17 ms·

Fastest-Growing Metro Area in U.S. Has No Crime or Kids

88 points by Futurebot 12y ago

VLM 12y ago
I thought for certain this was going to be a prison, but it turns out to be something kind of the same for retired people. The article mentions some demographic peculiarities, but the main point they seem to miss, is if every generation is poorer than the last as a national economic policy, and they're not leaving money on the table with this one, then who is going to live there in the future? I surely will not be able to afford it by the time I retire, at present trends. If you build something thats not sustainable on the assumption it'll be sustainable, thats not going to work well.
- NoPiece 12y ago
  Here is a house there for $157,900, so it is not like they are being exclusive by pricing people out. http://www.thevillages.com/HomeFinder/Results/detail/L15.5107 http://www.thevillages.com/HomeFinder/Results/detail/L15.510... The average person could probably cover the mortgage payment with their social security check.
  - VLM 12y ago
    I donno about that. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_... my family is in the top 10th income percentile. My wife and I make about the same, so I plugged my half that into http://www.ssa.gov/oact/quickcalc/ http://www.ssa.gov/oact/quickcalc/ and ended up with about $1500/month. So 90% of the population will have less than us, or less than me, anyway. Some mortgage calculators for the $157K house estimate $1012/month for that house leaving not too much for food, electricity, repairs, hobbies, "life". Medical care... If a dude in the top 10% income bracket can't really afford to live in the cheapest house in the entire village its getting kind of elite not "average person". (admittedly I'd have other sources of income than SS, which is probably going bankrupt before I retire anyway, and I'd probably have my wife to double the income... unless she got sick (or I got sick) in which case its pretty much financial death penalty declare bankruptcy and start over... Of course I could have a roommate, or several of them, assuming the HOA allows it) My mom is on SS and that house would cost more than her check...
    - NoPiece 12y ago
      The median house price in the US (Jan 2014) was $188k, so it doesn't make sense to say 157k is targeted at the top 10%. The average SS benefit check for a retired worker is 1,298.40. A spouse would add another 652.57. And they'd have medicare, and hopefully some savings for a down payment. http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/2014-04.html http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/2014...
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        The median house price is not affordable for the median worker. As you say, though, characterizing someone who can afford the mortgage on a $157K house as in the top 10% is way off. That was the lowest priced house available though, so who knows what proportion of the community those homes constitute.
    - akgerber 12y ago
      Many retirees have a house with a paid-off mortgage that they would sell before moving, so Social Security would just need to support their living expenses. They also have a 401(k) or pension if they took advantage of those programs. Social Security is a (very effective) program designed to prevent senior poverty, not to pay for a high-end lifestyle.
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  >>If you build something thats not sustainable on the assumption it'll be sustainable, thats not going to work well. I don't think sustainability was a priority for the Boomers. After all, they grew up and lived in an era of unparalleled prosperity, and are now retiring with the wealth they acquired. And since golf is more fun when played with others, you get retirement towns like the one in this article.
- x1798DE 12y ago
  Where are you getting the idea that every generation is poorer than the last? I personally think that there are certain trends in governance that are not doing us any favors in terms of economic stability and growth, but my most pessimistic assessment would still have each successive generation getting richer, just at a slower rate than would happen with better policies.
- brc 12y ago
  Every generation poorer than the last? No. Not unless you have major political upheaval (Zimbabwe et al) As a national economic policy? In which nation? North Korea?
- reedlaw 12y ago
  The name "Village" reminds me of the TV series, The Prisoner. In the series a British secret agent is held prisoner in a tightly-controlled, idealized community also called The Village[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_%28The_Prisoner%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_%28The_Prisoner%29
greenyoda 12y ago
“You basically have a city of 100,000 people, owned by a company.” It sounds like there are many things that can go wrong with this kind of "company town" scenario, like the company being able to overcharge residents for all sorts of goods and services by controlling what businesses can set up shop on the property. Since this complex is the size of Manhattan, it could be difficult for a resident, especially someone with impaired mobility, to go shopping in the "outside world".
