Retirement Communities and Assisted Living

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares119 Views

    A Retirement Community Prepared for a Hurricane. Tornadoes Came Instead.

    by

    Hurricane Milton’s death toll was highest far from the coast where it made landfall, in a retirement community where few were braced for destructive tornadoes.Victor Linero was watching coverage of Hurricane Milton’s churn toward Florida when, suddenly, he saw a live video of a tornado near his grandfather’s home — hours before the hurricane was supposed to hit on the opposite side of the state.In a panic, Mr. Linero warned his grandfather over the phone that he needed to take cover.“I was screaming, ‘Papi, get shelter now!’” recalled Mr. Linero, 26, who was raised by his grandfather. “And then I start hearing, ‘Oh my God. Ahh!’”He heard his grandfather, Alejandro Alonso, 66, let out a final scream. Then the other end of the line went silent.By the time it was over, what looked to be two tornadoes had plowed through Spanish Lakes Country Club Village, the retirement community north of Fort Pierce where Mr. Alonso lived. They had decimated mobile homes, tossed trucks aside and toppled trees, all while Hurricane Milton was nearly 200 miles away, in the Gulf of Mexico.In the end, Mr. Alonso, his 70-year-old girlfriend and four other people were dead. Roughly 125 houses, all of them mobile homes, were destroyed. It was one of Hurricane Milton’s most perplexing ironies: that an area on the opposite coast from where the brunt of the hurricane hit saw more deaths than any other single spot during the storm.“We were not in an evacuation area,” Anita Perrotta, who lives in the community with her husband, said as she described the two of them hiding in their home at Spanish Lakes while the tornado threw debris against it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      3 Die Amid Outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease at an Assisted Living Home

      by

      Twenty-five people connected to the home, in Albany, N.Y., have been hospitalized amid the outbreak, officials said.Three people who tested positive for Legionnaires’ disease have died amid an outbreak at an assisted living home in Albany, N.Y., that sickened at least seven others, officials said on Friday.The deaths came amid what Maribeth Miller, the interim Albany County health commissioner, described in an email as a “cluster” of Legionnaires’ cases at the Peregrine Senior Living at Shaker home that officials had learned of on Aug. 30.Water samples from the home showed the presence of Legionella bacteria, which causes the disease, Ms. Miller wrote. She said the county Health Department had placed certain restrictions on water use at the home, one of 11 that Peregrine operates in New York and Maryland, while more tests were conducted. Water filters have been installed on some showers and sinks so that residents can still use bathrooms, she added.“There is no threat to the community at large,” Ms. Miller wrote.Kristyn Ganim, the home’s executive director, said employees had been working with health officials to address the outbreak. In addition to installing filters across the water treatment system, she said, staff members were providing residents with bottled water.“I want to reassure all of our residents, staff and visitors that our community is completely safe,” she said in a statement.Legionella bacteria occurs naturally in water, and people typically contract Legionnaires’ disease by inhaling mists or water vapor containing the bacteria, according to the state Health Department. The bacteria can grow in poorly maintained industrial water systems; cooling towers; or heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Sandwich Generation Is Getting Squished

      by

      In early 2020, I wrote about the struggles of the “sandwich generation,” demographers’ label for those who are caring for children and aging relatives at the same time. The sandwich generation parents I spoke to in that prepandemic moment talked about the emotional and financial toll of that level of caregiving responsibility. Some had to leave full-time employment or change jobs because caring for a parent with failing health and children with their own abundant needs took too much time and required too much flexibility.More than two years later, I wanted to check back in on this group (which, according to Pew Research Center, includes more than half of 40-somethings). As I’ve written regularly, the difficulties facing both parents and child care workers can be interconnected: The child care industry doesn’t pay workers enough to prevent a lot of turnover, many centers are short-staffed, parents are already paying more for child care than they are for housing in many states and inflation is making everything worse.Elder care has similar challenges. The AARP Public Policy Institute, which tracks nursing home staffing shortages by state, reports that an average of 25.1 percent of nursing homes don’t have enough direct care workers. In some states, it’s dire — over 60 percent of nursing homes in Maine, Minnesota and Wyoming are short on staff. Nursing home work became a particularly dangerous job during the pandemic: As Scientific American reported last year, “Workers in skilled nursing facilities had at least 80 deaths per 100,000 full-time employees” in 2020.Wages in the direct care