Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Larry Cross’ Home: A Life-Long Living Home in Progress

Posted by Michael Annus

I am Larry Cross. In May, I became involved with SAGE’s Legacy Fellowship program. SAGE, a Portland non-profit organization, promotes Senior Advocates for Generational Equity.

I was born in 1946, thus making me a senior. (baby image and parents)

My SAGE project continues to expand my unique SE Portland home into a Life-Affirming Educational Meetinghouse, thus making me an advocate (house image)

Inclusion is my highest goal. Inclusion generally: the Meetinghouse available for people to learn from each other, share their myriad life experiences with each other. SE Portland includes a wider demographic of people than many other Portland neighborhoods. I seek to bring people together. Larry & Rosemary), home tour image

More specifically, I seek to evolve people’s understanding of physical inclusion in spaces: public and private. I describe this as accessibly for Everybody and Every Body. (Urban Center)

My home offers ideas relating to Aging in Place, Sustainability, Universal Design, and Lifelong Housing for Yourself and Those Who You Love.
Build it green home tour, certificate

Pocket doors instead of swing doors
Grab bars in the bathroom
Natural light skylights, large living room window
Ramps instead of stairs

My home incorporates many wonderful and often original works of art. My home is actually a work of art. Influenced by the architect Louis Sullivan that “Form Forever Follows Function,” my home “works” very well but also radiates a sense of beauty, joy, peace, and tranquility.

My home emphasizes nature, its beauty, its healing attributes, and its ability to provide design direction. My goal incorporates engaging life in all forms: plants, animals, humans, the sun, the rain, the symbiosis of the universe.

By including unique waterfalls, my yard abounds with animal life birds, bees, squirrels, chickens. waterfalls

The enclosed space of my home offers a retreat, a sanctuary, a very meditative environment in which to learn from all of life: people, nature, the cosmos.

For me, sustainability also means creating a living space that provides me with pleasure and peace of mind, thus sustaining my life. Larry & Emeralda, Oscar, 4 chickens, Alfred E. Neuamn

Within two years, I will transfer legal ownership of my home to a local non-profit organization to establish, in perpetuity, my home’s valuable educational attributes, now and into the future. This aligns with SAGE’s guiding principle: “generational equity – that each generation should sustain or improve the quality of life for the next.”