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  True of course, but no more or less so than regular "government" of the people. You need look no further than Bell California, the poster child of how a few crooks can take over a small town and line their pockets. Unlike Bell, the Villages actually seems to care what their residents think :-). Given the changing demographics of the developed world (lower birth rates and longer lives shifting the median age higher) this sort of system is inevitable. It can also be an effective way to keep costs in line. If the 100,000 residents are cared for by hospitals that are not trying to maximize profits (the profits being driven by home sales, services etc) you can get pretty efficient at maintaining a solid quality of life for folks.
  - HarryHirsch 12y ago
    You need look no further than Bell California, the poster child of how a few crooks can take over a small town and line their pockets. I don't share your pessimism about government. Bell isn't a regular occurrence, and most important, it's being dealt with in the courts. Overpriced everything in company towns, on the other hand, is baked into the design. Look no further than your average college campus, where one caterer tends to have negotiated the whole concession. Independents can't even set up if they wanted to and prices do reflect the fact. On my campus we can't even order pizza for a seminar, except through Sodexo. And there's nothing you can do.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      > where one caterer tends to have negotiated the whole concession Airports is one of my favourite examples, because you're not even able to go elsewhere once you're past the security gates. It's not unusual for a single company to get the concession and then set up franchises of brands that people would normally expect to be separate. E.g. at Oslo Airport every place to buy food in the international departures area from Pizza Hut to the "upscale" champagne bar and lounges is run by the same company.
rdl 12y ago
I'd love more company-designed-and-built towns. There's plenty of land. I'd be happy to look at a town built by a private company (probably a single-purpose entity, but imagine if Whole Foods got into this?). As long as there's a basic level of legal protection from state/federal law, having municipal-level government handled by a hybrid of company (as vendor/owner) and residents would be interesting. It's also something people have looked at for outside the US -- e.g. the "Free Cities" projects, and various free trade zones around the world.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  One of the most famous planned, corporate-developed communities in recent memory is Celebration, FL, originally developed by Disney. It's got a very Stepford feel to it. Almost like living in Main Street, USA in Disneyworld or Disneyland. Some people dig that, though. It's not unlike the community mentioned in this article. I wouldn't want to live there, but I can see the appeal to those who would, and I don't begrudge them their tastes. A little less extreme are some of the privately planned cities in Southern California, like Irvine or Mission Viejo. These are generally affluent "commuter cities" whose governments aren't necessarily privately run, but whose majority landholders (and de facto bosses) tend to be the original developers. I'd say the jury is still out on how successful these projects have been.[1] The SoCal privately planned communities have done pretty well for themselves, but they've benefitted tremendously from the expansion of the city, services, and infrastructure around and between them. It would seem much harder to make an isolated, self-sustaining community work. [1] As cities, that is. As corporations, they've done phenomenally well for their developers. The developer of Irvine is worth about $14 billion, which puts him in the running for richest man in Southern California.
  - eclipxe 12y ago
    Irvine is definitely not a commuter city. It is the hub of business in Orange County with many people commuting from other cities and counties into Irvine. Mission Viejo on the other hand is a commuter city. Both are the brain child of Donald Bren (who happens to have donated a large sum to UC Irvine and the CS school is now named after him ) Zot.
nlh 12y ago
This is probably an insanely pessimistic view, but my first instinct after reading this is that there's got to be some absolute misery juuuuuuust below the surface of this place. Having seen and dealt with lots of HOAs (and seen how incalculably awful they can be), I've got to imagine that life in The Villages is probably pretty good if you play along with all the rules, trim your hedges just so, and keep paying those dues and growing old quickly and quietly. But if you're the kind of person who wants to change something, or is unhappy about something, or wants to improve something, or wants to do something even a tiny bit outside the boundaries, life gets rough pretty quickly. "I'm sorry, the board has decided you cannot do that." ... "I'm sorry, this decision is final." ... "I'm sorry, you must comply." In short: The Villages is probably pretty nice if you're a follower, and pretty nice if you're an owner, and probably pretty awful for anyone else.
- qq66 12y ago
