A Good Choice for Many
Some of my best friends live in an all-senior environment. And some of them don’t.
After six-plus years in a community populated only by adults, I’d hardly disagree with views on adult-only living as detailed in a recent Los Angeles Times story by Ray Kovitz of Mission Viejo. He covered the pros and the cons, interviewing “real” people and academics with apparently special expertise.
Only Robert Fulton of the University of Minnesota ruffled my graying feathers. Fulton sees “the retirement city movement” as another strategy of society to cope with death.” That’s simply far wide of the mark.
Society did not create adult communities; builders and developers--folks like Ross Cortese and Del Webb being among the pioneers--developed housing segregated in terms of the age of occupants. People over 50 choose to buy or rent--nobody forces them.
All of the adult community residents I know--and they number into the hundreds--made their own decisions. Nobody--not even the ubiquitous “society” as suggested by academic Fulton “isolated those most likely to die.”
Mortality isn’t restricted to adult communities, brother Fulton.
While an attempt will be made to avoid the platitudes of life in an adult community, some basic principles demand enunciation. First and pre-eminent, everyone--and that’s 100%, with no exceptions--who chooses an adult community does so with a central interest in both residential and personal security.
Adult community residents like being able to take walks after dark without wondering if someone sinister is lurking in a shadow. Some senior adults like to be able to leave their homes unlocked by day. Anytime they leave home they like having a better than average chance that their house will not be violated in terms of any forced entry.
Incidentally, retired or semi-retired or non-retired folks living in adult communities tend to know their neighbors better, without sacrificing personal privacy. Adult neighbors take in the mail and newspapers of people who are away. And there’s also an informal neighborhood watch over houses whose owners are off and gone. Senior folks are travel prone.
“Snow-birding” owners who winter in Florida or Arizona take special security precautions. They have someone “look in” occasionally and have a time-regulated light on during the evenings. But there’s more to adult-only community living than just being or feeling secure from vandals and burglars.
So let’s talk age segregation. Why live among people with whom you have age category in common? I would dislike having to apologize for mentioning World War II more than the Korean conflict or the fighting in Vietnam.
When I’m playing golf, it makes me feel good that my partner or opponent is using a longer iron than I do to get to a green. Some of them use shorter irons too for a comparable shot.
A similar age-level is evident on the tennis court and in the pool--although there are some slashing over-50 tennis players and some multi-lap swimmers who keep up the pace for 15 to 30 minutes. Thank heavens, they are few.
One dividend of life in an adult community is the tranquility. Our 30-year-old daughter often comments favorably when she visits. But some might mention that it’s “too quiet.”
That’s one of the reasons we like to entertain family--and many of us do--on holidays. They come and they play and tend to tire us a bit. When they leave we heave a sigh, clean up and go to bed early.
Adults generally take a lot of walks these days and it’s nice to have grandchildren to lope along on occasion. The walking cadre gets a lot of medical motivation from physicians who prescribe 30 minutes of brisk walking at least four or five days a week. If you’ve recovered from a heart attack or bypass surgery, you’re usually under orders to walk 30 minutes every day.
Our dog-owning adults also have their daily pedestrian ritual to perform. Pets are generally favored by older/senior persons and the affection for a dog or cat is obvious.
But some pet owners fail to keep their dogs on leash while walking and a few others permit their cats to rove. In a community with a high rate of bird seed dispensing, prowling cats are less welcome than eve pesky squirrels which raid bird feeders at the drop of a few seeds.
Because of commonality of age group, residents of adult-only communities seem to be friendlier than are adult neighbors in suburban areas. Since we’ve all moved here from somewhere else and because we seem to want to know other folks with common interests (be they gardening, golfing or goofing off), we’re more open to making new friends.
We also have more time and more opportunities. New residents depend on those already on board to provide information about churches, shopping, medical services and restaurants.
My wife mentioned that newly made adult friends demonstrate considerable compassion and helpfulness. If you’re going to an airport, it’s seldom a problem to have someone drive you in your car and pick you up a week or so later. A couple in their 80s who recently moved from here into a life-care community had a long list of friends who volunteered to drive this popular husband and wife to doctor appointments or to pick up their groceries or the mixings for their evening cocktails.
Most of us have a guest room for friends who come for a few days or for the over-18 son or daughter who needs a place to live for awhile. The couple across the street has a 35ish bachelor son who usually spends a few months each summer with them.
A carpenter, he built them a nice porch last year. Another couple now has a son who’s with them while recuperating from a serious leg injury, and he provides an unexpected youthful dividend for the young women lifeguards at our pool.
Little wonder that real estate executive Wesley Foster agrees with builders and other alert realtors that woopies (well-off older people) are becoming an increasingly vital segment of the housing market. Foster, who recently turned 50 himself, said that the Consumer Research Center has indicated that woopies--the counterpart of yuppies--now account for 42% of U.S. consumer spending.
Foster said that his firm has discovered that woopies like something extra in the homes they elect for their senior years and also can “afford the stimulating extras even better than their high-living young counterparts.”
Joe Sprows, sales manager in our still-abuilding adult community, said the breadth of the senior home market here is such that new models are being added in the over-$175,000 range, while other new models include some town houses “so we still can have a nice dwelling for those folks unable or unwilling to pay much more than $100,000.”
An executive at the 22-year-old Rossmoor Leisure World community near Silver Spring, Md., for people over 50, added that design plans for new high-rise condo apartment building were changed last year to provide more large three-bedroom dwellings to meet the deep-pocket tastes of couples and single persons unwilling to settle for one-and-two-bedroom units.
Washington advertising executive Marvin Gerstin, who now knows what it’s like to be over 60, said he now is convinced that moving into a new house is especially stimulating for a couple or person over 55.
“I’ve seen a senior housing switch to an adult community or an all-adult apartment building enrich and stimulate the lives of some friends. Frankly, I’m now geting excited at the prospect of doing the same thing myself,” Gerstin said.
You can say that again Marvin--and a lot of over-50 folks are doing just that. Most of them figure that the security and life-style advantages outweigh the disadvantages of being in a so-called non-real-world, age-segregated atmosphere where pervasive wrinkles and gray/white hair are accepted as part of the package.