field, which includes caregivers at private residences, assisted living centers and nursing homes, are “are persistently and notoriously low,” according to PHI, an advocacy group that researches elder care and disability issues. PHI noted, in a report last year, that these workers “are predominantly women, people of color and immigrants,” and that “median annual earnings are just $20,200,” due in part to “high rates of part-time employment” — and how do you support a family on that?Considering the toll Covid took on residents of nursing homes, there’s additional incentive for adult children to keep their parents living with them at home as long as possible, and that can require emotional and financial compromises. Women are more likely to be doing this care — according to the Family Caregiver Alliance, as of 2015, “The average caregiver is a 49-year-old woman who works outside the home and provides 20 hours per week of unpaid care to her mother.”Rebecca Jones’s experience is emblematic of the sandwich generation pandemic crunch. Her mother was diagnosed with early-onset dementia in 2014, which she called “a cruel and relentless illness.” Still, “we really dedicated ourselves to trying to keep her home as long as possible,” she told me. Her family relied on day programs in New England, where they live, to keep her mother occupied. One of her mother’s programs shut down because of a lack of funding before Covid hit. Jones scrambled to find another program, only for it to shut down along with everything else in March 2020.Jones was working as a paralegal at that time, and her husband is a mechanical insulator. In 2020, one of her children was a toddler and the other was an infant, and they were enrolled in a home day care. Jones, her father and her sister worked to get her mother a home health aide through Medicaid, she said. The family was able to manage, with difficulty, until March 2021, when all their arrangements collapsed at once: The woman who ran the home day care took another job, so Jones’s child care disappeared. Her mother’s condition became so bad that she could no longer remain at home, even with a health aide five hours a day.It was all too much. “I gave up a career that I love,” Jones said, because the cheapest child care she could find was $2,500 a month for her two kids, and that was financially out of her reach. Her mother, a school secretary, worked up until the day she was diagnosed with dementia, but “there’s no safety net for the elder working class. That was really so devastating,” Jones said. Her mother died that spring.According to an AARP survey from 2021, caring for older family members is a financial strain for many: “The typical annual total is significant: $7,242. On average, family caregivers are spending 26 percent of their income on caregiving activities.” That’s just the out-of-pocket cost, which doesn’t account for the sweat equity that loved ones are putting in. PHI has estimated that 43 million people provide unpaid caregiving to friends and family members, and that their “economic contribution is valued at $470 billion.”The elder care crunch is only going to become more dire as the population ages. According to a 2022 report on the imperative to improve nursing home quality from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine:The United States, like much of the world, has an aging population. Half of today’s 65-year-olds will need some paid long-term care services before they die. By 2030, one in four Americans will be age 65 or older. The fastest growing group will be those over age 85; this group is expected to grow from 6.5 million to 11.8 million by 2035 and 19 million by 2060. Marriage and fertility rates have declined, while life expectancy has increased, meaning fewer family caregivers will be available.The report has recommendations for improving nursing home care including increasing federal Medicaid payments to states, requiring that states use funding to raise workers’ pay and expand staffing, and requiring a full-time infection control specialist. There’s also need to form some kind of infrastructure for home care, like the kind Rebecca Jones was doing, said Amy York, the executive director of the Eldercare Workforce Alliance.But many ailing loved ones need care now, and help isn’t necessarily on the horizon. I asked York what sandwich generation parents can do in this moment, and she said, “One of the things that needs to be happening is that caregivers need to speak out.” She added, “Older adults tend not to, because we don’t want to think about getting older.” But lawmakers in particular need to hear from their constituents how difficult this work is, and the strain it is putting on families.If you’re not in the sandwich yet, you need to anticipate being in it someday, and get your older relatives to plan for their future. According to AARP, only 29 percent of older Americans have planned with their families how they want to be cared for as they age, and only 12 percent have purchased private long-term care insurance. Jelana Canfield, who lives in Hillsboro, Ore., and owns a bakery, told me via email that her mother, who has Parkinson’s, got long-term-care insurance after caring for her own mother, seeing how stressful it was and how financially out of reach good memory care was.But even though her own mother is in a good assisted-living situation funded by that insurance, Canfield told