“We all have a lot more in common than it seems.”
—Fortune cookie
BEHIND ALL THE GATED AGE-RESTRICTED LEISURE, ERSATZ ARCHITECtural nostalgia, and nightly hanky-panky, what I saw in The Villages is a concerted effort by a segment of older Americans to find community—something that in today’s turbulent world can be hard to chance upon, particularly for the elderly. Many Villagers simply don’t care if they live in an autocratic fantasyland founded on a policy of segregation; they just want a place to call home, a geritopia where they can be comfortable among their peers.
Most of the Villagers I met were blissful—thankful that such a place existed and that they had been lucky enough to find it. Retirement can be a stressful stage of life. There’s no script to follow for the decades between giving up work and reaching advanced old age. Private developers such as Webb and Morse are filling that void for some people, peddling a glamorized vision of serene, financially predicable leisure living in segregated resort-like communities. It’s a powerful vision that has proved to be very appealing to a sizable segment of aging Americans.
Much of life’s unpleasantness is erased in such a community. You don’t have to worry about boom boxes interrupting your sleep, or about tripping over a tricycle as you walk down your driveway, or about skyrocketing local property taxes. Nor do you have to worry about potentially volatile encounters with people who are significantly different from yourself. Real life is filled with friction; these communities attempt to remove the source of some of that friction—mainly children, troublesome neighbors, and the underclass.
And residents don’t have to grow old alone and afraid—a cheerless fate by any measure. Some of our cities and towns provide senior citizens with enough targeted services and built-in social networks, as well as conveniences accessible to pedestrians and by public transportation, but many don’t. Nor do many communities provide seniors with a critical sense of personal safety.
And the alternative to an artificial “downtown” is often worse: what’s a retiree supposed to do in the car-dependent suburbs, where so many Americans now live, often with no family nearby? Twenty years ago the average American drove 12,000 miles a year. Today that number is 21,000 miles. Not only is suburban sprawl antithetical to aging in place; it’s not a lot of fun to grow old in.
By contrast, for many seniors The Villages is fun because it’s a community specifically designed for them. When you drive up to The Villages’ security checkpoints, you are leaving behind a culture that worships—and caters to—youth. Certain ground rules are different in The Villages. The music is gentler; it’s “lights out” earlier, and social interaction is overall less belligerent and competitive. Residents can pass mostly worry-free days comfortably playing tennis and golf, and not have to fight for a court or tee time with a fast-paced younger crowd. And they never have to be lonely again, because it’s so easy to find friends with similar interests.
The relative dearth of younger people and real-life concerns frees up these seniors. To younger folks, they may be old fogies, but to each other they’re just peers. An older man with thinning hair, paunchy midsection, and bad knees can buy a woman a drink and not get heckled. A gray-haired woman succumbing to gravity’s pull can dance the night away, swim at the pool, and be a cheerleader with pom-poms without feeling self-conscious or foolish. Best yet, women feel safe enough to drive downtown in a golf cart at night to meet friends for drinks and live music at the town square, and then drive home alone in the dark.
What better place to park one’s parents than a leisureville? It’s safe; everything—even the hospital—is acessible by golf cart; and there are educational and recreational activities galore. For older family members, it can be a vacation from depression and loneliness. And for younger generations, it’s a ticket away from worry. That’s a beautiful thing.
But as history has shown us, utopian movements are much like balloons—they either burst or slowly deflate. People tend to rebel against rigid programming, even if that programming is centered on their own leisure. The developers I met at the housing conference in Phoenix expect such rebellion when enough boomers come of age and reject the Sun City model. And yet these developers are supremely confident that small tweaks to this “senior playpen” paradigm are all that it will take to entice another generation to buy their product.
But it’s not just a matter of smaller and more intimate communities placed closer to urban areas. It’s something more basic: something’s rotten at the core of these leisurevilles. While it’s not for me to say seniors shouldn’t enjoy themselves, the reality behind age segregation is another matter. No clever euphemism can hide the fact that these communities are based on a selfish and fraudulent premise—the exclusion of children and families. And no amount of volunteerism and continuing education courses—however admirable or enriching—can compensate for the high societal price of this exclusionary lifestyle.
