Beaverton Mayor Lacey Beaty posed a pointed question to her staff: Can you end homelessness within two blocks of the city library?

That place-based strategy is now drawing national attention. Invisible People, a nonprofit media outlet covering homelessness, featured Beaty in an article published Monday, Oct. 12, on rising senior homelessness and how cities are responding. The piece highlighted her decision to narrow the city's focus to the area around the Beaverton City Library on Southwest 5th Street, where the city felt the most pressure and where residents had lost access to a civic space.

"Once they were able to solve it in a two-block radius, I said, 'What about blocks four, five, and six? What about block seven?' … Sometimes, these issues seem too big to solve," Beaty said at a Sept. 16 panel hosted by the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, as reported by Invisible People.

Beaty was re-elected in 2024 after six years on the Beaverton City Council. She told the Harvard panel that mayors sit closest to residents but often lack direct control over housing and public health, which fall partly under county and federal authority. Her administration assembled state and federal funders to create Washington County's first year-round shelter without tapping the city's general fund, according to the Harvard recap.

The national numbers show why the strategy matters locally. The federal Point-in-Time Count found more than 41,000 adults 65 and older experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, up from about 39,700 a year earlier, according to Invisible People. The federal government only began tracking detailed age data for homeless populations in 2023.

In Beaverton, seniors 65 and older make up 15.2% of the population, according to the Beaverton Resource Guide, citing 2022 data. The city's median gross rent stood at $1,665 that same year. Jennifer Molinsky, director of the Housing and Aging Society Program at Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, told the panel that among the lowest-income older renters nationwide, 90% pay more than 30% of their income on housing.

The city is also building more senior housing near the library. The Meadowlark senior affordable housing project on 5th Street, developed by Community Partners for Affordable Housing, will include 66 units. Thirty-eight will be deeply affordable. Completion is expected in spring 2028.

Federal policy changes could affect local funding. Invisible People reported that a budget law signed in July 2025 cut Medicaid and other safety-net programs, and that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) moved to restrict funding for permanent supportive housing. A federal judge struck down HUD's 2026 funding notice in August, and an appeals court ruled in September that the agency could temporarily proceed while the case continues.

Beaverton's Committee on Aging, which covers issues affecting older residents, meets Tuesday, Oct. 13, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. in the Columbia River Room on the fifth floor of the Beaverton Building, 12725 SW Millikan Way. The meeting is open to the public and includes time for comment.