me she wishes she could afford to keep her mother in her own home. She said her mom calls her four or five times a day, adding, “I’ll call back while pushing my guilt down deep so I don’t cry that I’m not the one who is taking care of her anymore after three years of my husband and I doing everything for her.”Though it isn’t possible for all families, rotating family members in to help care for elders can help lighten the load. Terryn Hall, who lives in Durham, N.C. and wrote about caring for her grandmother in The Washington Post, told me about helping her mother, who is her grandmother’s primary caretaker. When Covid hit, “I jumped in and started helping out more. My mom is the primary caregiver, I was always the pinch-hitter,” she said. She took her grandma to medical appointments, made sure she had food and helped organize other family members who wanted to help.“I wish there were more frameworks or social narratives around staying home and building a community,” for younger people, Hall said. It should be just as aspirational, she said, as moving away from your family of origin to start a big career. Though she doesn’t have children, Hall said she would like to, and would want to live near family that could help her care for them.One of the things that stood out to me in the many conversations I had with parents of the sandwich generation was how isolated they felt, because the work of caring for parents with chronic illnesses at the end of their lives was so hard and so sad. Talking about how common this is, and how difficult, won’t create an elder care system where none exists, but acknowledging this as a collective experience is one way to ease the burden.Want More?In The Atlantic, Judith Shulevitz reviews new books by Elizabeth McCracken and Lynne Tillman in which “daughters try to transcribe the discordant emotions provoked by a mother’s decline and death.” As Shulevitz puts it: “Doing battle with monsters is an inescapable part of elder care. Ministering to mothers, to bodies that were once all-powerful and the source of everything good but are now reduced to helplessness, is particularly scary, or at least very eerie.”In September, writing for The Times, Paula Span looked at the quiet cost of family caregiving. “The pandemic amplified the conflict between employment and caregiving, Dr. [Yulya] Truskinovsky [an economist at Wayne State University] and colleagues found in another study. ‘Caregiving arrangements are very fragile,’ she noted. While families often patch together paid and unpaid care, ‘it’s unstable, and if one thing falls through, your whole arrangement falls apart.’”In July, The Times’s Lydia DePillis, Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman reported that “a lack of child care and elder care options has forced some women to limit their hours or sidelined them altogether, hurting their career prospects.”The Times’s resident ethicist ponders the question: “Am I Obligated to Look After My Insufferable Mother?”Tiny VictoriesParenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.My 4-year-old’s resistance to preschool was very high this morning and we were about to miss drop-off time. While she was in her room I turned on the “Frozen” soundtrack as loud as I could, knocked on her door like Anna does in the movie, then started dancing and singing around the house. By the second song she was laughing so much that I got her clothes on and teeth brushed and in the car seat, just in time to leave — and I felt like I got a workout in as well!— Samantha Campbell, MauiIf you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      At 'The Villages,' the Party Never Ends for Boomers

      by

      THE VILLAGES, Fla. — “Which side are you on?!”A highly animated older gentleman named Ray-Ray is shouting in my ear, demanding to know my political orientation. “You still haven’t told us!”I am tucked into the outdoor bar of City Fire, a popular watering hole in the Villages, the massive senior-living community in Central Florida that has gained notoriety as a MAGA stronghold. After a couple of cold, drizzly January days — very un-Villagelike, residents keep assuring me — people are eager to fraternize once more.Inside, the restaurant is crowded, with patrons nodding along to the live music or cutting loose on the small dance floor. Outside, where heaters and plastic sheeting hold back the chill, folks are packed together watching golf on the TVs, taking advantage of the $3 happy-hour beer and swapping stories at top volume. It’s a boisterous crowd. Villagers, as the community’s 130,000 residents are known, tend to be an outgoing bunch. They are perpetually coming up to introduce themselves and then quiz you about yourself. These folks love a good party — and a good argument.An enclave of homes in the Villages.Damon Winter/The New York TimesA Saturday farmers’ market draws residents and visitors to Brownwood Paddock, one of three town centers.Damon Winter/The New York TimesI’m talking with a small gaggle of veterans — all men, all supporters of former President Donald Trump — about voting rights and voting fraud. This is a hot topic in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has become a crusader for voting restrictions — or “guardrails,” as he calls them. It is also a topic with fresh relevance at the Villages, where four residents have been arrested in recent months on allegations of voting twice in