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Editor’s note: SHN Reporter Andrew Christman also contributed to this article.
In 2026, senior living providers are honing their models to capitalize on the growing demand for senior living services.
Providers are bringing new strategies forward to address staffing and daily operational challenges, focusing on tighter, more data-focused platforms that can provide real-time insights into overall financial performance and daily resident care practices.
Many companies continue to work through challenges in operations through creating scalable growth strategies, durable staffing practices and deeper partnerships to improve senior living during a period of strong demand.
Their work is worth tracking, and below is a list of senior living operators worth watching in 2026:
Viva Senior Living
Norwood, New Jersey-based Viva Senior Living has grown rapidly after its founding in 2021, now approaching 50 communities. Its focus lies in both high-acuity assisted living and memory care along with independent living, reflecting a trend of operators diversifying their services, even in their luxury wings, to meet the needs of the boomers who are changing substantially everything.
Viva’s growth brought the company into new markets in 2026, taking on opportunities in Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia with future plans to grow in Alabama and Wisconsin later this year.
The company’s rapid growth exemplifies an industry trend of operators focusing on services and staffing models tailored for a wider group of potential residents. The company’s growth ambitions make it worth watching this year. Viva has paired its growth with an operating model its leaders designed for the reality of today’s challenging senior living environment.
Viva is positioning its communities for new customer expectations around technology, personalization and the ability to age in place with access to elevated care services when needed. The company uses specialized memory care training, passive monitoring technology and partnerships with healthcare providers to better serve residents living with dementia and cognitive change. This commitment to aging in place focuses on clinical leadership and personalized care planning to help older adults thrive later in life.
“We want to give the opportunity to the leaders in our field to have the ability to be mobile and move within our company and have a force,” Chief Executive Officer Chris Metternich said. “We want it to be really owned and operated by our leaders underneath, who are driving the business on a daily scale.”
In one four-property portfolio that Viva took on at 70% occupancy, Viva got the portfolio to full occupancy, maintaining a 25% operating margin and increasing EBITDA by more than 80% through focusing on staffing, data-driven operational insights and expense management.
Viva’s staffing model is also critical to the company’s growth. The company prioritizes each community’s staffing needs and plans schedules accordingly rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach to staffing practices. Viva has focused its efforts on staffing to revolve around training opportunities, recruiting from other industries and creating internal career development opportunities.
The company’s focus on staffing comes as Viva’s top leadership recently changed with Metternich being named CEO after serving as COO, and Chief Clinical Officer Afrika Parks was named as COO in Metternich’s place.
The company’s trials and tribulations are a barometer for the wider industry as creating durable and resilient staffing models will be critical to future success, focused on training to prepare staff for the rigors of daily operations in senior living today.
Inspirit Senior Living
McLean, Virginia-based Inspirit Senior Living manages more than 36 communities in 11 states, with sights set on a 20% growth rate annually as the company brings more communities under management. Inspirit’s journey aligning more closely with healthcare providers is worth paying attention to given the opportunities inherent in doing so.
In 2026, multiple senior living operators are seeking to integrate with services that keep their residents well and therefore living in their units for longer. According to Inspirit Senior Living COO Jonathan Barbieri, technology has represented a big barrier to doing so in the past, which is why the company is doing things like tracking resident health data to better work with ancillary health care systems. For example, the operator can create care plans for residents just discharged from the hospital and placed in assisted living.
“Thanks to the advent of AI, as well as other technologies, we now integrate. We can see the information the hospital is providing in real time. We can take that admission as quickly as they need us to, or as quickly as the individual needs us to,” Barbieri said in a recent Transform podcast interview.
By bringing more technology into senior living operations, including data tools and artificial intelligence-supported systems, Inspirit’s leaders see an opportunity to make care more proactive. The end goal of all of this is to give staff more time to focus on residents and families.
The company’s growth through new communities under management and outright acquisitions has raised the company’s profile across the industry. Inspirit was recently named “on the fast track” for growing senior living providers, jumping to 69th overall on the Argentum 150 largest providers 2026 report.
“I see us growing at a pace that will change each year, and it will be driven not by a rigid design forced upon a group, but by a constant evaluation of what we can do well, and perhaps more importantly, what we can do better than someone else,” Inspirit Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Barbieri said.
Inspirit’s journey removing technological barriers to work more closely with healthcare providers is notable, and how the company fares in this journey could indicate the kind of windfalls and challenges other operators on similar paths will no doubt encounter. For that reason, coupled with its growth ambitions, it’s one to keep an eye on this year.
Willow Ridge Senior Living
Based in Albany, New York, Willow Ridge Senior Living has since its founding in 2019 grown to 28 communities in seven states. The operator takes on distressed properties and uses turnaround strategies to stabilize operations and improve community life at underperforming properties. The company’s approach mirrors that of other senior living companies seeking to acquire communities below replacement cost and reposition them to appeal to today’s senior living consumers.
