Sun Belt Retirement Havens Compete to Attract Elderly

Rose Silverman is a Florida booster, no doubt about it.

The 81-year-old exercise instructor offers morning aerobics classes and encouragement to seniors six days a week in the shade of a tile-roofed bathhouse on a beach that has drawn tourists for decades.

“The ocean, the climate, these were the biggest attractions,” said Silverman, who retired here in 1967 from New York’s Long Island. “As you see, I’m very enthusiastic about Florida.”

But the face of retirement migration is changing, and old drawing cards like Miami Beach are no longer guaranteed to be flush with retirees.

“If you look at the destination of those who actually tend to move long distance, the Sun Belt is still the predominant destination,” said University of Florida geography professor Stephen Golant.

But he believes regional migration patterns through 1985 indicate that new retirees are becoming less likely to pack up and move south. Combine that with a baby bust of the Depression era about to reach retirement age, and Golant sees change ahead in the Sun Belt’s retirement image.

Other experts on elderly migration predict greater competition among destinations seeking the economic value of retirees.

“The fact that the retiring cohort is going to be somewhat smaller means that they’re going to be fiercely competed for,” said David Savageau, author of “Retirement Places Rated” and an employee relocation consultant based in Gloucester, Mass. “The losers here--maybe they don’t think of themselves as losers--would be archetypal retirement states such as Florida.”

Until recently, private enterprise influenced retirement destinations by means of developments and marketing tailored to seniors.

But some states and communities, convinced of the economic value of 65- to 75-year-old residents, are making retiree recruitment a public policy priority, Savageau said.

For communities such as Hot Springs, Ark., Savageau said, “Their identity lies in attracting retired people and attracting tourist business.

“The same thing can be said for Asheville, N.C., and Blacksburg, Va., places in the mountains that people would just fly over otherwise.”

Savageau disagrees with Golant’s belief in a migration decline. “I think retirement migration is going to increase even though there are fewer numbers of retirement persons,” he said.

Golant sees the primary impacts on housing, because the migrants need new places to live, and on recreation and leisure, “everything from golfing to vacations,” because the retirees have the free time, the money and generally good health.

The aging population also will boost spending on “everything having to do with health care and in-home nursing care,” which could become a political liability by increasing demand on state budgets to support Medicaid, Golant said.

Regionally, he said: “The Northeast and Midwest will still, of course, be out-migration areas. . . . There’s nothing on the horizon that suggests more people will move into your New Yorks and your Chicagos.”

In the Sun Belt, Golant noted, “There are an increasing number of retirement locales, such as the Carolinas, which would offer alternatives to people compared to Florida.”

Savageau believes Californians may be ready to jump ship to capitalize on their home equity, and he is seeing some backlash against retirement havens.

“Look at these little places like Kalispell, Mont., or Blacksburg, Va.,” he said. “They’re very nice places. Sure, they don’t have the year-round climate that San Diego might have, but they’re still an alternative to Florida or Arizona or south Texas.”