To be sure, our elders have special needs, which are all too often sadly ignored by our youth-centered society. Age restrictions can be appropriate (if not redundant) for institutions designed to address these needs, such as specialty care facilities or vitally needed low-income senior housing.
But housing for senior citizens is one thing; “adult” housing is another. Just what “special needs” do today’s wealthy middle-aged boomers have? Not only do they represent the least marginalized generation in human history; they’re not even old. Developers are merely exploiting a legal loophole.
If The Villages is any indication, the so-called special needs include, among other things, alcohol-saturated faux downtowns and an opportunity to play golf on a different course every day of the month. People in the prime of life—they are called “active adults” for a reason—don’t need nursing stations and communal cafeterias so much as tennis courts, lap pools, and espresso bars. So why are we providing these “seniors” with a legally codified right to keep the rest of society at bay?
Clearly, our federal government shouldn’t be in the business of endorsing discrimination against young families. The Fair Housing Act was originally intended to protect Americans from bigotry, not promote it. It’s been well over two hundred years since we shamefully designated blacks as three-fifths human. Are young children—and their parents —any less than whole? Do we really want to promote communities where birth certificates are scrutinized at points of entry? Congress needs to reexamine this legislation and either eliminate age discrimination altogether or, at the very least, periodically raise the qualifying age as time and science progress. But given the strength of the retirement housing lobby, a swift legislative remedy is unlikely. I suspect that deteriorating market conditions for such housing, rather than a concern for the civil rights of families with children, will drive change.
Simply raising the qualifying age still leaves me feeling uneasy. Age-targeted housing in “naturally occurring retirement communities” seems like a far fairer compromise. Cities and small towns are a natural fit for seniors who can no longer drive. They also encourage a mingling of ages. Promoting age-targeted housing and facilities—as well as a sense of safety—in these locations strikes me as a worthy pursuit. Such a setup worked for my grandmother; why shouldn’t it work for me?
But until we establish a coherent vision for addressing the needs of our senior citizens, private developers-cum-social engineers will continue to exploit this lack of cultural consensus. As one industry consultant heartily assured me, the lid to Pandora’s box is already wide open.
“Age-restricted housing is out of the embryo stage and it’s here to stay,” he said. “It’s the housing sector’s sweet spot.” He then proudly shared with me his new term for age segregation: “Age-preferred. It just sounds nicer.”
Half a century after Ben Schleifer realized his modest vision for Youngtown, retirement has become more than a life stage—it’s become big business. But do we really want to encourage private developers concerned solely with their bottom line to toy with something as critical as our nation’s social fabric?
The Villages and age-segregated communities like it represent the coming together of a number of cultural trends emerging from the muddle of modern America life: geographic and financial withdrawal, “enhanced reality,” and the endless pursuit of leisure. Taken individually, each trend is niggling but points to a mounting desire for escapism. When the trends are lumped together, the result is worrisome.
A society that embraces secession and escapism is clearly not a society addressing its problems and planning for a better future. Nor is it a society concerned with sustainability. Sun City and its guiding philosophy are about as disposable as its aging housing stock and the strip malls that surround it. Children represent the future, and a community without them is as doomed as the celibate Shakers.
The Villages is probably not far behind—perhaps a few decades. The architecture may present a historical facade, but nothing there is built to last—not even age segregation, which may be abandoned one day out of desperation, in a last-ditch attempt to add vitality and population long after the Morse family has disbanded its advertising and sales departments and left the scene with its fortune. The Villages’ form of government guarantees that amenities fees will be collected, but it doesn’t guarantee that there will be people to collect them from. I suspect it won’t be such an attractive destination once the homes start to deteriorate and the vast majority of residents are shuffling by on walkers. At some point even Mr. Midnight will have to admit defeat as nature takes its course.
The people living in age-segregated housing are still a small minority of Americans, but that’s unlikely to remain the case. In 2004, ground was broken for 100 age-segregated developments; ten years earlier, that figure was fifteen. There is no firm number for how many of these communities exist, but industry experts estimate that there are more than 1,500, of various sizes, either completed or under construction.
