By Marc Freedman | Sep 15, 2021

Retirement communities like The Villages are growing fast, but so, too, is multigenerational living. Encore.org’s CEO spots the dueling trends.

Levi Freedman, playing Gin Rummy with his grandmother, Donna Stone Hellenbrand | Credit: Leslie Gray

More than 60 years ago, the introduction of residential communities for people over 60 served to redefine aging in America, elevating both a golden years lifestyle — graying as playing — and furthering radical age segregation.

The influence of that trend continues to be profound. Consider the new Census, naming The Villages in Florida, with its 130,000 residents, as the fastest growing metropolitan area in America.

That’s reason for considerable concern, as Encore.org Board Chair Paul Irving argues in a new essay for Next Avenue—and as the 2020 documentary Some Kind of Heaven shows in all its horrifying glory.

Lance Oppenheim, the film’s 25-year-old director, himself came away from The Villages convinced that age-segregated living was no way to grow older—bad for older people, younger people, and our rapidly aging society.

Fortunately, there’s another trend afoot… read the blog in full to find out more…

Encore source: https://encore.org/will-housing-continue-to-divide-us-or-lead-the-way-to-age-integration/