COLUMN ONE : When Golden Years Tarnish at Leisure World : Many of earliest buyers find their once-active lifestyles succumbing to failing health, poverty and lack of nursing care.
When Frank and Ruth Blau moved to Leisure World in 1968, they found a retirement nirvana.
The couple counted themselves among the community’s active social set. Ruth played golf with “the girls.” Ballroom dancing filled three nights each week.
But over the years, life has changed. The Blaus still live in Leisure World, but they no longer dance at any of its six recreation centers. They don’t make use of its five swimming pools or three lush golf courses. They are virtually confined to their home.
Ruth, 86, recently had cataract surgery and has had to give up golf because of her arthritis. Her 91-year-old husband is legally blind and suffers from a heart condition.
Their predicament is hardly unusual.
The Blaus are among thousands of senior citizens who took part in a grand social experiment that began a quarter of a century ago. Leaving the suburban homes where they raised families, these pioneers flooded Leisure World developments--first in Seal Beach and later Laguna Hills--in search of a setting that might shield them against the harsher realities of growing old.
Now the earliest settlers of these “active” retirement havens are seeing their golden years tarnished by deteriorating health, lack of nursing care within the communities and rapidly dwindling funds. This is no longer their Shangri-La.
A recent survey revealed that at least one in five homes in Leisure World Laguna Hills (population 21,000), is inhabited by someone blind, in a wheelchair, hooked up to life support or suffering from Alzheimer’s or other serious disability.
“What we are seeing is the aging of retirement communities themselves and the pain that is accompanying it,” said Prof. Jon Pynoos, who is an expert in elderly housing at USC’s Andrus Gerontology Center. “The communities never knew that so many would be unprepared for the ravages of aging, so they never built the infrastructure for residents who would become old and frail. That is now a major problem in almost every planned retirement community across the nation.”
When the two Leisure World communities in Orange County were completed in the early 1960s, the average age of residents was 60. It is now 76 in Laguna Hills and 78.6 at Leisure World in Seal Beach. That demographic shift is emblematic of a nationwide trend: The fastest-growing age group in the United States is made up of people 85 and older.
The aging population has changed the character of Leisure World, creating a need for a wide range of services never envisioned by the early pioneers. For example, at the Laguna Hills development:
* A host of board-and-care facilities and nursing homes have mushroomed outside the gates to cater to residents no longer able to care for themselves.
* More than 200 residents have had to sign over their homes and other assets in return for monthly payments to cover bills.
* The aging and ailing population keeps paramedics busy year-round. Capt. Glenn Sekins, who is based at Station 22 in Laguna Hills, said paramedics rush to Leisure World about 6,000 times each year, making the station the busiest in Orange County and the sixth most active in the nation. On each trip, the paramedics slip into the community of apartments, condominiums and single-family houses with their sirens switched off to keep from alarming residents, Sekins said.
* Some new organizations have joined the usual list of clubs and klatches. For example, there is a Stroke Club, an Alzheimer’s group and support groups for people who must spend long hours caring for ailing spouses. A bereavement group provides solace for those who have suffered the death of a husband or wife.
* The new frailty that grips many residents has sparked a debate within the community. Some believe that the retirement enclave should provide specialized services for its frail and disabled. Community leaders, however, say that they cannot fulfill such an obligation and that residents must provide for themselves.
“It is not that we are not sympathetic,” said Sherwood Heiser, president of Golden Rain Foundation, the community’s umbrella homeowners association. “You have to do what you perceive is best for the most, and those who are hurting are not the most. To be brutal about it, if they are hurting, go someplace else.”
Officials at other retirement communities say Leisure World is emblematic of a national trend.
“It’s an undeniable fact that someone who moved into our community 30 years ago now leads a different lifestyle,” said Ken Plonski, director of community relations for Del Webb, which pioneered retirement community living with the building of Sun City, Ariz. (pop. 47,000), in 1960.
Plonski said thousands of Sun City’s earliest settlers have moved to nursing homes and other hotel-like living arrangements because they could no longer prepare their own meals or perform daily chores.
