Books: Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias

A review of Andrew Blechman’s look at seniors, sex, and STDs

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


More than 2 million American adults live in age-segregated communities where anyone under 18 is welcome only as a temporary guest. In Leisureville, Andrew Blechman embeds at the largest of these outposts of maturity to learn more about the allure of growing old in style. Spanning three Florida counties and more than 20,000 acres, the Villages is home to 75,000 people, with thousands of new homes on the way. Residents, median age 66, prefer golf carts to cars; some drop 25 grand on “leisure chariots” tricked out with supersize aluminum wheels and chrome grilles. A Villages-only newspaper offers just good news. And of course, there’s bingo, line dancing, wine tasting, and…lots of partying. As one resident remarks after returning from a cruise, “I’m not even sure why I went. We live on a fucking cruise ship.”

The ageism practiced by the approximately 1,500 “gated geritopias” is actually the only form of housing discrimination sanctioned by Congress. Under the logic that special services are needed to support an aging population, they may exclude families with children under 18.

Responding to the charge that these seniors are dropping out of society, a Villager known as Mr. Midnight puts it this way: “I paid my dues. Now it’s your generation’s turn. You work it out. I’ll be here kissing the ladies.” (And kiss they do. Blechman finds teeming singles bars and horny seniors who want to “use it before I lose it!” In 2006, the Villages’ alarming std rate made national news; one doctor claimed she saw more cases of herpes there than in Miami.)

With 78 million boomers hitting retirement age and seniors-only communities recruiting 55-year-olds, Blechman raises the prospect of a significant portion of the population retiring into never-never land. Some communities have gone so far as to cut their financial ties with local school districts and vote against paying some of their local taxes. Blechman doesn’t have much respect for elders who try to escape the social contract in their golden years. “That’s not citizenship,” he writes. “That’s secession.”


If you buy a book using a Bookshop link on this page, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate