Client Education

Housing Options

Where Seniors Rule

By: Jim Radcliffe, Special to AccentCare

After delivering more than 12,000 babies in the Chicago area during a four-decade career, physician Robert Bouer looked westward for retirement in early 1994. He considered communities along Southern California's coast. Nothing clicked.

But then Bouer hooked up for a round of golf inside a cousin's retirement community – some master-planned development known as Leisure World.

"On the second hole of the course, I said, 'Who's your realtor?' " Bouer recalls. "A beautiful, tree-filled location with incredible amenities. Friendly. It had everything that a retired person could want."

Now, six years later, the retired doctor is a councilman for what is apparently the country's only city where virtually everyone is 55 or older.

Leisure World didn't form its own local government last year for the novelty of it; many of the 19,000 residents here wanted to break away from county rule and fight that government's proposal to put a thriving, commercial airport nearby.

"We weren't being treated well by the county supervisors," Bouer says. "They were putting an airport over our heads. They didn't give a damn about us."

Betty Hohwiesner, 80, says the city – which is called Laguna Woods and was born March 24, 1999 – is a reminder to younger Americans that senior citizens are not done living.

"It shows that we can do it – that we clearly have clout," says Hohwiesner, who helped lead the charge as president of Leisure World Residents for Cityhood. "A lot of people feel that when you get to be 80 – oh, my God – go climb up in your box. That's not the case."

City officials are quick to point out that Leisure World, a 36-year-old development run by nonprofit homeowners associations, remains a private community with 14 security gates that only residents and their guests may pass through.

And, the officials add, the city is more than Leisure World. Indeed, although Laguna Woods' borders don't extend much beyond Leisure World's cinder-block walls and cyclone fences. Outside the retirement community, the city has only five residences: three retirement homes with a collective 500 residents, a rectory with four priests and a storage facility with two employees who live on site.

City Hall is outside the development, too. But to understand the city, you must look inside Leisure World, plopped between Los Angeles and San Diego and near the California coast, Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm.

A Hotbed of Activity

Residents, on average 77.5 years old, cannot walk outside their homes without bumping into activity.

Leisure World is a pair of golf courses, a table tennis center with Swedish-made tables and zipping ping-ping balls, five pools, 240 clubs and organizations, indoor and outdoor shuffleboard courts, a half-dozen clubhouses and an 834-seat auditorium.

Yes, some residents depend on walkers and canes. But they are heavily outnumbered by seniors wading in a pool during an exercise class, or others swatting balls on tennis courts or those sweating off calories on stair climbers and exercise bicycles.

Seven years ago, Lois Grote and her chestnut horse, Moony, moved in. Grote, 62, rides Moony, 21, several times weekly on trails that start at Leisure World's stables and snake through urban and rural stretches. "This is for active seniors," Grote says. "It's very good. It has the pools, tennis courts and anything people would want to do.

"Most people get involved in so many things that they don't get anything done. There's no excuse not to be active here unless you don't want to be ? they aren't going to drag you out of your house. Scandinavian Club, Montana Club, Wyoming Club. ... Lawn bowling – did I mention that?"

Each household pays $347 monthly to a homeowners association to cover recreation and other expenses. Under $30,000 will get you a 1,000-square-foot quarters in a two-story building. Or, if you can afford it, there are $500,000-plus homes that offer 2,500 square feet, 9-foot-high ceilings and marble walls and floors. The homes, boxy to pleasant, mostly attached to other residences in various configurations, splay out in plains and rolling hills, connected by private, meandering roads.

To keep residents of kindred spirit, each household must include someone 55 or older. Co-occupants must be at least 45. Spouses, and adult dependent children and live-in caregivers, are exempt from the age restriction.

The nonprofit Golden Rain Foundation, the master homeowners association that oversees the administration and recreational facilities and the common grounds, spends $70 million annually to maintain Leisure World's vast common grounds and facilities; in a typical city, some of these properties would be maintained by the city, while the rest wouldn't exist. In comparison, the city's annual budget is $3.1 million.

Leisure World was the vision of Ross Cortese, a real-estate businessman who sprinkled seven Leisure Worlds across the country: three in California and one each in Maryland, Virginia, Arizona and New Jersey. For this one, he gobbled up 3,568 acres of lonesome California chaparral in 1962. Two years later, the first 530 homes were snapped up within 90 minutes of going on sale. By the mid-1980s, when construction was completed, the population topped 18,000.

The annual Gay Nineties Luncheon, held exclusively for residents who are at least 90, is a favorite. "We had 60 at lunch today," says Debby Lamb, Leisure World's recreation director. "Normally, we have 70, 80. But I heard a couple of them saying that people were busy. There's no leisure in Leisure World."

How It All Got Started

The cityhood movement began like a slow-breaking ocean wave.

In 1989, a community next-door, Laguna Hills, pushed for a city that would include Leisure World. But some Leisure World residents didn't see any benefit to being part of any city, while others rejected the notion that a retirement community could joyfully merge with one of young families. Why would Leisure World residents want to foot the bill for a park outside the gates when they were already paying a monthly fee for that and much more?

A ballot measure barely lost – with Leisure World residents shooting it down by a 2-to-1 margin. Two years later, Laguna Hills became its own city.

