Most aging-and-housing nonprofits are operating in a familiar pattern: a model that works, a budget that does not keep up, and a constant search for the next grant cycle. HomeShare Oregon is in a different position. We are an Oregon nonprofit with national reach, and June is the month a donor or funder can do something that has shape beyond Oregon. We want to explain why.
The triple Oregon has built
Three things have to exist together for home sharing to be a serious civic intervention. Most states have one of them. A few have two. Oregon has all three.
First, an operating program at the scale of a state, with outcomes. HomeShare Oregon has served 6,691 Oregonians through HomeShare Online since 2021, with 80 percent housing stability at six months. We are reporting under the State of Oregon's 2023 to 2025 biennium grant. The City of Portland selected HomeShare Oregon as a Qualified Home Sharing Provider for its 2026 home sharing pilot.
Second, ownership of a technology platform purpose-built for home sharing. We acquired HomeShare Online (originally the Silvernest platform) in 2024 and run it as a nonprofit, which is the only nonprofit home sharing technology operating at this scale in the United States. The platform handles identity verification, background checks for both home providers and home seekers, compatibility matching, secure messaging, and the lease template. The matching itself is run by the platform, not by people. Real people at HomeShare Oregon help participants navigate the platform when they need that help. Most home sharing programs across the country lease or build from scratch. We own.
Third, the policy moment. Oregon's draft 2026 to 2030 State Plan on Aging is in public comment through Friday, June 12. The Plan as drafted does not name home sharing. We are asking the Office to add it. Other state aging plans that already name home sharing (Pennsylvania and Minnesota are the most-cited examples) do so without an operating program at scale. Oregon has the program, the data, and the platform. The Plan should name it.
Why this matters beyond Oregon
Fourteen states have adopted Multisector Plans for Aging. Twenty-seven more are drafting them. The conversation in Salem is the conversation that is about to happen in every state capital. The Oregon program is being looked to as an early reference example. When state aging planners and city housing directors elsewhere ask what working home sharing infrastructure actually looks like, they are looking at Oregon.
That is not a hypothetical. It is a steady stream of conversations with leaders in other states and cities about how the work translates. We are answering questions other states have outlined, without leaning on any one of them as the headline. The reason it works is because Oregon already has the operating program, the outcome data, and the technology infrastructure that the questioners are missing in their own states.
What your gift unlocks
A gift to HomeShare Oregon this month does three things at once. It funds direct service in Oregon, where we are running the program for enrolled Oregonians and the next thousand who will come in this year. It funds the policy work that is asking Oregon to name home sharing in the State Plan, which is also the policy work that other states will read first. And it funds the technology platform that the rest of the country may eventually run on top of.
The unit economics are unusually favorable. Home sharing matches a homeowner and a home seeker for the marginal cost of running the platform. There is no per-unit construction cost, no per-unit subsidy, no per-unit rehab. The cost of an additional match is the platform doing the matching and the people behind the platform helping participants use it.
Where the gifts go
Platform infrastructure: hosting, background check integration, secure messaging, lease tooling, ongoing development. The platform is the asset that does the compatibility work and the bulk of the leveraged work.
Outreach and trust-building: the small budgets that bring home sharing to the neighborhoods and the communities where older homeowners actually live. This is the line that has historically been most underfunded across the field.
Policy and partnerships: the work that is currently asking Oregon to name home sharing in its State Plan on Aging, and the work that is preparing to help other states do the same.
People: the team at HomeShare Oregon that supports participants using the platform, answers the questions that come in, walks providers and seekers through the tools, and shows up for partners considering a pilot. The platform does the matching. People support the people using it.
What we are asking
If you fund aging, fund this. If you fund housing, fund this. If you fund Oregon community development, fund this. If you fund civic infrastructure across multiple states, fund this with the understanding that Oregon is the first reference. The argument is the same in every case: Oregon has built the program, the data, and the platform, and what is needed now is the investment that makes the work visible and durable.
We will follow up personally. If you would like to talk before a gift, we welcome the conversation.