the 2020 election. (Three of the four were registered Republicans.) Legally speaking, double voting is a no-no, the kind of fraud a certain former president and his followers might consider worth fretting about.Not my City Fire companions. “You’re talking about four votes out of more than a hundred thousand people!” objects Ray-Ray. In fact, around the Villages, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than two to one, I haven’t run across many conservatives perturbed by the possible fraud in their midst. Some profess to know little if anything about the arrests. Others, like Ray-Ray and his buddy Marty, are fired up about voting fraud generally — just not the kind where a few of their neighbors may have done something careless or stupid.During the 2020 presidential campaign, supporters of Donald Trump waited to see him at a rally at the Villages Polo Club.Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the contrary, these vets say they know what real fraud looks like. They hail from places like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the cities, they say, are rife with electoral malfeasance, some of which they claim to have seen firsthand. (Marty insists Detroit is a disaster.) The piddling, isolated incidents that maybe happened here? Pfft. They could not care less. And the fact that I am asking about the issue tells them which team I root for in the great blood sport of American politics. As if being part of the Fake News media weren’t bad enough. The men have already warned me that there is a gun-toting regular whom I should avoid tonight if I don’t want trouble.Marty and Ray-Ray are, of course, joking. Even in the midst of a political rant, the residents here are an overwhelmingly helpful, friendly bunch. That is, after all, the motto of this place, as trumpeted on the banners hanging all around the town squares: “The Villages: America’s Friendliest Hometown.”But for many people, “friendly” is not the first word that springs to mind to describe the Villages. The conservative community has long been a campaign stop for G.O.P. politicians, but the rise of Trumpism dialed up the tribalism. The enclave became known as a hotbed of partisan brawling during the 2020 campaign. Public screaming matches erupted. Property was vandalized. Neighbors stopped speaking to one another. Mahjong groups and golf foursomes broke up. That summer, a video went viral of a Villager shouting “white power” during a golf-cart parade celebrating President Trump’s birthday. The episode introduced the Villages to the broader public — and not in a good way.This senior Mecca — the nation’s largest — emerged from humble roots. In the early 1980s, H. Gary Morse, a onetime ad man, took over his father’s mobile home park in an unlovely patch of Florida cow country. (Some of the mobile units can still be seen in the northern end of the Villages, which residents euphemistically refer to as “the historic district.”) Mr. Morse soon realized that, to draw people to this landlocked region en masse, he needed to give them amenities — and lots of them. Soon followed the golf courses, swimming pools, shops, restaurants, movie theaters, sports facilities, rec centers (of which there are more than 100) and endless clubs (2,900-plus).Pickleball has become one of the dominant pastimes in the Villages.Damon Winter/The New York TimesPrime housing options offer easy access to the many golf courses in the Villages.Damon Winter/The New York TimesToday, the Villages isn’t so much a retirement community as an empire, a collection of dozens of neighborhoods covering more than 32 square miles spread over three counties, with the bulk in Sumter County. It boasts more than 60,000 households and is expanding. Fast. Dump trucks and excavators swarm the developing areas, and new buildings spring up practically overnight. Housing prices are out of control, gripe residents. (I checked out a lovely but modest home in the Village of Chitty Chatty that was priced around $460,000.) Thanks to the thousands of new Villagers who arrive each year, the Villages was the fastest growing metro area over the past decade.The Villages’ bellicose politics has made it a subject of fascination (and horror) for many. But its portrayals as a MAGA circus miss the core of its appeal, especially among the tsunami of retiring baby boomers, who are aiming to redefine aging, much as they reshaped every aspect of the culture. Seniors don’t move to the Villages for the politics. They come for the golf and the pickleball, the softball and tennis and polo. They come for the concerts and casino nights and the Senior Games (think of them as a more mature Olympics). They come for Boozy Bingo at Lazy Mac’s Tacos, karaoke night at City Fire and the line dancing taught by a D.J. called Scooter.The moment the music starts, Villagers hit the dance floor with abandon.Damon Winter/The New York TimesJust ask the Democrats.Judi Bessette is one of several members of the Villages Democratic Club who have gathered in the Tea Room of the Colony Cottage rec center to share the trials and tribulations of voting blue in this deep-red community. Ms. Bessette had her Biden flag vandalized during the campaign. Twice. The first flag lasted less than two weeks before it was torn and left hanging by a thread. She put up a new flag, only to have someone replace it with a Trump flag swiped from her neighbor’s place.It’s not just