While they
may not seem significant, age-restricted living spaces are a brand-new utopian
idea sold to senior citizens. Some are just an apartment building but others,
especially in the South (the most famous is the Villages in Florida) are
massive complexes of tens of thousands of people living in a perfectly designed
paradise for the old. These places are growing and attract more and more older
people to live in a world with no children, and where they can only visit for
about a month a year.
The
author makes the argument that these are terrible for our greater society
because they draw out our elderly population, that is a community’s memory of
its history and a source of volunteerism and social good. It disrupts the links
between generations and also takes major amounts of tax money out of government
revenues, especially the education system. I am inclined to agree with the
author. As a young person, it’s disturbing to see that I pay social security
taxes into a fund that is used so that old people can go on 20-30 year
vacations, paying no taxes to local communities and cutting themselves off from
reality. Because of school funding limitations, more communities are building
adults-only zoning areas and that means less housing for people with children,
driving the birthrate even further down as parents realize how expensive it
will be to have children. I think these
things have a major effect on the political polarization of the country and lead
to a lack of understanding between people. Age segregation is segregation plain
and simple.
I will
acknowledge, however, why people choose to go to these places. We now live in a
society that causes people to move long distances more and more. Adult sons and
daughters cannot be expected to live near their parents, and often live in
different states. When a job comes calling, it can be hard to stay. Because of
that, seniors lose the connections they once had to their old communities and
often choose to go to another.
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