What will happen when there are thousands of these segregated communities across America, housing millions of aging secessionists? What happens to the rest of us—those left behind who don’t qualify in terms of age or finances? For that matter, what happens to American society in general, and our municipalities in particular, when a critical mass of mature Americans form self-contained private cities and disengage from the general population? Experience shows that these privately owned quasi-governmental entities often resent paying local taxes for schools as well as for municipal services that they prefer to perform for themselves. And they are potent voting blocs that can swing elections addressing these issues.
Our national mythology extols the concept of the melting pot. We are supposed to work together and strive to assimilate into a commonality called citizenship. Our national motto, displayed on the back of the dollar bill, is E Pluribus Unum—out of many, one. But as an increasing number of Americans secede into niche communities, we risk further loosening the ties that bind our nation together.
The lesson of Sun City couldn’t be any clearer: segregation reduces social contact and leads to a willful forgetting of commonalities, which can further deteriorate into generational resentment. Many Sun Citians have lost sight of the fact that they live within a larger age-integrated community that also has special needs, such as schools.
For me, Sun City’s de-annexation from the local school district was the proverbial canary in the coalmine. Two decades later, Villagers living in the Lake County portion of their gated community voted down an additional halfpenny sales tax that would have helped fund local schools. The measure failed countywide by a two-to-one margin, but Villagers defeated it by nearly four to one. Three years later, a similar measure easily passed countywide, but Villagers still voted against it in alarming numbers.
Two of the biggest special-interest groups vying for funds in Florida state government are retirees and young families. Evidently, the seniors are more than holding their own: Florida law stipulates that retirement communities are exempt from paying new-housing impact fees designed to help fund school districts. Because this burden is spread across fewer taxpayers, families with children must now pay higher impact fees to make up the difference.
Seniors emphatically insist that they needn’t contribute, because their housing has no direct impact on school systems. But as we have seen, these senior communities need employees, and those employees have children who need schooling. Besides, whatever happened to the idea—perhaps naive—that we’re all in this together, that we have an obligation to the generations that come after us? What if everybody drops out after getting his or her own needs met? When do things start to fall apart?
Retirees move for a variety of reasons including weather, family, and finances. Many seek a lower cost of living—a prudent consideration for those on fixed incomes and limited resources, particularly in an age of seemingly skyrocketing municipal expenses. More often than not, local taxes are a factor; in effect, these seniors go “tax shopping.”
Many are picking communities on the basis of how little they can get away with when it comes to paying into local coffers. These retirees are abandoning the communities that once paid for and nurtured them and their families; few have much interest in investing in their new community and its children. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be shopping around for lower taxes.
I think of my grandmother, who retired on Social Security and a meager pension. Contributing money to Philadelphia’s crumbling inner-city school system must have been daunting, but I don’t remember her ever complaining about it. To her, it was just something you did; something that had to be factored into the cost of living in a real community, a community she cared about.
When I first learned of school system de-annexations, I was reminded of Harry Chapin’s melancholic song “Cat’s in the Cradle,” in which an inattentive father ignores his son, and eventually the son grows up and rejects him. An aging generation that chooses gated secession and de-annexation may ultimately pay a similar price when the next generation inherits the purse strings and starts playing tit for tat.
It remains to be seen how generous this excluded generation will be after a lifetime of peering through the gates at sybaritic seniors. How eager will the new generation be to throw its elders a financial life preserver after being treated as a nuisance and thought of as little more than an expensive “invoice” burdening local taxes? Will it pull the plug on Social Security, pensions, Medicare, and Medicaid when funding for these programs requires too much sacrifice? Who wants to foot the bill for millions of hedonistic young seniors living in gated geritopias? And with an estimated 72 million Americans over sixty-five by 2030, younger Americans will be asked to pay for a whopper of a tab. The Boomers lived large and subsequent generations are inheriting nearly ten trillion dollars in national debt as well as entitlement programs on the verge of bankruptcy.