conservative neighbors who make Democrats here uncomfortable. They grumble about the family-dominated enterprise that owns and controls so much of the Villages, which they refer to simply as The Developer. Mr. Morse, who died in 2014, had been a big-time Republican donor with formidable political clout in the region. Democrats complain that he and his heirs long sought to cultivate a conservative climate here. TV sets in the shops and hotels are typically turned to Fox News. Along with local programming, Fox News Radio plays in outdoor spaces. Democrats dismiss the community paper, The Villages Daily Sun, as a propaganda machine for The Developer, which owns it and other media properties. And during election season, say the Democrats, The Developer makes office space available for the Republicans but can’t seem to find space for their team.To keep the peace in their daily lives, people of all partisan persuasions learn to keep their political views to themselves in mixed company. “I run a book club,” says Laura Goudreau, “and our No. 1 rule is: nothing political.”When Judi Bessette flew Biden flags in front of her house in 2020, someone vandalized them.Damon Winter/The New York TimesMike and Sue Faulk. Mr. Faulk is president of the local Democratic club.Damon Winter/The New York Times“If I were to not talk to any Republicans, then I wouldn’t have many acquaintances,” says Mike Faulk, the Democratic club’s president, who notes that, in his golf group of 16, he is the only Democrat. Chris Stanley, the immediate past president of the Democratic club, says she gets asked why on earth a Democrat would want to live in the Villages all the time. Her answer: Because life here is amazing, and she loves it.Dancing is very big in the Villages. Line dancing, two-stepping, twisting, awkward head-bopping — the moment the music starts, Villagers go at it with abandon. Here is a place where the over-55 set can cut loose, flaunting their Jagger-esque moves without being judged by younger, more limber folks.“I came to party!” a snowbird named Jim quips to me at City Fire. (Yes. I spent a lot of time there, and I highly recommend karaoke night.) Having raised four daughters back home in Pennsylvania, Jim spends his winters here, enjoying the fruits of his labor. He was not the only Villager to express this sentiment. These people have made their contribution to society and now intend to have themselves some fun.The enclave has been called Disney for retirees. The comparison is apt, not only because of the nonstop amusements. Its entire aesthetic is too studied and precious to feel like the real world. The three quaint town squares and main retail areas were developed around themes: Spanish Springs, Lake Sumter Landing and Brownwood Paddock. The streets and public areas are spotless and beautifully landscaped. And everywhere you look, there are golf carts.Residents dancing to live music at Edna’s on the Green.Damon Winter/The New York TimesHomes under construction in a new development in the Villages.Damon Winter/The New York TimesGolf carts are key to understanding the Villages. There are over 90 miles of cart paths here, and it is a point of pride that every corner of the community is cart accessible. The vehicles are an expression of residents’ individuality and independence. People are serious about tricking out their rides. They paint them with flames, name them and plaster them with bumper stickers. Those with money to burn splurge on carts that look like vintage autos. Even seniors who have no business driving anymore zip around like teenage joy riders, say residents. Crashes are not uncommon, and visitors are warned to watch out for bad drivers — and drunk ones. One afternoon during my visit, Marsha Shearer, a board member for the Democratic club, emails that a friend and fellow board member had witnessed a doozy of a wreck by what appeared to be a highly intoxicated driver. “She was also an anti-vaxxer and a very belligerent Trumper who kept screaming over and over again ‘I’m not vaccinated’” and cursing President Biden, the friend, Sue Dubman, reported. The police eventually came to deal with the mess.Golf cart parades are part of the culture. Villagers use any excuse to organize one: Christmas, Halloween, the start of a big Supreme Court case, delivering their ballots to the polling station. Andy Kleiman considers the parades the most fun part of the local political life. “You go by and see all these people giving you the thumbs up,” he beams. Of course, you’re likely to get other fingers waved at you as well.Michael Farrell took his dog Baby out on the town at Lake Sumter Landing.Damon Winter/The New York TimesGolf carts are key to understanding the Villages and its residents.Damon Winter/The New York TimesDamon Winter/The New York TimesIt is easy to mock all the clubs and events as boomer hedonism mixed with golden-years YOLO nihilism. Eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow you may get diagnosed with shingles or need a double hip replacement! And the frenzied socializing can definitely veer in that direction. Residents mentioned that alcohol abuse is a real problem here. And for years, the community has fought its reputation (based in part on a 2008 book) as a den of sexual iniquity, where seniors get jiggy in golf carts and S.T.D.s run rampant. Many Villagers are definitely on the hunt for companionship, and the men are quick with