  I think most people who want to live in a planned-out corporate retirement community with 42 golf courses are not bold iconoclasts looking to stir the pot. I'd guess that most people who move there know that they are trading conformity for predictability and are probably happy with the decision.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  I've seen HOAs that are both full of petty bureaucrats with unresolved anger issues, and ones that are out to make the community as widely accommodating as possible. No way to know without actually going and talking to folks. That said, any community with the ability to push out people unwilling to abide by the communities standards will have a higher satisfaction rating with members of the community. Whether it is by incarcerating people who violate laws (general practice in most US cities), disallowing member to said people (common in private clubs), or killing and torturing their families (seems to be a technique used in less civilized places). Some friends of mine have speculated what a retirement home for hackers would look like. Basically catering to folks who have strong opinions about "how" to live their lives. It isn't an easy question to answer.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
ThomPete 12y ago
You can take any well off group and isolate them and think you can extrapolate all sorts of things out of it. This place is an anomaly nothing more nothing less.
epochwolf 12y ago
Most of my mom's extended family lives in The Villages, I've been there quite a few times. It's a nice place and my grandparents have few complaints about how things are run.
- karlkatzke 12y ago
  Have you had discussions with your mom's extended family about what should happen as they near the end of their lives? My grandparents moved to Hot Springs Village in their 60s. Grandpa died this year (after having a major heart attack with EMS more than 45 minutes away...) and they hadn't really discussed what to do with the house, or Grandma now that she's losing her faculties. She certainly can't stay in the house because there's no help for her and she cannot live by herself. I'm reading this thread because my aunt and uncle moved to the Villages, and it's really split them from the rest of the family. My parents and I disagree with their choice strongly. We intend to stay as mentally and physically active as possible as long as we can; to do this we're going to put ourselves in places where we're around people of varying ages who will open us up to new ideas, that have good medical infrastructure, and we're going to live in places where we aren't dependent on cars.
  - epochwolf 12y ago
    Many times. My grandmother was a hospice nurse for most of her career.
ams6110 12y ago
The Villages: where baby boomers go to die.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- reactor 12y ago
  And what about you?
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    Baby Boomers' parents generally didn't die in weird corporate towns - why would their children or grandchildren necessarily follow them? Although, if I squint when I look at planned corporate communities, they do somewhat look like an extended iOS. This may be the future:)
thrownaway2424 12y ago
Amusing that this should be on the front page at the same time as the Atlantic article about Denver's transportation policy. The Villages is basically a pedestrian's nightmare, without sidewalks or anything worth walking to or past. It also has no businesses, being completely reliant on the surrounding area for goods and services and entertainment. Anyway, whenever you see the claim "fastest growing" you should just go ahead and substitute "small" and then the whole phenomenon makes way more sense. There was a period where Bryan/College Station, Texas, was the fastest growing metropolitan area in America. That didn't make it a nice place.
- karlkatzke 12y ago
  I resemble that accusation. (I live in Bryan/College Station, and did not graduate from TAMU, although I did work there for a few years.) No, really, B/CS is actually rather a nice place to live. It's continuing to grow pretty rapidly, the neighbors are nice, there are places to live without HOAs, and there's more than enough to do that doesn't involve drinking or college students.
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    Maybe it's lovely now. Twenty years ago it was a dump, literally ... the TAMU socialist party newsletter (yes, really!) busted employees from the local Elf/Atochem factory dumping arsenic into the local reservoirs at midnight.
rwhitman 12y ago
My parents live in a retirement village, similar much smaller and in Pennsylvania. I could rant about this forever. For my parents, when they were very mobile and active it was a blast. Today both of them are in poor health with very little mobility. They live in a place far away from any amenities or in any commutable distance to the city, so all my siblings live far away. The community is designed like standard exurb suburban vomit - no sidewalks, houses spaced apart too far, the community clubhouse is miles from anything. When there is a health emergency they're often left on their own. There are a lot of health emergencies. My dad now needs more or less 24/7 care. They have a nurse that comes by 3 days a week, the nurse staffing in the area is completely overwhelmed and the nurses they send are really unqualified to do much of anything and never show up half the time. The area they live in was previously mostly rural and the local hospital is unequipped for anything my dad needs, or any qualified doctors so they drive 30 minutes to the next hospital away. Long story short the real problem is what they hinted to - most of the retirees in this places are in their late 60's early 70's still. When they all hit 80 something what happens? The services in the area where these things spring up aren't even remotely equipped to handle the volume of long term medical care needed to keep these folks afloat. They're going to suffer and families are going to scramble to deal with it en masse