Yet, even as their original denizens age, the Leisure World developments continue to attract a sizable share of younger retirees. The majority of residents in Leisure World Laguna Hills, which is composed of three housing corporations that maintain the homes’ exteriors and the grounds, are active seniors who hope to spend the rest of their years there.
To qualify for residency, a retiree or spouse must be at least 55 years old. The developments allow guests, but they may not stay more than 60 days a year. Home prices range from $60,000 to $600,000 at Leisure World Laguna Hills and from $40,000 to $170,000 in Seal Beach.
For thousands, the lifestyle Leisure World offers makes it their paradise, their promised land. Heaven on Earth.
But the retirement community has become a different world for those residents unprepared for the ravages of aging.
These older residents have become so frail that they almost never venture outside. A recent survey of 8,000 homes in the Laguna Hills Leisure World discovered that 686 residents are deaf, 257 are legally blind, 228 are in wheelchairs, 192 are hooked up to hospital lifeline services, 140 have Alzheimer’s, and another 48 are on life-support systems.
The numbers tell only part of the story because the survey did not inquire how many use walkers or canes, or suffer from arthritis, emphysema or other debilitating illnesses.
The four-member staff in the community’s social services department helps many of these ailing Laguna Hills residents, handling 3,500 requests for help each year--almost 70 new files each month--ranging from welfare cases to suicides.
Among the people who frequently seek help are those who moved into the community 25 years ago, said Gemma Heffernan, manager of the social services department.
Ruth Eagles wistfully remembers her early retirement years, which were untainted by the pain and boredom that now haunt her. Almost three decades ago, Eagles retired early from her job as a high school teacher in Compton, sold her Lynwood home and moved to Leisure World Laguna Hills.
She indulged in classes to learn Spanish and paint landscapes that now hang in her living room. Eagles and her best friends, two widowed sisters, would check up on one another and while away the hours shopping at the mall.
But those days are now a distant memory.
Eagles’ best friends have since died. A year ago, Eagles fainted in her home. As she fell she knocked over a large lamp. She regained consciousness to discover that the bulb had burned through the sole of her right foot.
The foot has never healed, and she spends most of the day at home, unable to climb into a bus or even to walk to the laundry room to do her wash. So Eagles is thinking about moving to a full-service facility where she won’t have to worry about getting around or being lonely.
But she’s ambivalent about moving. She believes that she cannot afford the “outrageous” monthly rent in a retirement hotel. Moreover, “I don’t know if I would like living with a lot of old people,” the 80-year-old woman said.
Many Leisure World residents eventually run out of cash and have to move in with their children, while others simply give up all their assets to sustain a few more years of living, social service officials say.
About 240 residents in Leisure World Laguna Hills have turned over their securities, homes or other assets to Saddleback Foundation, the fund-raising arm of Saddleback Memorial Medical Center next to Leisure World. By making such gifts to the nonprofit hospital, they can take advantage of tax deductions and boost their income.
The deals are fashioned as annuities so the retirees receive--until their death--a monthly payment. Those who sign over their homes are allowed to continue living in them, but the hospital takes possession when they die.
“Most who get involved in the program tend to be in their 80s,” said James D. Fry, vice president of the foundation. About “70% of the folks we are talking to need help to make ends meet.”
It is a paradox. This is a community that is home to a handful of millionaires, and the average resident’s estate is valued between $250,000 to $400,000. But scores of Leisure World Laguna Hills residents live in poverty.
The Social Security Administration estimates there are about 85 people in the Leisure World Laguna Hills community receiving Supplemental Security Income, the federal government’s welfare for very low income elderly.
Maria Burgos, coordinator of a federally subsidized home-delivered meals program, said that about 145 Leisure World seniors, many of them shut-ins, receive meals each day. They pay a nominal charge or nothing at all.
Demand for the service has grown dramatically since it began in 1982 with only a handful of recipients, Burgos said.
“Most people will not accept the service unless they can’t do anything else,” she said.
Many Leisure World residents also prefer not to contemplate the inevitable.
Fifteen years ago, more than 1,000 residents signed petitions to protest the “bad taste” of plans to build McCormick & Son Mortuary just outside one of Leisure World’s gates. The funeral home was built anyway.