the offer to buy a gal a drink. (At City Fire, you can send over a poker chip for someone to use as a drink token.) The surreal effect of living in a bubble where everyone is encouraged to act as if on perpetual holiday was a focus of the 2020 documentary “Some Kind of Heaven,” co-produced by The Times.But the parades and games and clubs, most definitely the political ones, also give people a sense of belonging and purpose — of still being able to make a difference. Whatever their ideological persuasion, residents are constantly reminded that civic engagement matters. That they matter. Like at all retirement communities, the social life at the Villages tackles head-on the scourges of isolation, despair and loneliness that are eating away at so many Americans as the nation’s social fabric frays. In a culture that can feel as though it is leaving seniors behind, the Villages is designed to bring people together. And despite the at times harrowing political warfare, the community largely succeeds in doing so — even if it isn’t always easy.People here feel responsible for one another. Marty Schneider — of Marty and Ray-Ray — is a longstanding member of the Band of Brothers, a group of mostly Vietnam-era vets founded over a decade ago to, as Mr. Schneider puts it, “give veterans who were having trouble somewhere to go.” People were really struggling and some died by suicide, he recalls. What began as a small gathering on Tuesday afternoons at City Fire has morphed into a 501(c)3 organization with several hundred members that puts together social outings (bowling, golf…) and community events and holds weekly raffles and other fund-raisers to support veterans and related causes. When the weather permits, the Tuesday social features a drive-by from a member who tricked out a golf cart like a tank. With a nod to “the ladies” who have joined, Mr. Schneider says the group recently discussed whether to change the name to the Band of Brothers and Sisters. “So that’s a possibility down the road.”Marty Schneider, center, at City Fire in Lake Sumter Landing with some of his fellow Band of Brothers members.Damon Winter/The New York TimesThe central problem, of course, is that this sense of belonging may flow as much from who is not a part of the Villages as who is. The populace here is 98 percent white, putting it increasingly out of touch with the broader nation. The entire place, in fact, has a time-warped quality. It is reminiscent of college or summer camp — but for people who no longer have to worry about what they’re going to be when they grow up or what their political choices will bring. For Villagers, the future is less of a concern than living their best life. Right. Now. Here, baby boomers still reign supreme, in a place that caters to some of their most self-absorbed, self-indulgent impulses. The culture, like the overwhelmingly conservative politics, can feel like a scrupulously maintained bulwark against the onslaught of time and change.In this way, the community is a distillation of the cultural crosscurrents at play in an America that is simultaneously graying and diversifying. Baby boomers, long accustomed to setting the agenda, are being eased out of their slot atop the sociopolitical ladder — especially conservative, white boomers. This shift can be painful. One of Donald Trump’s shrewdest political moves has been to exploit some people’s nostalgia for a bygone era where the cultural hierarchy was clear and the world made sense. The Villages works overtime to maintain a replica of that fantasyland — a shiny, happy, small-town bubble where seniors can tune out the rest of the world and party like it’s 1969.Crowds gather for the nightly live band and dancing at Lake Sumter Landing.Damon Winter/The New York TimesSurrounded by people at a similar life stage, many with similar values, Villagers can maintain a distance from the demographic and cultural changes reshaping the nation and from many of its more intractable problems. Crime, inequality, homelessness, climate change, racial strife, the high cost of child care and college — these are challenges for other communities to grapple with. Other generations even. Big Government is eyed with skepticism, even as the aging populace commands an increasingly larger chunk of the federal budget for programs such as Social Security and Medicare. So long as taxes stay low and the golf courses stay open, Villagers can stay focused on living the dream. They have earned this retreat, dammit. The escapism is the point. And escapism, by definition, means separating oneself from unsettling trends and people.Early one evening, I settle in near the Sumter Landing bandstand to watch the Hooligans, a local favorite that plays all the classics — Pink Floyd, the Clash, the Police, Rod Stewart. At one point, a trim, relatively young woman sporting short dark hair and a golf visor wanders over to ask if I’m the band’s agent, noting that I look very official sitting there with my notebook. After quizzing me about who I work for and what I’m working on, she introduces herself succinctly: “Brenda. Strong conservative and strong Christian.” She and her husband are snowbirds visiting from Minnesota, spending their second winter in the Villages. They love it here. Except … Brenda has noticed a distinct lack of diversity, and she’s not entirely sure if that’s an OK thing. On the other hand, she adds, “it feels safe,” because “anyone here who doesn’t belong stands out.”And with that, she drifts back into the sea of seniors swaying as the band belts out Radiohead’s “Creep”: “What the hell am I doin’ here? I don’t belong here. …”Diners in the Brownwood Paddock Town Center seek shelter from the glare of the evening sun.Damon Winter/The New York TimesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Voting Fraud Charges for 3 in Florida's Villages

