The Star-Ledger, Sunday July 23, 2006
Just Don't Call it a Retirement Home
By Kathleen O'Brien
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After decades in the insurance business, Gene Zielinski was used to crunching numbers.
As he faced turning 60, he did this calculation: If he and wife Becky moved to North Carolina, they could have 50 percent more house for 40 percent less money and 25 percent of the property taxes.
Wave goodbye to the Zielinskis, who left Maplewood for Durham last month.
Zielinski is among the oldest Baby Boomers, those turning 60 this year. In New Jersey alone, 50,000 residents will hit that milestone each year for the next two decades. Will there be a giant sucking sound as they pull up stakes to flee the Garden State's high housing costs?
When it comes to boomers and their future digs, it may be easier to determine where they don't want to live:
They don't want to move in with their adult children.
They don't want to relocate to Florida.
They don't want to live in a cookie-cutter "active adult community" in the middle of nowhere.
And certainly the mythical Florida seniors' complex, "Del Boca Vista Phase II," lampooned in "Seinfeld," is not for them. To boomers, such age-restricted developments reek of being old.
"We had people tell us they'd be embarrassed to tell their children they were going to an active adult community. They used the word 'stigma,'" said Myril Axelrod, a marketing consultant who studies boomer housing preferences.
In short, they don't want to do what their parents did.
"They don't see themselves as getting old," said Axelrod, of Marketing Directions Associates in New York. "They're never going to get old, and they don't want to be with old people. They're the Peter Pan generation."
With housing consuming the biggest chunk of household income, a lot of money is riding on where they'll want to live next.
"Baby Boomers are the 800-pound gorilla in the housing market. They always have been," said James H. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.
The housing needs of boomers have literally remade the landscape at every stage of their lives so far, he said. The Levittown-style housing tracts were built for their childhoods. When they were ready for their first apartments, New Jersey saw the garden apartment boom of the 1960s. When, as newlyweds, they wanted to buy real estate, the market responded with condominium construction.
Experts say they probably won't move lock step to one kind of retirement housing. Instead, those who do move may chose Southeastern states like Georgia and the Carolinas; age-targeted (but not age-restricted) developments tucked in nooks and crannies of existing Jersey suburbs; or the Hudson River waterfront, with its New York feel. (Think Jersey's boomer-in-chief, Hoboken resident Jon Corzine.)
Many, of course, will stay put. An AARP survey of those turning 60 this year showed 70 percent had no immediate plans to move.
"The roots are too deep to rip them up," said Pete Cirino of Scotch Plains, who turned 60 in May. "Our parish means too much to us, and my wife has many friends in the area."
Both Cirinos still work. He's with a New York hedge fund, and wife Beverly works as a pastoral associate at their church, St. Bernard and St. Stanislaus Roman Catholic Church in neighboring Plainfield. Once he retires, they may contemplate a cost-saving move, but like many boomers, it probably won't be to Florida.
"Even though I'm 60, I don't think of myself as ever living in Florida," Cirino said.
Yet age has a way of altering the empty-nester's perspective. "All of the sudden, the grass grows faster and you don't have any free labor around to cut it," Hughes said.
This doesn't mean they see themselves as ready for "retirement" housing.
Some, like the Zielinskis, will move to "next-stage" housing. The couple's ultimate goal is to live near the Intracoastal Waterway south of Wilmington, N.C. But since they must work for six or seven more years, they moved to Durham instead.
He hopes its economy will support his career shift to financial planner. His wife has made arrangements to continue her accounting job with a North Jersey hospital via computer.
He had heard of "half-backs," New York-New Jersey retirees who move to Florida only to move halfway back. He figured they'd head straight to North Carolina instead.
Boomers likely will have to work longer than their parents did, if only because of Social Security age requirements. Since most jobs aren't as portable as Becky Zielinski's, many boomers will have to live near their workplaces until they fully retire, Hughes said.
Some will stay put by necessity, as financial considerations put sparkling new retirement villages beyond their reach.
The notion of "aging in place" sounds cozy, like Mr. Wilson in "Dennis the Menace." But the reality more often means poorly insulated older homes whose heating costs eat up the monthly pension, said Stephen Golant, a professor of geography at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
"It's irresponsible to romanticize homeownership for these people," he said. They could benefit from modern -- and subsidized -- senior housing, he said.
Voorhees architect Bill Feinberg probed the mind-set of leading-edge boomers after he realized many of those moving to retirement communities he had designed were lukewarm about their decision. Feinberg wanted more; he wanted them to be happy.
He and Axelrod used four focus groups, including one in Mount Laurel, to discover what might make boomers enthusiastic about their new homes. Their advice:
. Throw out the labels. Boomers bristle at anything that implies they may be old.
"If you put up a sign that says, '50-plus housing,' they won't go there," Feinberg said. "You're not going to label them. They really don't like that."
Instead, they will be drawn by features that match their sixtysomething lifestyle, from jogging paths to business centers with copiers and faxes for those who work from home.
. Throw out the rules. The busybody covenants that govern many retirement developments will have to go, Feinberg said. He predicts homeowner covenants will be pared to core concerns like maintenance and landscaping -- not behavior.
"Baby Boomers grew up resisting authority, so they don't want a homeowners association looking over them. It's 'I don't want to ask someone if I can paint my mailbox,' or 'I don't want to have to ask anyone's permission to plant flowers in front of my house,'" he said.
Their parents had a different attitude, having been raised during the Depression. That generation saw rules as offering protection. "They followed those rules. They did what they were told," Feinberg said.
"h Don't exclude kids. Boomers balk at being segregated by age. They believe being around young people will keep them young, and their generation aggressively values inclusion. However, they don't want to end up the only seniors in the neighborhood.
"Their whole philosophy is, 'Oh, we wouldn't want to exclude children,' but the reality is they don't want to live next to teenage parties that are going to keep them up at night, or have motorcycles zooming up and down the street," said Axelrod.
The solution may be a senior "enclave" within a larger community of all ages. At Washington Town Center -- the brand new "downtown" built from scratch in Washington Township, Mercer County -- seniors are not zoned into certain sections of the town. Instead, savvy builders have realized different layouts attract different ages without explicit marketing.
For example, the Center's loft units, built over retail shops, attract both young, childless couples and retirees -- but not families with young children, said Jennifer Dominguez, director of marketing for Sharbell Development Corp., which built them.
And a first-floor master bedroom isn't the preferred layout for parents who want their children's bedrooms nearby. But it will attract boomers, Axelrod said, even though it hints at age and infirmity. "That's the one thing they'll make a concession to, because a lot of them have knee problems from all that jogging," she said.
. To each his own. Boomers are disdainful of the cookie-cutter sameness of the earlier retiree "villages." Nothing in Washington Town Center is more than 5 years old, but its variety of styles makes it appear it grew gradually, like an old-fashioned town. It even has white picket fences that appeal to boomer nostalgia.
Retirees raised in the Depression wanted no-frills housing that reflected their frugality, Feinberg said. Eishenhower-era retirees were willing to spring for a bit more and didn't mind the conformity of the larger developments.
Boomers, however, want more: more options, more privacy, more freedom, more amenities. The AARP survey showed 8 percent seek to move to a bigger house.
All that bumps up the cost. But unlike their parents, boomers are perfectly willing to take out a mortgage for empty-nest housing, Feinberg said. If it isn't paid off when they die, they figure their c |
