CNN has done this whole investigative scoop on how elderly retirees have been priced out of retiring to Florida and all I can say is good. That is better for the environment. That is better for maintaining a support system. Stay where your loved ones are. I hate the idea that the cost of living is so high that you cannot even afford to move to a shitty fucking red state but old people need to stop moving to Florida. I’m more concerned about the people living in Florida than the retiree/snowbird population, stay in fucking Ohio instead of moving into a condo shoddily built over endangered wetlands. There are constant natural disasters and ongoing environmental concerns, I don’t care if you wanted to retire to the beach. This is something I am so passionate about as a southeasterner even if I am not from an ‘ideal’ retirement area, moving across the country at age 65 is a terrible idea logistically speaking, moving towards family is one thing but moving to a ‘scenic vacation’ area and pricing out all the locals and then needing a caretaker while your loved ones are states away is so baddddd.
we are crowded enough!! do not come to florida!!!
Not to mention that the elderly are more vulnerable to heat stress and less capable of evacuating during natural disasters, Florida is a terrible place to move to in your golden years.
I’m also from North Carolina and back in 2020, I was living in a trailer in an area that was the middle of fucking nowhere but has become a more touristy recreational area in the last 50 years and a lot of wealthy people from the research triangle had (temporarily) relocated there due to the pandemic and work from home mandates. The shit they would post on the previously very quiet Facebook group boggled my mind. “The nearest hospital is an hour away????” “There are no coffee shops or jogging trails?” “There are no municipal resources whatsoever?” YES, EXACTLY. EVERYONE ELSE IN THE COUNTY MAKES LIKE $40k A YEAR. GO HOME.
People in the Facebook group would be like “Is this a good place to retire to?” and locals would have to gently inform them that elderly residents in the region often have to leave the area because there are no doctors, no nearby hospitals, no home health aides and an overall lack of resources. It was so sickening.
Keep in mind old people really like the heat. We should, as a society, setting up places for people to retire to. We should allow people to go someplace warm and safe and spend their Golden years. I don't understand why people think that they can just say "DON'T COME HERE" and not out any effort into making a place for those same people.
Anything less is pretty bleak behavior.
Nope. We’re experiencing an elder care crisis and the answer is not to export them to Florida as Florida is a terrible retirement destination for the reasons outlined above. An elderly person’s desire to live somewhere warm does not supersede the needs of the people already living there nor does it negate the fact that pretty much every gerontological study indicates that it is better for elderly people to remain in familiar locations where they have longstanding community connections. We need more nursing homes, we need more assisted living communities, we need them across the nation. We need less people retiring to Florida.
Sorry I didn't mean to imply that Florida was THE only place, but this does need another aspect to it other than "anywhere but here" The whole gulf coast is fairly similar from my experience and we can spread people out in a much larger area than just Florida.
Again I apologize I didn't mean to communicate a "NO CHANGES ALLOWED" agenda, I was trying to get at 'You gotta offer up alternatives " adjustment to your plan
Nope. Gulf coast is bad for this. Someone mentioned that everywhere has natural disasters but I cannot stress enough that the frequent hurricanes, power outages and heat waves are terrible for aging bodies. It seems like a tropical paradise to these people and then they arrive and they are lonely and there is a lack of resources to care for them and they are pricing locals out of the places they’ve lived their entire lives. No public transportation, failing hospital systems, locals are struggling in many of these places and until the underlying systemic issues are fixed, making more retirement communities for out of staters will make everything worse.
I do think warning people not to retire to the southeast and to consider staying where they are is beneficial even if, I, a 25 year old barely scraping by, cannot offer them better retirement planning advice. Maybe someone will see me explaining why it is bad and think “Hmm. Perhaps I do not want to move hundreds or thousands of miles away from everyone who loves me to a place where the weather is warmer but far more violent and destructive and the land cannot support the population already living there and the medical care is poor. Maybe I should stay here where I am settled and opt for downsizing to a smaller residence, it seems like that would be more economical and less environmentally destructive than uprooting my entire life and going to a place where I am certainly not wanted.”
I do think these people are victims, I think they are sold this idyllic beach retirement future by property developers and many of them end up miserable, dying alone or eating into their savings. Countering this romanticization can be helpful. The Florida retirement dream is a bad idea.