Willow Ridge organizes its growth into three regions, bringing scale and support to backend accounting capabilities, placing bookkeeping in-house and adding new clinical, maintenance and sales leadership. That’s an approach taken by other, larger, companies, like Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD), which reorganized its operations into what are essentially six different companies.
To support its turnaround strategy of growth, Willow Ridge has built specialist roles into its operating model to support communities during the most important stages of a turnaround effort. The positions can be used to fill vacancies and address urgent needs, while internal promotions have created a deeper leadership bench. For example, Willow Ridge promoted a senior executive director to lead its New York properties and added vice presidents of clinical services and financial services, while shifting regional operations leaders into sales-focused roles that match operating oversight with occupancy growth.
“Having those staff and the flexibility and that plug-and-play position really helps us fill vacancies during a critical time of the turnaround,” Willow Ridge CEO Michael Morris said. “Having these specialist positions is really a big part of our model.”
Willow Ridge has grown with Cougar Capital Management as a primary capital partner, with plans to grow alongside the private equity firm. For the remainder of this year, Willow Ridge has eight community acquisitions scheduled, Morris said.
The company is showing how a regional senior living operator can turn portfolio growth into a repeatable model that leads to value creation. By pairing a turnaround growth strategy with a hands-on operational model with greater financial oversight and growing leadership structure, Willow Ridge is positioning itself to compete in an environment where higher acuity and staffing costs challenge all providers in the industry.
Wellpointe
Fresno, California-based Wellpointe is among the developers making strides with private and public collaborations in order to develop its latest project in the Viva L.A. Warner Center. The ambitious project tests the scalability of blowing up small-home concepts into large footprints, making the operator one to watch this year.
The 3,200-unit community comes with a $2 billion price tag and took nearly four years of planning to make happen, but there is a need for the affordable housing project in the area, according to CEO George Kutnerian. Following the project’s announcement, Kutnerian believes there will be a new era of “social infrastructure investment.”
While this is the largest project it has undertaken so far, Wellpointe’s offerings largely lie in the affordable realm already, with assisted living services in single-family homes with a co-living style. The operator is the largest provider of residential assisted living properties in California, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC).
“Today, residents and families are more aware of the small-home setting, including the approachability and human connection that are its hallmarks. People may like to visit a resort, but they want to live in a home,” Kutnerian said.
Wellpointe employs resident-to-staff ratios of one to three staffers for six residents.
Now, the operator is taking its small-home concept vertical with its newest project, which will range from 32 to 42 stories upon completion. It will have a mix of independent living, assisted living and memory care offerings. It’s funded from public and private sources, including tax-exempt bonds, low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) dollars.
“Even though this is a new type of format for us, we’ve been operating in this segment in terms of affordable assisted living for quite some time now, so it’s not new to us,” Kutnerian said.
And looking ahead, Kutnerian believes other operators and developers will be sure to follow in the company’s footsteps as it takes on this project.
“I think others will follow. Certainly, we’re trying to set a good example,” he said.
AgeWell Senior Living
AgeWell Senior Living is on track to exceed its original goal of reaching 75 communities in its portfolio by 2031, so much so it is increasing its target. The company has navigated growth, a rebranding and leadership changes in the last few years and has emerged as a fast-growing third-party operator with an ever-expanding footprint, making it one to keep an eye on.
The North Palm Beach, Florida-based operator is growing through a combination of management contracts, with plans to eventually acquire and own properties. In June, the operator added seven communities to its management portfolio in Virginia and South Carolina, bringing its total up to 36. Before the end of the year, it could execute on another 17.
“We’ve performed to a level that’s past the norm right now, and because of that, we’re getting a lot of interest in our platform,” CEO David Mills said.
Its current growth comes from interested real estate investment trust partnerships, such as National Healthcare Properties (Nasdaq: NHP).
This all comes after the company rebranded from AgeWell Solvere Living in March, a move meant to “simplify and strengthen the parent brand to ensure clarity for residents, families, partners and team members.”
Part of the success in AgeWell’s platform comes from its regional strategy and approach and supporting its regional leadership teams. Regional vice presidents, for example, oversee no more than 10 communities at a time so they do not become overburdened. As the company continues to grow, it focuses on leadership development so it can reaffirm its culture and grow the next generation of leaders internally.
With the progress it’s made toward its five-year goal, AgeWell has adjusted its portfolio target up to 90 communities, as the operator does not want to grow to be among the largest operators in the industry, Mills said.
“If we look at all the companies that have grown and failed over the years, they’ve all done something wrong. Most of the time it was stretching their team inappropriately, so the goal that we have is not to do that,” he said.
