“I’m kind of hating how much I love it,” my wife Lindsey says to me on a Thursday evening stroll through Market Square in Lake Sumter Landing at The Villages.
I’m a fully fledged Florida Man now, having moved my family from Los Angeles to Jacksonville in October 2021. So, naturally, I invited the love of my life to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary by driving 2.5 hours deep into rural central Florida to visit “America’s top-selling master-planned community for active adults” for 14 years straight, according to the RCLCO Real Estate Consulting ranking touted in The Villages’ promotional materials.
We’re almost 20 years too young to purchase most of the homes here, since federal law requires 80 percent of home purchases in a qualified retirement community be occupied by someone 55 or older. Local districts can and do set that threshold even higher.
But we’re not here to house shop. We’re here to celebrate our marriage and figure out why The Villages is not just Florida’s fastest-growing senior community but also America’s fastest-growing metro. Between 2010 and 2020, its population grew by 39 percent, from about 93,000 to 130,000, beating out Austin, Texas, for the top-growing metropolitan area of the decade.
Lindsey and I prepared for the journey by watching Some Kind of Heaven, a haunting 2020 documentary produced by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Whale) and directed by Floridian Lance Oppenheim. The film profiles several oddball Villagers, like Reggie Kincer, a 75-year-old retiree from Nashville who copes with the surreal isolation of Villages life by practicing tai chi meditation and consuming lots of mind-altering drugs while his wife Anne attempts to keep him grounded in reality. A lonely widow begins dating a golf cart salesman who, as head of the local Parrothead club, is more interested in chugging margaritas and dancing with other singles than in a serious relationship. An octogenarian California nomad who lives in a van frequents The Villages’ pools to pick up wealthy widows and secure a comfortable retirement.
As we entered The Villages from County Road 466 on Thursday afternoon, though, a more mundane reality began to set in: It’s just another Florida community that’s been master planned by a private developer. The landscape is exceptionally well-manicured, and the signage welcoming you to “Florida’s Friendliest Hometown” in what Lindsey calls “the Cracker Barrel font” is downright Disneyesque. The main artery is Buena Vista Boulevard, evoking the Disney-adjacent city of Lake Buena Vista that Gov. Ron DeSantis recently ripped from the hands of the company.
The vista here is one of endless golf greens—residency includes complimentary access to 42 of The Villages’ courses and over 200 pickleball courts. Single-family neighborhoods with names like Citrus Grove, Chitty Chatty, and Liberty Park sprawl on and on: The Villages spans 33 square miles and counting, larger than the island of Manhattan.
We began to recognize what distinguishes The Villages from any other cookie-cutter Florida housing development after we checked into the Waterfront Inn overlooking Lake Sumter, a picturesque body of water. In 2014, historian Amanda Brian published a paper on The Villages’ “faux history”—including analysis of a plaque recounting the tale of Oscar Feliu, who in 1906 ran a “successful fishing equipment and bait shop for the many sportsmen who came to Lake Sumter to enjoy the outstanding fishing available in the area.” Except, no, he really didn’t, because the manmade lake was excavated in the 1990s.
But as we stroll to dinner past artificially aged wooden waterfront buildings while soft rock pipes through speakers and approach the public square where a crowd has gathered for live music, we can’t help but notice an energy here. It’s the endless weekend: No work in the morning, or ever again. Maybe it’s the 60-something woman twirling in a tight red dress or the couples holding hands in lawn chairs as they sip and chat, or Some Kind of Heaven on my mind, but Lindsey whispers to me as we walk through, “it’s charged.” We vow to return after dinner.
The main street with its ’50s-style shop awnings and market light–adorned movie theater is just adorable. Yes, it’s all so manufactured, so Disneyesque, but it is undeniably pleasant and safe. Trucks marked “Villages Community Watch” patrol the area, and everyone seems relaxed, at home. The walkable downtown urbanist’s dream just so happens to be a privately managed active senior community plopped in rural central Florida.