Despite their attempts to ignore it, death is a stark reality in the Leisure Worlds of Laguna Hills and Seal Beach.
The weekly publication Leisure World News in Laguna Hills sometimes carries up to 10 obituaries. County records show that there were 807 deaths in 1990 at Leisure World Laguna Hills. Leisure World in Seal Beach (population 8,500) registered 410 deaths. That was 40 more than the number of deaths in Irvine, which with a population of 110,675 is 13 times larger.
The cause of death in Leisure World is largely predictable: cancer, strokes, heart disease, and sometimes just old age. But suicide is increasingly appearing on the list.
Last year, “Final Exit,” a best-selling suicide manual, sold out twice at Waldenbooks in the Laguna Hills Mall next to Leisure World. In January, there was standing room only when the book’s author and Hemlock Society founder, Derek Humphry, talked about the need to legalize doctor-assisted suicides for the terminally ill.
Humphry’s message rings true for Caroline Youngquist, an 81-year-old resident of Leisure World Laguna Hills. Only a few years ago, Youngquist’s brother, Dr. Edward Lang, took his own life to halt his suffering.
Lang’s future held nothing but dread--amputation of his remaining leg, a hernia operation and the prospects of having a third pacemaker implanted in his heart. The retired professor from Syracuse bought a shotgun and ended life on the patio of his Leisure World home.
As the volunteer representative for the Hemlock Society in Orange County, Youngquist distributes pamphlets about how terminally ill people can painlessly take their lives. Youngquist insists she has never assisted directly in anyone’s death, and has no way of telling how many people follow the instructions in the society’s manual.
Paramedics, however, are finding copies of “Final Exit” next to the bodies of dead Leisure World residents. Entire sections with titles such as “Self-Starvation,” “Storing Drugs” and “Self-Deliverance via the Plastic Bag,” have been underlined by residents who had carefully followed the book’s detailed instructions, said Sekins, who is in charge of paramedics at busy Fire Station 22.
Most residents, of course, don’t turn to suicide. Though old and frail, they struggle instead simply to remain in their homes.
The Leisure World community in Seal Beach provides a wide range of resources to care for its large population of frail elderly. The community boasts a private charitable organization--the Golden Age Foundation--providing loans of wheelchairs, walkers, canes, installations of Lifelines, blood pressure readings, free meals and many other services at no cost to needy residents. They also have within their gates a medical center with a full range of specialists including four geriatricians.
At Leisure World Laguna Hills, social workers labor to help frail and needy residents get help. But community leaders say that providing additional services would be too costly and bluntly suggest that those who need more help should consider moving out.
The community’s position has angered some residents and advocates for the disabled who argue that Leisure World discriminates against disabled seniors.
Among those are Mary Pischke, a 71-year-old double amputee, who has been fighting the governing body to provide wheelchair lifts on the community’s private buses. Pischke said she and other disabled residents are virtually imprisoned in their condominiums and cannot use the community’s facilities even though they pay their monthly fees.
“My golden years have turned rusty,” Pischke said, fighting back tears. “Look, all we disabled people need is a miserable bus with a lift and we’ll be all right.”
With some extra services, the majority of frail people in Leisure World would probably prefer to spend the rest of their lives there. Several studies have shown that between 75% and 85% of people over 60 don’t want to move, so long as they remain healthy and can continue taking care of themselves.
They’re people like Floyd Corbin.
Corbin’s 91-year-old wife, Eve, has suffered myriad maladies, including a heart condition. Two years ago, doctors told the couple that Eve would not live more than a few months.
Eve had other plans. Though she is hooked up to an oxygen machine in her bedroom most of the day, she has fought through the afflictions. Her blind 84-year-old husband has remained determined to help her.
It’s no easy task. Floyd Corbin lost his eyesight in a car accident 47 years ago, so he has memorized where everything is positioned in the room. Each table, each chair. Every morning he takes his careful, tiny steps and assists his wife to the bathroom, brushes her hair and helps her into a robe.
The couple receive lunch and dinner from neighbors who volunteer at a nearby senior citizens’ center. Neighbors buy their groceries, help him pay his bills, cut Eve’s hair, and daily put her pills in separate paper cups so she gets the right doses.
