By Debra Utacia Krol

(Sun City West, Arizona) Tanned, lean and healthy, Jim and Evy Heath tool around town in a white golf cart festooned with flags. Jim is 65; since he retired as a union trucker in 1993, he and his 60-ish wife, a nurse, have split their time between here, in Sun City West, and Minnesota. The Heaths say they love their lives.

“We’ve got four rec centers, a pool, bowling alley and bocce ball,” says Jim. “You can do anything out here.”

Many of the area’s 100,000-plus seniors agree. Even Money Magazine touted the Sun Cities as one of the top places to live in the U.S.

But now, Arizona’s pioneering, age-segregated planned community has become an all-ages town. Affluent senior citizens still enjoy their golden years with little tax burden, but this enclave of silver-haired retirees appears to be undergoing significant change.

A Place for Living the “Golden Years”

Once, this land was deemed fit only for cotton, creosote and horned toads. Then, in 1954, real estate broker Ben Schleifer and banker Clarence Suggs purchased 320 acres of cotton fields to create the nation’s first master planned retiree community.

Schleifer wanted his new community to be “associated with youth and ambition,” so they called it Youngtown. Tellingly, though, AARP founded its first chapter in Youngtown. Author Andrew D. Blechman spells out the history in his book Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008).

In Phoenix, mythic developer Del Webb seized quickly on the retiree concept, and created the Sun City empire right next to Youngtown. While Schleifer’s vision incorporated more humble silver-haired immigrants, Webb catered to more upscale seniors. Youngtown Police Chief Dan Connelly, 65, says “Youngtown was designed for blue collar workers; there were middle-income workers here, retired sergeants, and the like.”

Social Security, better health care and the prosperity of the mid-20th century all contributed to this expanding retiree cohort. With the increasing disintegration of the extended family, entrepreneurs like Schleifer and Webb got in on the growing business of giving retired people a new life in what Webb first styled as “golden years.”

Seniors swarmed into cozy ranch houses. Recreation centers and homey downtowns sprang from the desert. Retirees bought golf carts and settled into what many still see as Utopia.

The dazzling array of activities for the 55-plus denizens of the Sun Cities—the original Sun City, Sun City West and Sun City Grand—still includes recreation centers, golf at greatly-reduced fees, and over 100 clubs. Residents pay a modest fee for services.

Homes are generally lower-priced than elsewhere. A basic two-bedroom detached home in Sun City, can cost as little as $90,000.

Old age is a big business

There’s no doubt that retirees bring in big money. The Arizona Department of Commerce’s community profiles estimate that Sun City alone brings in over $300 million in annual business revenues.

Senior-oriented businesses here include health care, physical assistance equipment, financial advisers and, of course, golf cart dealerships. Two area hospitals have geriatric practitioners on staff, and a major Alzheimer’s research facility is nearby.

Instead of incorporation, the Sun Cities opted for government by homeowners association. The Sun City Homeowners Association (SCHOA) and Sun City West’s Property Owners and Residents Association (PORA), perform duties that would normally be tackled by a municipal government.

And then there are taxes—or rather the lack of them. Residents in age-restricted communities pay one-half to two-thirds less tax than anybody else in the county. PORA’s Web site states that the property tax on an $80,000 home is less than $400 a year. SCHOA’s annual magazine reports that the average Sun City property tax is $800 a year.

Residents pay no municipal sales or property taxes. School taxes are virtually non-existent.

Naturally, residents want to keep it that way. They even have their own taxpayers association, the Sun City Taxpayers Association. The association’s Web site trumpets a food tax elimination in Sun City.

Blechman commented via email on the trend towards segregating seniors together. “It’s not hard to understand why seniors choose an age-segregated lifestyle,” he wrote. “Families are increasingly blown apart by geography; the car-dependent suburbs are antithetical to aging-in-place; with so much transience, hometowns only exist in a physical sense—the people are gone so where do you return to?—and we have a miserable track record of caring for our seniors.”

Blechman is also concerned that age-segregated, sometimes gated senior enclaves lure some of society’s most valuable members away from public engagement. “With age comes wisdom and experience. We should treasure our elders.”

Sun City boasts of being the “City of Volunteers,” but Blechman has something to say about that, too. “Many residents volunteer outside of Sun City’s boundaries, but not in large enough numbers to make up for the fact that Sun Citians don’t pay any school tax,” he writes.

Senior services congregate in Sun Cities

Social service agencies here deal with age-related issues on a grander scale. Steve Lacy, an advocate for seniors with the Area Agency on Aging, sees many of these cases. “Definitely as you age, you can start getting isolated,” Lacy says. “Your spouse passes, you may lose your driving ability or develop cognitive losses.”

This exacerbates the fact that so many seniors have left their old communities—and their support systems—behind. “If you’re in Nebraska and end up in a nursing home, everybody knows where you’re at,” Lacy says. “Some actually leave and go back [when their health fails], but that’s really hard to do; it takes a lot of work to sell your old home, find a new place to live.”

On the other hand, Lacy notes that the Sun Cities do offer seniors more in the way of support services. “There’s more being done [in Sun City] to prevent isolation and other kinds of situations. The network to protect people is strong there.”

Seniors need that strong network. Jane Burzzese of Interfaith Community Care based in Surprise, Arizona, notes that many of the 600 to 700 calls for assistance her agency handles each month come from elderly people who have lost their support system.

“Some of them have survived their adult children or have only one left,” says Burzzese. Others never had children. And some are estranged from their adult children. “When they learn that their parents are moving to Arizona, they become really angry and cut off contact; ‘If they want to live out there, let them deal with it,’” she relates.

Interfaith operates six senior day care centers, and maintains a cadre of volunteers and staff to help seniors with home repair, meals, transportation and most importantly, human contact. Burzzese says many seniors struggle to survive on less than $1,000 a month.

The Sun Cities do suffer from crime, only it’s not usually visible from the tidy streets. Senior fraud is the big concern here, and Burzzese says a coalition to battle the problem is made up of representatives from the Arizona Attorney General, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Interfaith, area banks and financial institutions and other agencies.

“These con artists are really sophisticated,” says Burzzese. “They will befriend a senior and then start taking over their finances.” Among other strategies, local banks monitor withdrawals of large sums from seniors’ accounts, notifying an adult child or other interested party.

Everyone this reporter spoke with said they have a great working relationship with local law enforcement and emergency service agencies.

Another, fuller version of this article with more local detail is available here and owned by the Arizona Capitol Times, normally available by subscription only. Our thanks go to the editorial staff for allowing us to provide this link free of charge.

Debra Utacia Krol, an enrolled member of the Xolon (or Jolon) Salinan Tribe of central California, is a freelance journalist and NewsPlink correspondent based in Arizona.