Our date is at Chop House, as generic a steakhouse as its name implies. We sit at the bar. The bartender, a warm silver-haired man, talks me out of a Manhattan and into a Boulevardier, and I ask if he lives here. He says he’s not yet ready to move from Mount Dora, a 45-minute commute, but his wife is eager for the Villages life. He likes that people who live in $1.5 million homes and $270,000 homes hang out and drink together. They’re all Villagers, after all. Despite its outsized growth, housing prices in The Villages have increased at a slower rate than average in Florida, according to Redfin’s market analysis. I would soon see with my own eyes why that is.
At the bar, I fish for wild stories. The best the bartender could provide was the time a drunk woman draping a cigarette out the driver’s window hopped the curb and hit the Chop House. “In a golf cart?” I ask, hopeful. Alas, no.
DUI rates in The Villages are about average for a Florida town, while every other category of crime is well below. There have been multiple drug busts, though, including one involving an alleged “golf cart chop-shop” in 2017.
I ask about the wild sex rumors. Stories about rampant sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in The Villages have circulated in the media for years, but the data show STD rates in all three counties The Villages straddles are below the state average. The bartender tells me he’s heard that dice hanging from a golf cart’s rearview mirror indicate swingers, but he’s never actually seen such dice. He thinks things have changed since “the new generation” started moving in.
That new generation, of course, would be the baby boomers who’ve flocked to The Villages over the past decade. It’s a boomer boomtown.
Peace and Quiet
After dinner, we return to Market Square, eyes peeled for dice and other signs of licentiousness. Instead, we encounter a last-call vibe as couples and singles saunter back to their carts and the band breaks down. It’s 9 p.m. in The Villages. No dice.
That’s OK. As parents of young kids, this early lights-out lifestyle suits us. We drift back through Florida’s friendliest hometown hand-in-hand as The Villages pumps “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” through speakers shaped like rocks.
In the morning, I step onto the patio and see three long canoes full of senior citizens maneuvering around beautiful man-made Lake Sumter. Downstairs, I spot one of them clad in a blue team shirt: “Paddling Patriots.” As I amble toward the boardwalk, instead of music I hear a local radio broadcast with a host lamenting the unfortunate side effects of some kind of abortion pill. I’m uncertain why it’s topline news for the 55-and-up crowd.
A minute later, I pass a building where I can see the host rattling off the morning news in the radio booth, and I recall that the local media is owned by The Villages. The local paper, The Villages Daily Sun, averaged over 49,000 print sales per weekday in 2022, making it the 23rd most circulated print newspaper in America, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. The paper regularly features stories about homeowners who violate the rules of the architectural review board by improperly landscaping their property, subjecting them to $150 fines plus $50 a day until they comply. “Clock ticking for Villager to remove stone and put down sod at patio villa,” reads one headline from September.
Could the name-and-shame atmosphere be one reason several Villagers I encounter are reluctant to let me print their last names? Bob and Sue, ages 65 and 60, whom I meet along the boardwalk, moved from Fort Lauderdale a month ago. Bob tells me “it’s a dream come true” living in “adult Disney World.” I ask what’s so great about it, and he says, “Peace and quiet.” She says, “Silence.” Neither of them have watched Some Kind of Heaven, but Bob says that no matter how good things are, there will always be some complainers.
My morning meeting is at Panera in Market Square with Villages Homeowners Advocates (VHA) President Peter Russell, a tall, trim man who, at age 74, appears the paragon of an “active adult.” A true Villages believer, he assures me that this is “the most spectacular community you could ever live in.”
Russell describes the VHA as being part of a “three-legged stool,” alongside the developers and the local government. Each “village” within The Villages is governed by its own independent special district whose members are elected by the residents, who pay fees to cover the bonds that fund it. Municipalities, the state Legislature, and the governor each have the power to create these districts. Florida is home to more than 1,900 of them, which helps explain why master-planned communities have flourished in the state: They let developers create infrastructure free of the bureaucratic machinery of a county planning department. The districts have authority to issue tax-exempt bonds, but a 1980 law is clear that the primary purpose of independent special districts “is management, not financing.”
When DeSantis dissolved Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District in 2022 after the company opposed the Parental Rights in Education Act (what opponents called the “Don’t Say Gay” law), he spared The Villages—where registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats 2-to-1 in 2020—by targeting only districts established before the 1968 ratification of the Florida Constitution. The authors of the dissolution bill, which affected six districts, contend that pre-1968 special districts had taxing and eminent domain authorities that impinge on the sovereign “home rule” of county governments.