88 points by Futurebot 12y ago

VLM 12y ago

I thought for certain this was going to be a prison, but it turns out to be something kind of the same for retired people. The article mentions some demographic peculiarities, but the main point they seem to miss, is if every generation is poorer than the last as a national economic policy, and they're not leaving money on the table with this one, then who is going to live there in the future? I surely will not be able to afford it by the time I retire, at present trends. If you build something thats not sustainable on the assumption it'll be sustainable, thats not going to work well.

NoPiece 12y ago
Here is a house there for $157,900, so it is not like they are being exclusive by pricing people out. http://www.thevillages.com/HomeFinder/Results/detail/L15.5107 http://www.thevillages.com/HomeFinder/Results/detail/L15.510... The average person could probably cover the mortgage payment with their social security check.
- VLM 12y ago
  I donno about that. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_... my family is in the top 10th income percentile. My wife and I make about the same, so I plugged my half that into http://www.ssa.gov/oact/quickcalc/ http://www.ssa.gov/oact/quickcalc/ and ended up with about $1500/month. So 90% of the population will have less than us, or less than me, anyway. Some mortgage calculators for the $157K house estimate $1012/month for that house leaving not too much for food, electricity, repairs, hobbies, "life". Medical care... If a dude in the top 10% income bracket can't really afford to live in the cheapest house in the entire village its getting kind of elite not "average person". (admittedly I'd have other sources of income than SS, which is probably going bankrupt before I retire anyway, and I'd probably have my wife to double the income... unless she got sick (or I got sick) in which case its pretty much financial death penalty declare bankruptcy and start over... Of course I could have a roommate, or several of them, assuming the HOA allows it) My mom is on SS and that house would cost more than her check...
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    The median house price in the US (Jan 2014) was $188k, so it doesn't make sense to say 157k is targeted at the top 10%. The average SS benefit check for a retired worker is 1,298.40. A spouse would add another 652.57. And they'd have medicare, and hopefully some savings for a down payment. http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/2014-04.html http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/2014...
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      The median house price is not affordable for the median worker. As you say, though, characterizing someone who can afford the mortgage on a $157K house as in the top 10% is way off. That was the lowest priced house available though, so who knows what proportion of the community those homes constitute.
  - akgerber 12y ago
    Many retirees have a house with a paid-off mortgage that they would sell before moving, so Social Security would just need to support their living expenses. They also have a 401(k) or pension if they took advantage of those programs. Social Security is a (very effective) program designed to prevent senior poverty, not to pay for a high-end lifestyle.
enraged_camel 12y ago
>>If you build something thats not sustainable on the assumption it'll be sustainable, thats not going to work well. I don't think sustainability was a priority for the Boomers. After all, they grew up and lived in an era of unparalleled prosperity, and are now retiring with the wealth they acquired. And since golf is more fun when played with others, you get retirement towns like the one in this article.
x1798DE 12y ago
Where are you getting the idea that every generation is poorer than the last? I personally think that there are certain trends in governance that are not doing us any favors in terms of economic stability and growth, but my most pessimistic assessment would still have each successive generation getting richer, just at a slower rate than would happen with better policies.
brc 12y ago
Every generation poorer than the last? No. Not unless you have major political upheaval (Zimbabwe et al) As a national economic policy? In which nation? North Korea?
reedlaw 12y ago
The name "Village" reminds me of the TV series, The Prisoner. In the series a British secret agent is held prisoner in a tightly-controlled, idealized community also called The Village[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_%28The_Prisoner%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_%28The_Prisoner%29

greenyoda 12y ago

“You basically have a city of 100,000 people, owned by a company.” It sounds like there are many things that can go wrong with this kind of "company town" scenario, like the company being able to overcharge residents for all sorts of goods and services by controlling what businesses can set up shop on the property. Since this complex is the size of Manhattan, it could be difficult for a resident, especially someone with impaired mobility, to go shopping in the "outside world".