Social Security calls itself a compact between generations; but can you maintain such a compact without continued contact? One wonders if up to thirty days of fun-filled visits will be enough to bond the generations, or if the good works of some volunteers in The Villages will be enough to foster goodwill.
I often think about the youngster in Lady Lake with a history of being harassed for skateboarding in the Spanish Springs “Town Square.” How will he and his friends—and thousands of future teenagers—look on this generation of aging Villagers? Will they resent them, or will they merely count the years until they too can live inside the gates? The message many of these Villagers and their compatriots around the country are sending to subsequent generations is that success is defined by secession and perpetual self-gratification. I spoke to countless Villagers who complained that they had “done their share” and were “tired of giving back.” But what exactly have they given? Blessed to be born into one of the richest generations in the history of the world, they’ve led a life that most people can only dream of. Such good fortune wasn’t a matter of luck: it was given to them by previous generations who made untold sacrifices through two world wars and a devastating depression.
Taking a sabbatical after retirement from our grueling modern workaday life is one thing, but a thirty-year vacation is another. Promotional materials for age-segregated communities would have us believe that “life” is really a matter of “lifestyle”—a marketing concept that can be tweaked. But at what point do convenience and leisure bring us diminishing returns? At what point do conveniences make life too easy, so that it becomes insipid and uninspiring? More often then not, enrichment requires struggle and effort.
Surely today’s retirees have something more to pass on to us than a love of golf and a perceived entitlement to lock themselves away in leisurevilles. That’s not citizenship; that’s secession. It’s a form of surrender, an acknowledgement of societal failure.
America is a country that celebrates liberty and individual autonomy, anyone with enough resources is free to secede. But imagine the opposite of disengagement—millions of retirees reengaging and actively working to leave behind an admirable legacy. Today’s retirees are among the best-educated people in the world. Never before have so many people had so much knowledge and so much time to impart it. They undoubtedly have wisdom to share with us. It’s no secret that strong ties between the generations lead to stronger communities and greater hope for the future.
It’s equally important that we as a nation once again recognize the importance our elders, whom we often treat less than admirably. Another way of saying that a society is youth-centered is that it ignores its elders. A recent survey found that fewer than half of all American communities have begun to address the needs of our rapidly increasing elder population. It’s time we began discussing things as basic as senior-friendly crosswalks, adult day care, and job retraining so that a skilled generation of workers has more options than being a greeter at Wal-Mart.
Worse yet, elder abuse remains a sad reality: an estimated 5 million seniors suffer from mistreatment by younger generations. Even the millionaire philanthropist and fabled socialite Brooke Astor was allegedly among their number. The stereotype of senior citizens forced by poverty and neglect to eat cat food or live in decrepit nursing homes is at times not far from the truth.
In a society that places less and less emphasis on cultural and institutional traditions, it’s worth remembering that seniors are our link with the past. They are our institutional memory, our repository of experience, and perhaps our greatest natural resource. A program in Massachusetts understands this and pairs seniors with foster children, an arrangement that facilitates both interaction and volunteerism, which is of benefit to both generations. And a promising multistate initiative, called the Experience Corps, encourages people over fifty-five to remain involved in their communities by tutoring and mentoring elementary school children.
The days when a “hoary head” was considered a “crown of gold” may be long gone—we are far more likely to dye our hair at the slightest sign of natural maturity than don a powered wig as a symbol of wisdom and authority—but that doesn’t mean our elders have any less to teach us.
It’s to be hoped we will take an interest in them, and they will take an interest in us. This should be of concern to all of us, because one day—if we’re lucky—we’ll all be old.
I took some time to readjust to my less convenient life back home. Although it was already spring, I still found myself occasionally trudging through wet snow to shovel my driveway and brush off my car. As the days grew longer, I spent countless hours prepping the lawn against crabgrass, pruning the hedges, and nurturing new plantings. Somewhere along the way, the lessons of Sun City took root; I gave up the fight to preserve my lawn’s artificial monoculture, and opted to scatter clover and wild thyme.