The Villages’ umbrella district is the Village Center Community Development District (VCCDD), created by the town of Lady Lake in 1992. Because the VCCDD contains no residents, Florida’s special district website explains, its representatives “will continue to be elected by the landowners of property within the boundaries of the District,” meaning the Holding Company of The Villages Inc. chooses them. Much as Reedy Creek was a de facto Disney-appointed government, the VCCDD belongs to the holding company and its associated web of limited liability companies.
Before we begin our interview, Russell warns me that when he held local office in New Hampshire, he froze out a reporter who used only his negative quotes while leaving out his positive comments. I ask him if he thinks it’s a problem that local media here are owned by the same parent company that develops the land, owns the commercial real estate, and staffs a special district providing services and amenities. It seems unlikely they’d publish much criticism of The Villages. He tells me about Grit, a newspaper-turned-magazine that was popular in small towns in the first half of the 20th century.
“The Grit focused on good news,” says Russell, who laments how today bad news sells papers. “Wouldn’t it be good to have good news in print delivered to me?”
Inside the Bubble is the title of a popular Villages guidebook written by Ryan Erisman, the 45-year-old founder of For Boomers Media. I ask Russell if he ever feels that he’s living inside a bubble, insulated from the outside world.
“I hope so,” he replies. He says when he leaves, he can’t believe how much time people spend speeding down highways in their cars. He took a pleasant 20-minute golf cart ride to meet me in the square this morning.
I recount to him reporting by Ryan Grim in The Intercept about a local scandal in which a 72-year-old recently elected county commissioner from The Villages named Oren Miller spent 75 days in jail for violating Florida’s Sunshine Law by allegedly conducting official business off-book via his wife’s advocacy for a no-kill animal shelter. The Villages Daily Sun regularly published full-color photos of Miller in cuffs with headlines like, “Convicted Felon Oren Miller says legal fight is not over.” Miller’s defenders claim it was a setup intended to hamstring a slate of candidates who were advocating reforms that would shift increased new fees funding expansion from homeowners to developers—i.e., The Villages Development Company. Russell doesn’t buy it.
“If you don’t tell the truth, you pay the price,” says Russell. “[Miller] didn’t tell the truth.” In regards to the funding question, Russell says that whether new expenses are billed directly to the homeowners or borne by the company, eventually “it’s all going to be passed to the public.”
Russell’s VHA isn’t the only homeowners advocate in town. The Property Owners’ Association (POA), run by a man named Cliff Wiener, bills itself as independent of The Villages and more willing to oppose the establishment powers, which locals tend to call “the developers,” “the company,” or simply “the family,” since the Holding Company of The Villages remains largely in the hands of the children of founder H. Gary Morse. His son Mark Morse is the current CEO. He declined my interview request, as did representatives of the VCCDD.
When I ask Russell about the POA’s portrayal of the VHA as establishment shills—one POA bulletin snarks that the VHA should “change its name to the DHA” for “Developer’s advocate”—he replies that there are always “naysayers” and that he personally knows that Wiener (who didn’t reply to Reason‘s inquiries) “absolutely loves it here.”
“You’ve probably heard some people don’t like Jeff Bezos,” Russell tells me. “Is it because Jeff Bezos has made a ton of money? Is there a certain jealousy factor involved in that deal?”
Russell says it’s precisely becausea single company owns all the land and oversees maintenance that things work so well here. If something’s broken, you know who to blame. The role of the VHA is to field complaints and bring them to the developers, who work with the districts to fix the problem—Russell’s aforementioned three-legged stool. This arrangement even explains the relative housing affordability, he says. The developers can buy up the cheap pasture on the perimeter of The Villages, incorporate it into a new special district, and employ their highly standardized construction methods and streamlined supply chain to keep costs low and meet demand.
Before I go, I ask him about the swingers. He mumbles “yeah, yeah, yeah” when I relay to him the “dice” signal and says someone else told him that turning out your shirt collar is another signal, but he’s not into all that. He has a World War II book club after our meeting, one of thousands of advertised activities within The Villages.
“What happens here at 7:30 at night?” he says, gesturing to the square. “I can only imagine.”