ChuckMcM 12y ago
True of course, but no more or less so than regular "government" of the people. You need look no further than Bell California, the poster child of how a few crooks can take over a small town and line their pockets. Unlike Bell, the Villages actually seems to care what their residents think :-). Given the changing demographics of the developed world (lower birth rates and longer lives shifting the median age higher) this sort of system is inevitable. It can also be an effective way to keep costs in line. If the 100,000 residents are cared for by hospitals that are not trying to maximize profits (the profits being driven by home sales, services etc) you can get pretty efficient at maintaining a solid quality of life for folks.
- HarryHirsch 12y ago
  You need look no further than Bell California, the poster child of how a few crooks can take over a small town and line their pockets. I don't share your pessimism about government. Bell isn't a regular occurrence, and most important, it's being dealt with in the courts. Overpriced everything in company towns, on the other hand, is baked into the design. Look no further than your average college campus, where one caterer tends to have negotiated the whole concession. Independents can't even set up if they wanted to and prices do reflect the fact. On my campus we can't even order pizza for a seminar, except through Sodexo. And there's nothing you can do.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    > where one caterer tends to have negotiated the whole concession Airports is one of my favourite examples, because you're not even able to go elsewhere once you're past the security gates. It's not unusual for a single company to get the concession and then set up franchises of brands that people would normally expect to be separate. E.g. at Oslo Airport every place to buy food in the international departures area from Pizza Hut to the "upscale" champagne bar and lounges is run by the same company.

rdl 12y ago

I'd love more company-designed-and-built towns. There's plenty of land. I'd be happy to look at a town built by a private company (probably a single-purpose entity, but imagine if Whole Foods got into this?). As long as there's a basic level of legal protection from state/federal law, having municipal-level government handled by a hybrid of company (as vendor/owner) and residents would be interesting. It's also something people have looked at for outside the US -- e.g. the "Free Cities" projects, and various free trade zones around the world.

jonnathanson 12y ago
One of the most famous planned, corporate-developed communities in recent memory is Celebration, FL, originally developed by Disney. It's got a very Stepford feel to it. Almost like living in Main Street, USA in Disneyworld or Disneyland. Some people dig that, though. It's not unlike the community mentioned in this article. I wouldn't want to live there, but I can see the appeal to those who would, and I don't begrudge them their tastes. A little less extreme are some of the privately planned cities in Southern California, like Irvine or Mission Viejo. These are generally affluent "commuter cities" whose governments aren't necessarily privately run, but whose majority landholders (and de facto bosses) tend to be the original developers. I'd say the jury is still out on how successful these projects have been.[1] The SoCal privately planned communities have done pretty well for themselves, but they've benefitted tremendously from the expansion of the city, services, and infrastructure around and between them. It would seem much harder to make an isolated, self-sustaining community work. [1] As cities, that is. As corporations, they've done phenomenally well for their developers. The developer of Irvine is worth about $14 billion, which puts him in the running for richest man in Southern California.
- eclipxe 12y ago
  Irvine is definitely not a commuter city. It is the hub of business in Orange County with many people commuting from other cities and counties into Irvine. Mission Viejo on the other hand is a commuter city. Both are the brain child of Donald Bren (who happens to have donated a large sum to UC Irvine and the CS school is now named after him ) Zot.

nlh 12y ago

This is probably an insanely pessimistic view, but my first instinct after reading this is that there's got to be some absolute misery juuuuuuust below the surface of this place. Having seen and dealt with lots of HOAs (and seen how incalculably awful they can be), I've got to imagine that life in The Villages is probably pretty good if you play along with all the rules, trim your hedges just so, and keep paying those dues and growing old quickly and quietly. But if you're the kind of person who wants to change something, or is unhappy about something, or wants to improve something, or wants to do something even a tiny bit outside the boundaries, life gets rough pretty quickly. "I'm sorry, the board has decided you cannot do that." ... "I'm sorry, this decision is final." ... "I'm sorry, you must comply." In short: The Villages is probably pretty nice if you're a follower, and pretty nice if you're an owner, and probably pretty awful for anyone else.