Until 1996, cityhood was largely forgotten in Leisure World. Then, a countywide initiative, meant to kill off the proposed Orange County International Airport at the now-closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, failed. For the first time, Leisure World seriously eyed cityhood as a way to gain political muscle to help squash the airport.

Over the next several years, the federal government took steps to shutter the fighter-jet base, and studies confirmed the obvious: Just south of the runways, Leisure World would be hit hard by jet noise. Debate over the airport would become the most controversial subject ever to emerge in the county, pitting civic leaders and even family members against one another. A final decision on the airport might not come for years.

Three of the five county supervisors favor the airport: They said it would pump up the local economy and provide desired air travel and cargo flights. Leisure World residents were furious. Because they were not a city, and therefore under direct rule by the Board of Supervisors, their local leadership was supporting a position they despised. By putting in place its own City Council, Leisure World could join neighboring cities in attacking the proposal – and could funnel tax dollars into the anti-airport camp.

"That's the ax we held over everybody's head," recalls Hohwiesner, the cityhood campaign chief. "We've got to be a city so we could have a voice."

There was a second ax as the March 1999 cityhood election approached: This would likely be the last chance for a Leisure World city. Another adjacent development chock-full of young families, Aliso Viejo, was revving up to become a city. If Leisure World's cityhood effort failed, Aliso Viejo's leaders would move to absorb at least some of the 60 businesses just outside Leisure World ? and a Leisure World city had to have them for sales-tax revenue. Fortunately for Leisure World, it had collected sufficient signatures to get its cityhood measure onto the ballot; Aliso Viejo hadn't.

But what to call this new city? In summer 1998, residents cast 1,000 ballots with all sorts of recommendations that were mostly mundane (like Laguna Heights and Laguna Verde), but also included A Little Bit of Heaven, Early Bird, Geezerville, Peaceville, Playtime, Utopia and Viagra Village. Voters would make three choices on March 2, 1999: decide whether to become a city; pick five residents to serve as council members; and select a city name from two finalists.

Politicking was divisive. Opponents feared that another layer of government wouldn't help. Maybe the city would go broke. Why change anything? We found retirement heaven, leave it alone. Leisure World residents would support any countywide, anti-airport measure at the polls, anyway.

"Sometimes it got really nasty," says Brenda Ross, 84, elected to the City Council in March 1999 and subsequently appointed mayor by her council peers.

"The people against the city were coming up with all sorts of things that weren? true?It went on and on."

Among them, Ross remembers: If cityhood went through, anyone could come inside the private community, like skateboarding youth; Leisure World would lose its age restriction; council members would die before fulfilling their terms.

Ross, who will be 88 when her term expires in April 2004, didn't take that last one seriously and still doesn't.

"It's when you stop being busy that you die," says the mayor, who lives on the 11th floor of her condominium complex and marches down the stairs instead of taking the elevator, and oftentimes takes the stairs upward for a couple of flights.

Political signs were virtually nil, because Leisure World doesn't permit them in yards or on street corners.

A Slim Margin of Victory

Still, 66.7 percent of the voters registered within the proposed city's boundaries cast ballots – 10,336 in all. Those wanting to know whether seniors would govern themselves included a Japanese television station, a Scottish newspaper and the Chicago Tribune. Cityhood won by only 342 votes.

By all accounts, the cityhood controversy died at the ballot box.

"I don't hear much talk on it at all," says Harold Woods, 81, one of three who ran for council while opposing cityhood, in part using the race as a medium to voice opposition. "It seems like it's an accepted thing. ... It being unusual as it would be, I had concerns that it might not be effective. Now that it's happened, I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude. It seems to be functioning OK."

Herb Gilbert, 81, voted for cityhood. He moved here in 1977, lured like many by the feeling of security and the swirl of activity. A retired electrical engineer who regularly plays golf and table tennis, he says cityhood hasn't brought noticeable changes.

"As far as I know, it's OK. I haven't seen any adverse effects," he says. "I honestly think it is best, but I can't put my finger on it as to why. I think it's because we're no longer under the thumb of county supervisors."

–The City Is in Good Hands–

Laguna Wood's first year passed with little turbulence, although Jim Thorpe did give up the largely ceremonial title as mayor after a fellow Council member complained that he ran meetings that were too long.

However, the City Council pushed on: A city manager was hired. City Hall moved into a strip mall outside Leisure World's gates. The Sheriff's Department agreed to send out more patrols, and street sweepers now strut their stuff on the public streets outside the gates weekly instead of monthly.

"The city is in good hands," says Hohwiesner, the cityhood organizer. "We elected some very good members."

The City Council is mulling over a proposal that few other municipal bodies would: Building paths and bridges around town designed for a golf cart, a transportation mode favored by hundreds here who can no longer drive cars or who just prefer the ease of the motorized buggy. The mayor wants to someday look at building recreational facilities outside Leisure World, so that the outside residents can enjoy

"We are looking at things that are unique to our community," says Bob Ring, the Golden Rain Foundation's president and an ardent cityhood supporter. "They may not happen – but at least we're looking at them. I think we've shown the world that we can govern ourselves.''

Jim Radcliffe is a staff writer for the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif.