Nonprofit Retirement Housing Foundation (RHF) has shifted its focus exclusively to affordable senior housing and services. The company’s internal development department has multiple projects underway for the next generation of limited income senior living residents.

In 2024, RHF sold 15 of its 16 market-rate communities in a move CEO Stuart Hartman described as a shift in the company’s future in order to meet the needs of older adults unable to afford private-pay senior living. The company also shed its skilled nursing units, with its “real wheelhouse” lying in affordable senior housing, he said.

“We felt compelled to try to help those that had the greatest need,” Hartman told SHN. “Rather than try to reinvent the wheel and be all things to all people, let’s focus on what we do best.”

RHF is combining new development with acquisitions, to further expand its reach, having recently agreed to purchase a portfolio of six communities by the end of this year, Hartman said. The company is “selective” in its review of potential acquisition opportunities, and Hartman noted the company takes into consideration long-term, adverse climate disasters along with plotting regional density. Additionally, RHF has committed to renovating each of its communities every 15-20 years, to “preserve” the affordability of housing for future residents.

Long Beach, California-based RHF maintains a portfolio of 184 communities in 28 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands with communities ranging between 12 and over 1,000 units. The two largest states in which RHF operates are California with 70 communities and 20 properties in Texas. 

“We’re looking at where we can develop critical mass, and we also look at acquiring communities where there is a substantial need for affordable senior housing,” Hartman said.

The nonprofit senior housing provider also has an active development department to build new communities from the ground up. Hartman forecasted a development pace that added “one or two” new communities by construction each year “for the next several years,” citing a need for affordable housing amid rising demand.

Two communities are currently under construction, one in Baldwin Park, California, and one in Chula Vista, California, with the $36 million Chula Vista community including an affordable senior housing community and a PACE center. The $32 million Baldwin Park project includes roughly $10 million of funding by RHF for the 55 unit build. The assemblage of two properties in Baldwin Park were sites that were previously businesses rezoned for senior living after seven years of planning, Hartman noted.

The nonprofit provider also has two sites under entitlement for new construction in the future, Hartman said. Projects are developed through low-income housing tax credits with Housing and Urban Development (HUD) 202 grants

RHF also is in the midst of renovating aging properties, with seven to nine complete renovations to be finished per year. The plan includes a $30 million capital project for two communities that were recently completed in Modesto, California, totaling over 300 units. Next up for the construction pipeline of affordable communities could be the start of work next year on a 60-unit affordable community in Riverside, California, along with arranging financing for a project in Westminster, California, later this year, Hartman added.

“We seek to develop new, acquire existing [properties], and renovate our campuses going into the future so that we can maintain the affordability for lower-income seniors,” Hartman said.

Typical properties owned and managed by RHF include age and income-restricted affordable senior housing, including housing for people with disabilities similar to independent living and active adult, while providing residents with resources regarding external health care services they might need to age in place. The organization is not the service provider, but through social service coordinations, the organization assists residents with obtaining low cost or no cost services through other third-party organizations in the community. The organization has built relationships with PACE programs, with PACE serving as a potential springboard for future collaboration at new communities. 

Hartman sees preparing for a future in which more affordable options are needed in today’s senior living environment as a critical need facing the industry today.

“There is a tremendous amount of concern in the affordable housing industry, and wisely so,” Hartman said.