The Biggest Population of Karens
I walk to meet Lindsey and a couple named Paul, age 61, and Cindy, age 60, at R.J. Gator’s waterfront restaurant for lunch. Paul says he’s worried that if we print his last name his public association with the Trump- and DeSantis-friendly Villages could cause business problems. They both say it’s strange to live among retirees when they are still working but that the upside is someone’s always up for a game of pickleball or golf. Lindsey, the extrovert in our relationship, says she digs the “summer camp” feel of it all.
Paul and Cindy rented in The Villages after escaping Michigan during the COVID-19 pandemic, joining America’s swelling ranks of remote workers. They hadn’t planned to stay. But as they searched for a home on Florida’s Gulf Coast, they realized property was just too expensive, especially with skyrocketing homeowners insurance in the state. The more they experienced Villages life, the more they liked it. Cindy appreciates the instant community.
“No one was born in The Villages,” she says. “Everyone was very welcoming. You’re all in the same boat.” That resonates with me and Lindsey. In our Jacksonville neighborhood, there are a lot of born-and-raised locals, and finding common ground and community wasn’t fast or easy.
I ask if their move into the “free state of Florida” really feels all that free when they live under the watchful eye of The Villages’ architectural review board, local media, and ever-present Community Watch.
“I want to live, like, a country club lifestyle,” says Paul. “It’s safe. There’s not a lot of crime. You’ve got the biggest population of Karens! Nothing’s ever going to happen without someone taking a picture of you.” To him, these are all good things.
They have a 25-year-old daughter living with them. She wouldn’t be able to do so if she were under age 19, since kids are only allowed for 30 days at a time. Her daughter’s no kid, though, Cindy chuckles, informing me she still isn’t old enough to swim in the 30-and-over “adult” pools.
Still, they say the place is becoming younger, which they like to see. That’s in no small part because The Villages just opened an all-ages neighborhood this year called Middleton. They say we just have to see the new charter school. That’s up next, but first Paul gives a thumbs down to the “parts” of Some Kind of Heaven he says he watched and tells me the consensus in the community is that the Florida-born filmmaker was seeking retribution for the barrage of cloying Villages television commercials he was subjected to as a young man. In a Variety interview, the director says he had “grown up knowing about The Villages, and…saw a marketing video they had put online. The images looked like they were coming from a David Lynch movie, but they were un-ironic.”
On the drive south to Middleton, there are acres and acres of land being excavated for new subdivisions. How far can they push this? Acquire cheap pasture, build walkable town square, terraform golf course, pave pickleball court, pour cement foundations, erect prefab walls. Profit. Repeat. Will The Villages and its special districts eventually swallow all three surrounding counties, expanding into a giant interconnected colony of nostalgically themed resort living areas? And is anything so wrong with that?
Endless Weekend
What I saw on a random Thursday night beats a lot of what masquerades as usable public space in terms of sociability, safety, and fun. Sure, we millennials are obligated to scoff at the ’50s pastiche, the corniness of it all, but what happens once they market it to us as a ’90s town? Will some of us step into the bubble, too?
The charter school in Middleton is enormous, sparkling new, and an 8 out of 10 on GreatSchools, for whatever that’s worth. The dismissal bell rings, and the kids snake back into the new subdivisions surrounding the campus. It appears a safe and easy walk home. How pleasant.
Lindsey and I look at each other and agree we can never live here. Not in Middleton. I left Los Angeles in part to escape the Karens, not invite them to surveil me by golf cart, fine me, and critique my front yard in the newspaper.
Yet I can’t help but appreciate what The Villages has accomplished, creating through urban design and well-maintained amenities a sense of community, belonging, and peace for its residents in a world where that can be difficult not just for seniors, but for Americans of all ages who increasingly report persistent feelings of loneliness and isolation. I also can’t help but appreciate a woman who would spend her anniversary in this place with me and do so with joy and genuine curiosity. I’m not yet ready to pop my collar, hang the dice, and putter into the endless weekend. But with true millennial ambivalence, I’ll say this about America’s boomer boomtown: I don’t hate it.
The post The Villages Is America’s Boomer Boomtown appeared first on Reason.com.
