Walk-in showers, dimmable lighting, community rooms with meal programs, and a growing set of health partnerships: inside how a preservation platform is redesigning senior affordable housing around the needs of residents.
At many of Tredway’s senior affordable communities, bathtubs have been replaced with walk-in or roll-in showers. The change is a relatively simple one, but to the residents who requested it, it is one of the most consequential renovations Tredway has made to any of its buildings.
“Before we start work, we speak to the residents of the building,” Will Blodgett, the founder and CEO of Tredway, said in a recent interview. “Things emerge like, ‘Hey, we have these bathtubs here and we’re old and it’s hard for us to step into the bathtubs.’ So we changed all the bathtubs to roll-in and walk-in showers. Another feedback we got was, ‘Hey, my unit’s really bright.’ Well, because when you get old, your eyes get a lot more sensitive. So we installed dimmers on our light switches.”
The story of those retrofits tells you most of what you need to know about how Blodgett approaches senior affordable housing. Residents identify the need. Local property managers bring it to Tredway’s attention and Tredway adjusts the capital-improvement plan.
In 2026, Tredway acquired a large portfolio of affordable senior housing properties across five parishes in the greater New Orleans area from the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The properties are occupied exclusively by older and disabled residents. Tredway committed to maintaining the properties’ affordability for at least the next forty years and to investing tens of millions of dollars in resiliency and building-wide improvements. The transaction represents a significant senior affordable-housing preservation investment in the greater New Orleans area.
The New Orleans deal is where Tredway’s senior housing thesis is being tested at scale. Tredway says it is on track to own more than 20,000 affordable homes across more than 35 states by the end of 2026 has made senior housing a meaningful part of its preservation strategy.
The demographic pressure is becoming harder to ignore. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans aged 65 and older reached 61.2 million in 2024, up 3.1% in a single year, while older adults accounted for 18% of the US population, compared with 12.4% in 2004. Census data also show that poverty remains a significant issue among older Americans, with the Supplemental Poverty Measure for people aged 65 and over increasing in 2024. At the same time, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported in its 2026 State of the Nation’s Housing research that affordable housing remains in short supply and housing-cost burdens continue to rise. Together, these trends increase the pressure on affordable senior housing as a growing older population competes for a limited stock of housing that is both financially accessible and suitable for ageing in place.
Will Blodgett has framed senior affordable housing as a distinct design and operating challenge. “For our elderly community, the importance is to age in place with the dignity and respect you deserve.” Older residents have different needs than younger ones — physically, socially, and medically — and a national platform that treats a senior community the same way it treats family housing risks designing and operating for the wrong resident.
In many of Tredway’s senior communities, community rooms have been reconfigured to support meal programs and resident gatherings. The purpose is specific. “A big issue, especially in our elderly buildings, is isolationism,” Blodgett has said. “You’re alone, you’re super lonely. That’s like an epidemic right now.” In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General identified loneliness and social isolation as a significant public health concern, particularly among older adults.
“What’s the best way to bring people together?” Blodgett has said. “It’s over food.”
The health piece is being built alongside those efforts, community by community rather than all at once. Tredway has begun working with Ounce of Care, a company that helps embed health and care-coordination services within affordable housing. According to Blodgett, the partnership currently operates at one Tredway community, with plans to expand to roughly 30 by the end of the year. “The biggest fears of the elderly are: one, where am I going to live? And two, I’m worried about my health,” Blodgett has said. Preserving an affordable home addresses the first. The resident-services work — where it is in place and as it continues to grow — is an attempt to address the second.
This is what Blodgett and his colleagues call resident-informed renovation. Nobody at Tredway’s headquarters decided, in the abstract, that senior communities needed walk-in showers. Residents identified the need, local teams brought the feedback forward, and the renovation plans followed.
The New Orleans transaction offers a view of what that approach can look like at scale. Ten properties. Five parishes. Roughly 1,600 homes. A forty-year affordability commitment. And tens of millions of dollars of committed capital for building-wide improvements and resiliency — a category that carries particular weight in coastal Louisiana, where storm preparation, hurricane hardening, and backup power are part of the basic work of protecting residents. Tredway’s local partner has spent years in Louisiana affordable housing and understands the particular mix of FEMA requirements, parish politics, and day-to-day realities of operating senior communities in a hurricane zone.
Blodgett has argued that the aging-in-place movement — the idea that older adults should be able to remain in their homes and communities as they age — has been underserved by the affordable housing sector, where much of the attention has historically focused on family housing and new construction. Preservation, in his framing, is aging in place at scale. Every senior affordable community whose affordability is extended is one where residents have a better chance of staying in the place they already call home. And every walk-in shower, dimmable light, or community room built around how older residents actually live makes staying there a little easier.
The economics depend on public-private partnership. Tredway acquires aging affordable properties, extends their long-term affordability through recapitalization, and reinvests in both the buildings and the resident experience. The capital improvements are financed. The affordability is extended. The residents stay.
“Our work across these projects demonstrates how developers and localities can protect the most vulnerable populations and keep longstanding communities together,” Blodgett said in a June statement announcing Tredway’s 2025 ranking. The Archdiocese properties in New Orleans — some home to residents who have lived there for decades — offer a tangible example of what “keeping longstanding communities together” can mean at the property level: preserving the home while adapting it to the changing needs of the people who live there.
By the end of 2026, Tredway says it is on track to, more than 20,000 affordable homes with senior housing representing a meaningful share. At many of those communities, the shower will no longer require a step over the side of a bathtub. In some, community rooms will host meals designed as much to combat isolation as to provide food. In others, resident-services partners like Ounce of Care will help residents navigate benefits and the healthcare system. The common idea is simple: preservation should mean more than keeping a building affordable. It should make it possible for the people already living there to remain there as they age.
At Tredway, the argument is that aging with dignity ultimately has to translate into the physical design, services and capital plans of the properties themselves.