods.
Explore resource ↗04Livability Index
Explore how neighborhoods support housing, transportation, health, engagement, opportunity, and more.
Explore resource ↗Help shape what comes next
What would help you stay in the community you love?
Share the housing choices, home changes, services, or neighborhood connections that would make aging in community more possible for you and the people you care about.
This project is supported by a 2026 AARP Community Challenge grant. Senior Voices PDX is an independent community initiative.