To me, the gardening was hard work, but I took great pleasure in sitting on my patio and surveying my modest accomplishments. I missed seeing Dave mowing his lawn at picture-perfect angles, or strapping on his leaf blower (and outsize safety goggles and headphones) for spring cleanup. And I missed Betsy applauding as I skateboarded shakily past their old house.
But I’ve become friendly with our new neighbors: a single mom and her charming teenage daughter. What they lack in gardening know-how they make up for with tasty impromptu dinners. Another neighbor, one of my close friends, impresses me with his desire to hang out with younger folks like myself. In his sixties and retired, he regularly invites me over for home-brewed beer and slow-cooked barbecue ribs. He loves to entertain my toddler daughter with his comedic antics, and my daughter adores him in return. Despite his age, he keeps current with the hip-hop music scene so that he can continue being a disc jockey for middle school dances—a favorite pastime.
Our town, thankfully, remains happily age-integrated for the most part, with strong bonds continuing to keep the generations close. Elected town officials range in age from the mid-thirties to the mid-seventies; and people of all ages routinely mingle on the sidewalks or at our new community center. When the operator of a local cinema butted heads with a sometimes less than endearing crew of teenagers loitering in his downtown parking lot, and attempted to repel them with a device that produces a painfully high-pitched noise heard only by younger ears, most people agreed that he had crossed the line. Neighboring merchants unanimously condemned the action and petitioned the town to outlaw the device. “We feel that young people are welcome members of our community and we enjoy the vitality that they bring to our town,” they wrote. Similarly, many of my peers and I enjoy hanging out with older residents. They are entertaining, and there’s a lot to learn from them.
I can’t help thinking that the Andersons left something wonderful behind: an authentic community with a rich history. Since moving, they’ve missed seeing our previously fractured neighborhood pull together mightily to fight the proposed firehouse—and win. Our fellow citizens finally concluded that saving an extra three dollars a month in property taxes wasn’t worth giving up our children’s green space. A better site was chosen—one that the fire chief actually preferred—and construction has already begun. The senior center remains as is. The town’s older citizens are generally a thrifty bunch, and few of them have voiced a desire for a bigger, fancier building. But we do have a newly renovated and enlarged library that is finally wheelchair accessible. Funding for the project was a contemptuous issue. It was rejected at first, but enough residents—both young and old—banded together and approved it the second time around.
The glow of victory in our neighborhood may be fading, but the park remains and our cohesion persists. Now, I can’t walk ten yards without bumping into a neighbor that I know. And we all help keep an eye on the aging seniors in our neighborhood (especially when it snows) and on one another’s children, doing our best to keep them all out of harm’s way.
My wife and I live on a corner lot, and in the warm weather it’s not unusual for half a dozen neighbors to stroll by my backyard and stay for a glass of wine or a bowl of ice cream. To me, the whimsical happenstances in a traditional community—the accidental crossings—give life its vibrancy. My patio’s often filled with three generations of neighbors at a time: the adults yapping away while the children run around the yard and swing on the hammock. If it sounds idyllic, that’s because it is. Community is precious, and I plan on soaking up as much of it as I can. It fills me with hope.
That said, in some ways Gary Lester was right. I sometimes wish our neighborhood and town had better planning. If they did, I wouldn’t have had to dedicate so much time and anxiety to campaigning for our community green. And like any parent, I worry about the safety of our daughter, occasionally allowing myself to dream of the reduced traffic and the sense of security that a gated community provides.
But when push comes to shove, I’m not interested in the Faustian bargain that living in a controlled community demands. I love my town, warts and all, and take comfort in the knowledge that no entertainment specialist designed our downtown; nor can it be bought, sold, or traded like a stock certificate.
As any parent knows, kids can be trying, and it’s true that generational peers tend to gravitate toward one another, but I still can’t bear the thought of living in community without children. I find such a fate, improbable though it may be, heartbreaking. As it is, I can hardly stand it when my wife and daughter leave town to visit relatives and the house echoes with loneliness instead of our daughter’s youthful wonderment and laughter. One day she will necessarily leave the nest, but if we’re fortunate, she’ll chose to live nearby and our garden will once again be filled with a new generation of lively youngsters.