Housing Matters | Article 02

The Housing Ladder: A Place for Every Season

The question isn't whether a community has housing. The question is whether it has the right mix of housing to support the people who call it home.

A recent trip to Rosemary Beach, Florida, left me thinking less about the homes themselves and more about what the community was designed to do.

Some communities reveal their purpose almost immediately. Rosemary Beach is one of them.

Sugar-white sand met cobblestone streets, distinctive architecture, and tree-lined walkways. Even the setbacks, public spaces, and paths seemed thoughtfully planned to encourage walking, biking, gathering, and a particular sense of place.

The beauty was undeniable, but what captured my attention was the intentionality.

Established in 1995, Rosemary Beach was planned around principles of New Urbanism and Traditional Neighborhood Development, with an emphasis on community, connection, and convenience. Today, its vacation rentals, restaurants, public spaces, architecture, and outdoor amenities also contribute to a distinctive destination experience.

Rosemary Beach knows its sense of place.

A few days later, my husband and I arrived in Wilmington, North Carolina, to drop our son off at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Again, housing caught my attention—but for a different reason.

Wilmington supports a more layered mix of everyday activity. Students, young professionals, families, workers, retirees, visitors, healthcare providers, local businesses, tourism, and port activity all contribute to the life of the community.

Its housing reflects some of that complexity: apartments, duplexes, townhomes, historic properties, single-family residences, and other options serving people at very different stages of life.

Two coastal communities. Two distinct identities.

Two beautiful communities can require very different housing because they are designed to support very different purposes.

The Human Side of the Housing Ladder

Yet community purpose is only one side of the story.

Wherever we live today, each of us began somewhere—and as life changes, what we need from housing often changes with it.

In Where Life Begins, the first article in the Housing Matters series, we explored housing as the place where so much of everyday life unfolds.

The Housing Ladder asks what happens next: How might that place need to change as we move through different seasons of life?

Traditionally, a ladder suggests upward movement. In housing, that can easily become a story of

progressing from renting to owning or from a smaller home to a larger one.

But life is rarely that linear.

The ladder represents seasons, not success.

Most of us begin under someone else's roof. Then, for many, comes a season of stepping out—a college dorm, a gap year, a roommate, a first apartment, or a first job that brings new responsibilities and perhaps a new address.

Growth may bring another shift. Marriage, children, career opportunities, hobbies, or changing priorities can alter what we need from the place we call home.

Other seasons are less predictable. Transition may look like relocation, graduate school, caregiving, living on one income, starting over, or renting while learning a new community before deciding whether or where to purchase.

Later, simplifying may mean an empty nest, less maintenance, retirement, or a desire for greater flexibility. Remaining may call for accessibility modifications, aging in place, or living closer to family, healthcare, and familiar routines.

People do not necessarily move through these seasons in order—and sometimes life brings us back to a season we thought we had already passed.

That is why the housing ladder is not about climbing toward a larger home or a particular definition of success.

Each rung represents a season, a transition, or a changing need—and the value of the ladder is having an appropriate place to land when life changes.

From the Individual to the Community

Housing options can be as layered as the seasons of our lives, and no two journeys look exactly alike.

My grandmother, for example, grew up on a farm without running water and dreamed of one day building a home of her own. She eventually did.

Decades later, now in her 90s, she lives with my mother after selling that home years ago. The physical address has changed, but many of the things that make a place feel like home remain: Christmas cookies baking in the kitchen, the afternoon news playing in the background, a garden growing outside, and traditions quietly passing from one generation to the next.

Her housing story has changed through the seasons, just as all of ours do.

Some may begin in an apartment. My own journey included an 800-square-foot home long before "tiny homes" became a trend. For someone else, the right fit may be a duplex, a two-bedroom rental, a manufactured or modular home, a larger residence for a growing family, an executive property, or a historic home waiting to be restored.

None represents a higher or lower rung.

They represent different needs at different moments in life.

That is where the individual story becomes a community conversation.

A healthy housing mix cannot be understood by quantity alone. It also involves three related considerations:

Availability: Are housing options actually available?

Variety: Are there different types, sizes, and living arrangements for different seasons of life?

Attainability: Do those choices reasonably align with different household incomes and circumstances?

Not every community needs every type of housing, nor should every community look the same.

But the mix matters.

Housing availability isn't simply about how many homes exist. It is also about whether the available choices reflect the people and purposes of the community.

The North Carolina Connection

That conversation is especially timely in North Carolina.

The state's 2026 First in Opportunity Strategic Economic Development Plan places housing within a much broader discussion that includes workforce readiness, childcare, healthcare, infrastructure, and long-term economic competitiveness.

That connection is worth noticing.

A manufacturer may announce hundreds of new jobs, but behind those jobs are people who need places to live. A student graduating from college may want to remain in the community. A teacher or healthcare worker may be relocating. An older adult may hope to stay close to family and familiar routines.

Economic growth and housing are not separate conversations.

Housing is part of the infrastructure that allows people to participate in the life and economy of a community.

And that brings us back to the ladder.

A Place for Every Season

Different seasons require different spaces.

The housing ladder isn't about climbing toward a larger house or reaching a particular definition of success.

It's about having somewhere appropriate to stand when life changes.

Rosemary Beach helped me think about the value of intentional design. Wilmington reminded me how many different lives and purposes can exist within one community.

Neither needs to become the other.

The larger lesson is that housing works best when we understand the purpose of a place and the people it is intended to support.

For one community, that may mean thoughtfully supporting tourism and destination housing. For another, it may mean a layered mix of housing for students, workers, families, retirees, and generations living alongside one another.

There is no single housing model that fits every community—just as there is no single housing choice that fits every season of life.

Housing isn't simply about where we live. It's about whether a community creates room for people to move through life's changing seasons without assuming that every journey should lead to the same destination.

That is the value of a healthy housing ladder: room for different people, different seasons, and different stories along the way.