After years of caution, the senior living sector is showing signs of promise. Members of Environments for Aging’s Editorial Advisory Board recently held a virtual round table to share what they’ve seen so far in 2026 and what’s on their radars for next year.
For starters, many report that the pace of new development has picked up sharply in recent months: Requests for proposals (RFPs) are arriving steadily as clients no longer want to wait out market uncertainty.
But as the industry gains momentum, these designers and operators say more development doesn’t mean building the same way. Workforce shortages are pushing project teams to rethink space planning, converting underused amenity spaces into more profitable and desirable resources for residents and staff.
At the same time, construction and supply chain pressures are mounting, adding another layer of complexity to the planning, design, and construction of senior living environments. Together, these shifts point to an industry recalibrating in real time. Read on for more insights.
A surge in new senior living development
During the Environments for Aging Conference + Expo this spring in Phoenix, EFA’s editorial advisory board noted some movement toward smaller ground-up projects, while renovation and expansion represented much of the work in senior living.
Fast-forward to the fall and board members say they’re seeing a marked uptick in activity across non-profit and for-profit organizations. “I’m seeing a big jump in confidence toward new development, especially within the last couple months,” says Lisa Warnock, principal and founder of Glow Interior Designs (Portland, Ore.). “Despite all the challenges, we’re getting RFPs constantly right now … both in the continuing care retirement community (CCRC) space and in the for-profit developer space.”
Dean Maddalena, founder and president of Studio Six5 (Austin, Texas) agrees, adding, “It’s like a light switch went on.” He says clients have been in a wait-and-see mode for the perfect conditions to move forward on projects as their resident waiting lists continued to grow. But now, “they’ve decided that it’s going to cost more money to wait than to proceed,” he adds.
Philippe Saad, principal at DiMella Shaffer (Boston), says he’s seeing similar activity in the Northeast, with more expansion projects moving forward, particularly with nonprofit CCRCs. “I think the occupancies are high, and that’s what is making people say we can’t wait anymore,” he says. “We’re also noticing that there’s a very large amount of healthcare repositioning that needs to happen with the independent living expansion. So usually these are complex and larger projects that are actually happening.”
Reflecting from the operator side, Laura Busalacchi, senior director of interior services at Brookdale Senior Living (Milwaukee), says that as organizations start to see their competitors put money into projects or move forward on expansions or repositioning, “everybody starts doing the same thing,” she says. “Everybody slowed down at the same time. Everybody’s speeding up at the same time.”
At Brookdale, the organization had an influx of capital this year for renovation projects, which it hasn’t done since almost before COVID, as well as more reposition work, she adds.
Senior living sector has more room for growth
Citing data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Maggie Calkins, board chair and senior researcher at the Ideas Institute (Cleveland), says the industry has room to grow. She points to applications for new skilled nursing licenses in Ohio as an example: the state received 151 applications from skilled nursing homes between 2000 and 2009, 282 between 2010 and 2019, and 22 since 2020. “Based on what I’m hearing, I’d expect some uptick in that,” Calkins says.
Warnock says that she’s noticing activity from all sides of the industry, with institutional investment happening on the for-profit developer side at a significantly increased rate, as well as on the not-for-profit side, where aggressive development strategies are being rolled out. “It just seems like there’s a lot more institutional financing that must be coming in,” she notes.
As the pressure to deliver new projects builds, leaders say they’re seeing a desire for new solutions. After several decades working on intergenerational living projects with universities, Jane Rohde, principal at JSR Associates (Ellicott City, Md.), says her firm is being approached by campuses who are now interested in learning more about the model, which brings together residents across multiple generations. “I think we’re finally at this nexus where people are like, ‘We need a new solution and we need it now,’” she says. “That may be reflected in some of the campuses you’re seeing or the introduction of intergenerational programming on campuses.”
Intensifying construction and supply chain pressures
As project work begins to take off, several clients have flagged growing concerns in the construction and vendor landscape as some of the biggest challenges they’re facing. Mitch Elliott, principal at RDG (Omaha, Neb.), says some longtime senior living contractors are shifting focus to data center and industrial construction. This is also resulting in fewer qualified subcontractors available for senior living projects. “We’ve recently had a couple projects bid where the construction manager really struggled to get sub coverage because of how thinly spread a lot of these construction companies are across competing markets,” he says.
Maddalena notes there has been added burden in vetting vendors after several major suppliers went out of business in recent years. Others share that they’re managing increased lead time needed for certain products such as furniture. “It’s really had an impact,” Maddalena says.
Additionally, Saad says a scarcity of products made in the U.S. is impacting affordable housing projects, which require domestically made materials that are compliant with the Build America Buy America Act. As a result, those projects are facing longer lead times for materials and supplies due. “There’s a premium to pay now for locally made products because affordable housing requires them,” he says, adding that project teams need a strong contractor partner who knows the market to be able to navigate and secure materials to meet schedules.
Focus on flexibility with amenity spaces
When asked how planning and design discussions have evolved in 2026, several board members say more clients are looking to reimagine amenity spaces for flexibility and shared use to improve operations as well as address ongoing staffing challenges. “We always challenge our designers and clients to plan spaces that serve at least three functions, rather than creating three separate spaces dedicated to a single purpose each,” Maddalena says.
Saad echoed this idea, noting clients’ growing awareness of the balance between income-generating and non-income-generating spaces, sometimes leading communities to open amenities like dining venues and fitness centers to the public. “It’s no longer build, build, build amenities,” he says. “It’s about building the right amenities and the right balance of non-income generating spaces versus income generating. So there’s this additional economic level of awareness, which is fantastic. Whether they [communities] are wealthy or not, they don’t want to just put oversized amenities for the sake of it.”
Lori Hiatt, environmental gerontologist at ImprovAging (New York), says some of her clients, including those on the nonprofit side, are doing analysis of underused spaces to decide best uses. For example, a client in Atlanta decided to turn an unpopular library space into a 24-hour memory enhancement neighborhood, “so that a spouse or someone in independent living, who’s either restless or wants to be up, can get into a different place,” she says.
In other cases, Hiatt is seeing multipurpose rooms reorganized into adult day programs for family members in the community or daycare spaces for staff who need help with childcare during their shifts.
Looking ahead at challenges facing the industry
The renewed activity in the market, paired with existing industry challenges, means there are many things on the minds of senior living operators and designers as they look to the coming year: ongoing technology integration, the use of AI to support staffing and operations as well as a design tool for project teams, and solving for the missing middle by making projects more affordable. “Reducing common area spaces is a good step, colocating with universities, all of those things can really help that missing middle crisis,” Warnock says.
Rohde says she’s optimistic to see more Rural Transformation Grants, especially as more people are moving to such areas in search of affordable housing options. “I’ve not seen this much money be invested in rural areas in my career,” she says. “So we may see some outcome of that.”
Maddalena says he anticipates further adoption of technology, such as AI agents, to help address staffing shortages, so he’s helping clients plan for it now. “To see that technology that’s coming down the road and to build that infrastructure into the design is critical because if you don’t do it now, you will be doing it later, and it’ll be a lot more expensive,” he says.
Anne DiNardo is editor-in-chief of Environments for Aging and can be reached at [email protected].