“It has made the difference between her being home where she wants to be and having to be in a nursing home,” he said.
Neighbors feel empathy for them, Corbin said, because “they know we are all in the same kettle of fish. They’re all getting old, too, and someday they will need to have someone help them.”
A Profile of Leisure World
Population: Laguna Hills, 21,000 in 12,736 homes; Seal Beach 8,500 residents in 6,608 homes.
Average Age: 76 in Laguna Hills; 78.6 in Seal Beach.
Income:
* Average resident’s net worth in Laguna Hills is between $250,000 to $400,000; there are a handful of millionaires.
* About 85 people in Laguna Hills receive Supplemental Security Income, the federal government’s welfare for those with low income.
* Each day about 145 Leisure World seniors receive subsidized meals.
* About 240 Laguna Hills Leisure World residents have turned over their homes, securities and other assets to Saddleback Foundation, in exchange for a monthly income.
Disabilities: At least one in every five homes in Leisure World Laguna Hills has a person with a serious disability. An earthquake and disaster preparedness committee found from 8,000 survey responses that:
686 residents are deaf
257 are legally blind
228 are in wheelchairs
192 hooked up to hospital lifeline services
140 have Alzheimer’s
48 are on life support
(No such statistics are available for Seal Beach.)
The ailing population in Laguna Hills keeps paramedics busy. Fire Station 22 in Laguna Hills responds to about 6,000 calls per year, making it the busiest station in Orange County and the sixth busiest in the nation.
Annual Death Rate (per 1,000 residents):
Orange County: 6
Laguna Hills: 38
Seal Beach: 51
How Seal Beach community has aged:
Average Age
1973: 75.3
1975: 75.0
1979: 76.1
1989: 77.6
1991: 78.6
Source: Leisure World, Social Security Administration and Times staff reports
Getting Into Leisure World
Age requirement: At least one person per unit must be at least 55. Others, with the exception of spouses or care providers, must be at least 45. Guests may not stay more than 60 days per calender year.
Financial requirements: Prospective buyers must prove their ability to pay the price of living in the Laguna Hills and Seal Beach Leisure World communities. Housing costs range from $60,000 to $600,000 per unit in Laguna Hills and from $40,000 to $170,000 in Seal Beach.
Housing stock in both communities is varied, including cooperative apartments, condominiums and detached homes. The community associations representing the different forms of housing set their own financial criteria for would-be buyers.
Buyers of cooperative apartments in Seal Beach Leisure World must:
* Have at least $25,000 in assets even after paying cash for an apartment.
* Earn four times the monthly homeowner association fees, which range from $215 to $350.
Buyers of cooperative apartments in Laguna Hills Leisure World must:
* Have at least $75,000 in assets in addition to the purchase price.
* Have minimum annual income of $18,000 for one person and $21,600 for two.
* Be able to pay the monthly homeowner association fee of $360 to $520 that helps to pay for exterior maintenance, landscaping and recreational activities.
Buyers of condominiums in Leisure World Laguna Hills must:
* Be able to prove a minimum annual income of $25,000.
* Pay monthly fees of $291 to $306 to cover exterior maintenance, landscaping and recreational activities.
Note: Fees in the Towers, a 311-unit condominium that provides maid service and restaurant-like dining, can be considerably higher.
Source: Leisure World
Comparing Retirement Communities
How Leisure World Laguna Hills contrasts with a combination of retirement communities in Southern California and Arizona:
Leisure World Average of Adult Laguna Hills Communities* Average annual income $40,000 $42,833 Average net worth $250,000 $272,017 Average age 76 63 In-state buyers 75% 47% All-cash sales 60% 61% People per dwelling unit 1.6 1.8 Married 50% 85% Working part or full time 25% 37% Purchasing primary home 95% 81%
* Sun Lakes, Sun City Vistoso (Tucson), Westbrook Village, Saddlebrooke (Tucson), La Cholla (Tucson) and Green Valley, Ariz.; Leisure World Oceanside and Laguna Hills, Sun Lakes (Banning), Sun City and Sun City West, Calif.
Source: Kenneth Leventhal and Co.
