For 40 years while they worked and raised a family, Henry and Virginia Fox lived in the same house in west suburban River Forest.
Once they retired at 60 years old, however, it was like being shot from a gun. Suddenly addicted to travel and novelty, they moved seven times in 15 years. Nothing compelled them to move each time, except boredom. “My husband has had a quadruple bypass and we don’t play golf,” says Mrs. Fox. “So moving is like a hobby. We love redecorating; we keep scrapbooks for each home we’ve lived in. And I like unpacking — it’s like Christmas.”
Such stories are confounding retirement-community developers across the country. Even the granddaddy of them all, Del Webb Corp. in Phoenix, is scrapping its shuffleboard courts in favor of more modern attractions, like computer labs, weight rooms and lap pools.
That’s because retirees today are completely different from the graybeards of a generation ago.
In fact, they may not even have gray beards. Voluntarily or involuntarily, middle-age Americans are suffering layoffs or taking buyouts in record numbers. “The age of people in active adult retirement communities is coming down,” says William Becker, a Teaneck, N.J., marketing consultant. “Typically, 10 to 13 percent are now under the age of 55.”
These younger residents aren’t necessarily ready to be put out to pasture. Rather than grab a gold watch, they may ease out of the work force over a period of several years as a part-time consultant — or may even use retirement as a springboard to a new career.
Take Iris and Irwin Fenster. He’s 61 and still runs the family dry-cleaning business. She’s 56 and looking for a full-time job as a bookkeeper. But they moved to Lake Ridge, an all-adult community in Toms River, N.J., because of its lavish recreational facilities and freedom from yardwork. “When we want to retire, we won’t have to move,” says Mrs. Fenster.
Increasingly, older Americans want to retire in a community that offers more than endless gossip and golf. One in the planning stages is the Hamptons of Frederick, Md., which will have an on-site executive business service, with secretarial support and teleconferencing facilities.
On the other side of the spectrum, Americans are living longer, and in better health, than ever before. And while time eventually constrains nearly everyone’s world, healthy older retirees, like the Foxes, aren’t content to fish away their lives, either.
The lengthening span Americans spend in retirement is profoundly affecting housing wants and needs. After all, if you opt out at 55, you might spend as much of your adult life retired as you did working.
According to the American Association of Retired Persons, 85 percent of retirees say they don’t want to move out of their current homes. But those most likely to stay put are the lowest income groups and those who live in rural areas. The wealthier and younger retirees are seeking cushier, more stimulating lives in new settings.
Del Webb, the country’s eighth-largest publicly traded home builder, invented the concept of seniors-only playgrounds 36 years ago with Sun City in Phoenix.
Their idea, then and now, was to lure equity-rich empty nesters into Sun Belt resort communities packed with activities and lavish rec centers, where they’d stay until infirmities forced their move into living environments with more support services.
But Del Webb’s internal studies show that 45 percent of their 80,000 home buyers have moved more than once since turning 55. To keep them within Webb’s web of eight communities, the company keeps upgrading its floor plans and amenities, and offering discounts to those who buy another Del Webb home.
Besides dumping old-fogy pastimes like shuffleboard, the company is incorporating elements seniors say they want, such as more room for entertaining, golf-cart parking, storage for sports equipment, fancy media and computer rooms, better lighting, easy-care surfaces, tighter security and “ergonomic” design that makes it easier for disabled and arthritic people to get around.
Clarice Uhl, 76, and her husband, Edward, 80, former Californians have purchased nine Del Webb homes within Sun City West in Phoenix during the past 17 years.
“Some of the rooms in the earlier models were so small they seemed like closets,” says Mrs. Uhl. “So each time we buy we change things, like enlarging rooms, adding windows and redoing the kitchen.”
Mild climate is another attraction for retirees. But although Florida is still the main magnet, several studies have shown that many are becoming disenchanted with crime and overcrowding in the Sunshine State. Some are moving north, particularly to low-cost-of-living areas such as the Midwest and the Carolinas.
College towns are popular too with well-educated retirees who value high culture over a warm climate. Richard and Myriam Hallock, both 76, left Pacific Palisades, Calif., and glorious weather to retire in snowy Oberlin, Ohio. Both Oberlin College alumni, they rejected Sun Belt retirement communities as too sterile.
“Here we can go to lectures, concerts and plays several times a day if we want,” says Mr. Hallock. The developer from whom they bought, Kendal Corp., has also built facilities near universities in such previously unlikely retirement meccas as Hanover, N.H.; Charlottesville, Va.; Ithaca, N.Y.; and Bloomington, Ind.
The trend toward living in college towns supports AARP’s findings that 80 percent of older Americans don’t want to be segregated into communities specifically for older people. They prefer to live in a neighborhood with people of all ages.
Seniors want their independence because they don’t want to be a burden to their families, according to Cornell University professor Phyllis Moen. “So there’s a big need for alternate housing and community-based care arrangements,” she says.