qq66 12y ago
I think most people who want to live in a planned-out corporate retirement community with 42 golf courses are not bold iconoclasts looking to stir the pot. I'd guess that most people who move there know that they are trading conformity for predictability and are probably happy with the decision.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I've seen HOAs that are both full of petty bureaucrats with unresolved anger issues, and ones that are out to make the community as widely accommodating as possible. No way to know without actually going and talking to folks. That said, any community with the ability to push out people unwilling to abide by the communities standards will have a higher satisfaction rating with members of the community. Whether it is by incarcerating people who violate laws (general practice in most US cities), disallowing member to said people (common in private clubs), or killing and torturing their families (seems to be a technique used in less civilized places). Some friends of mine have speculated what a retirement home for hackers would look like. Basically catering to folks who have strong opinions about "how" to live their lives. It isn't an easy question to answer.
- maxerickson 12y ago

ThomPete 12y ago

You can take any well off group and isolate them and think you can extrapolate all sorts of things out of it. This place is an anomaly nothing more nothing less.

epochwolf 12y ago

Most of my mom's extended family lives in The Villages, I've been there quite a few times. It's a nice place and my grandparents have few complaints about how things are run.

karlkatzke 12y ago
Have you had discussions with your mom's extended family about what should happen as they near the end of their lives? My grandparents moved to Hot Springs Village in their 60s. Grandpa died this year (after having a major heart attack with EMS more than 45 minutes away...) and they hadn't really discussed what to do with the house, or Grandma now that she's losing her faculties. She certainly can't stay in the house because there's no help for her and she cannot live by herself. I'm reading this thread because my aunt and uncle moved to the Villages, and it's really split them from the rest of the family. My parents and I disagree with their choice strongly. We intend to stay as mentally and physically active as possible as long as we can; to do this we're going to put ourselves in places where we're around people of varying ages who will open us up to new ideas, that have good medical infrastructure, and we're going to live in places where we aren't dependent on cars.
- epochwolf 12y ago
  Many times. My grandmother was a hospice nurse for most of her career.

ams6110 12y ago

The Villages: where baby boomers go to die.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
reactor 12y ago
And what about you?
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Baby Boomers' parents generally didn't die in weird corporate towns - why would their children or grandchildren necessarily follow them? Although, if I squint when I look at planned corporate communities, they do somewhat look like an extended iOS. This may be the future:)

thrownaway2424 12y ago

Amusing that this should be on the front page at the same time as the Atlantic article about Denver's transportation policy. The Villages is basically a pedestrian's nightmare, without sidewalks or anything worth walking to or past. It also has no businesses, being completely reliant on the surrounding area for goods and services and entertainment. Anyway, whenever you see the claim "fastest growing" you should just go ahead and substitute "small" and then the whole phenomenon makes way more sense. There was a period where Bryan/College Station, Texas, was the fastest growing metropolitan area in America. That didn't make it a nice place.

karlkatzke 12y ago
I resemble that accusation. (I live in Bryan/College Station, and did not graduate from TAMU, although I did work there for a few years.) No, really, B/CS is actually rather a nice place to live. It's continuing to grow pretty rapidly, the neighbors are nice, there are places to live without HOAs, and there's more than enough to do that doesn't involve drinking or college students.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Maybe it's lovely now. Twenty years ago it was a dump, literally ... the TAMU socialist party newsletter (yes, really!) busted employees from the local Elf/Atochem factory dumping arsenic into the local reservoirs at midnight.

rwhitman 12y ago

My parents live in a retirement village, similar much smaller and in Pennsylvania. I could rant about this forever. For my parents, when they were very mobile and active it was a blast. Today both of them are in poor health with very little mobility. They live in a place far away from any amenities or in any commutable distance to the city, so all my siblings live far away. The community is designed like standard exurb suburban vomit - no sidewalks, houses spaced apart too far, the community clubhouse is miles from anything. When there is a health emergency they're often left on their own. There are a lot of health emergencies. My dad now needs more or less 24/7 care. They have a nurse that comes by 3 days a week, the nurse staffing in the area is completely overwhelmed and the nurses they send are really unqualified to do much of anything and never show up half the time. The area they live in was previously mostly rural and the local hospital is unequipped for anything my dad needs, or any qualified doctors so they drive 30 minutes to the next hospital away. Long story short the real problem is what they hinted to - most of the retirees in this places are in their late 60's early 70's still. When they all hit 80 something what happens? The services in the area where these things spring up aren't even remotely equipped to handle the volume of long term medical care needed to keep these folks afloat. They're going to suffer and families are going to scramble to deal with it en masse