      by

      All were residents of the famed, sprawling retirement community northwest of Orlando. Two were Republicans, and one had no affiliation.Three residents of a sprawling Florida retirement community were arrested over the last two weeks on charges of voting more than once in the 2020 general election, according to the authorities.The residents, Jay Ketcik, 63, Joan Halstead, 72, and John Rider, 61, lived in The Villages, a planned community northwest of Orlando where former President Donald J. Trump held a campaign rally shortly before the 2020 election.The three were each charged with casting more than one ballot in an election, according to arrest records from the office of the state attorney in the Fifth Judicial Circuit in Florida.Each charge is a third-degree felony and punishable by up to five years in prison, said Bill Gladson, the state attorney for the Fifth Judicial Circuit in Ocala, Fla. Citing rules of professional conduct, Mr. Gladson said on Wednesday that he could not comment on pending cases. Ms. Halstead declined to comment on Wednesday. Mr. Rider and a lawyer for Mr. Ketcik did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Court records did not say for whom the three voted in the 2020 general election or in what other elections they voted out of state. Voting records in the Florida Department of State list Mr. Ketcik and Ms. Halstead as registered Republicans. Mr. Rider has no party affiliation on record.About a 45-minute drive northwest from Orlando, the community was built in the 1960s as a collection of tracts and grew in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s with retirees from Northern states as its organizers added amenities such as movie theaters, shopping and other leisure activities. With more than 130,000 residents, the community of adults 55 and older, which stretches into three counties, has become one of Florida’s fastest-growing metro areas.The disputed votes had no effect on the 2020 election. Mr. Trump won Florida by about 51.2 percent and by an even far greater margin in The Villages, although Joe Biden had energetic supporters there as well. After residents who supported Mr. Trump held a golf cart rally amid counterprotesters, he tweeted a video of the event, writing, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages.” Then came his rally in October.Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Mr. Trump made baseless claims of rampant voter fraud, which failed to gain any traction in courts across seven states. But the former president and his allies have continued to repeat the false allegations, and Republican legislators have used the claims to justify new restrictions on voting.But election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties have said that there was no evidence that fraud or other irregularities played a role deciding the presidential race. In general, voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States, and cases that do occur are often isolated and unlikely to affect an election.Mr. Ketcik and Ms. Halstead turned themselves in to the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office Detention Center on Nov. 29 and Dec. 8, according to the sheriff’s office. Mr. Rider was arrested by Brevard County deputies at a cruise ship terminal at Port Canaveral on Dec. 3, according to prosecutors.It was not clear whether the three residents knew each other. Each was booked into a detention center or jail and released the same day of their arrest, records show.A probable cause affidavit said that, in addition to casting more than one vote in Florida in October 2020, Ms. Halstead and Mr. Rider also cast second ballots in New York through an absentee ballot. Mr. Ketcik was also accused of voting through mail in Florida and casting a second, absentee ballot in Michigan.The investigation into allegations of voter fraud by Mr. Ketcik, Ms. Halstead and Mr. Rider was initiated by the office of the Sumter County supervisor of elections, Bill Keen, according to arrest records. His office did not immediately respond to an inquiry for comment about the charges.Even though voter fraud is extremely rare, Republican leaders in several states, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, have cited isolated cases to pursue tougher rules around voting in the wake of the 2020 election. On Wednesday, Christina Pushaw, a spokeswoman for Mr. DeSantis, said, “Multiple voting is unlawful.”She added, “It isn’t a crime to be registered to vote in more than one state, as long as you only vote in one.”Ms. Pushaw said that in 2019, the state joined the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit group that helps states improve the accuracy of voter rolls. By joining the system, she said, state officials could crosscheck voter registration data to find duplicate registrations and outdated records.“Though the system is not perfect, it does help ensure election integrity and deter potential fraud,” she said. More