Housing should offer people choices at every stage of life.

I met a remarkable woman while knocking doors in Stratford. She's 95 years old and lives independently in the home she loves.

After our visit, I kept thinking about what it means to age in a community. The people who came before us didn't just grow older here. They built neighborhoods, schools, businesses and communities we experience today, and they carry our history. They deserve the dignity to remain connected to the places they call home.

Since I began knocking on doors, I've heard many versions of the same challenge:

• Parents living with grown children and grandparents raising grandchildren who can't simply pick up and move;

• Empty-nesters living in a four-bedroom house because there isn't a smaller home nearby that works for them; and

• Older adults who would welcome an accessible apartment, but don't want to leave their friends, doctors, church or community.

These are very different circumstances, but they're asking the same fundamental question:

How do we make it possible for people to grow older without being forced out of the communities they've helped build?

Part of the answer is creating places where people can remain in their community as their housing needs change. Sometimes that means making it possible to stay safely and affordably in the home you've always known. Sometimes it means an accessible apartment, a smaller home, an accessory dwelling, or a mixed-use development. And sometimes it means transportation and community services that make staying possible.

I imagine communities where generations live alongside one another – where an older resident can sit on a bench by a playground and watch children play, where grandparents raising grandchildren live alongside young families, and where people can walk or bike to the places they need to go.

It isn't always about aging in place. Aging in town should be an option, too. There isn't a single housing solution because there isn't a single aging experience.

Housing should offer people choices at every stage of life.