My impression of the 1980s (high school, college and first real job) was 65 was normal retirement and 55-64 was considered “early retirement”. My first job had the “Magic 75” formula, where you could receive the full pension if your age + years of service >= 75. However, you still had to be at least 55 years old to partake.
My mother took early retirement from teaching at 56. Her pension started immediately. However, before reaching 65, to keep her medical benefits, she had to agree to be available as a substitute teacher for 30 days each school year.
Most years I think she got at least 20 calls. There were a few years she hit 30 and could say “nope, I’m good for the year” if she didn’t feel like doing it. It was possible to decline when asked, but I think there was a limit on the number of times you could turn it down. She always reported scheduled vacations and time out of town so they knew not to call during those periods.
Back when pensions were the norm, many had “early retirement” clauses that either used a “magic number” (80 as sum of age and years of service comes to mind) or specified a number (often age 60 or 55) and a formula to reduce the pension for each year before 65. Some jobs, especially onerous physical ones, would have 30-and-out options so your steel plant wasn’t full of 60-year-olds who couldn’t lift stuff.
So early retirement was for those who managed money wisely (or inherited it wisely) and those who stuck with the same job for decades (less rare than today). Several factors helped - besides employees who stuck it out longer, I recall typically 10 years to vest; so the high turnover meant that a lot of contributions were put in for employees who never got to 10 years. The employee portion was refundable, but not the employer part; but the total of the fund benefited from that and from not having to pay small partial pensions. (Today, in Canada, the law is pensions vest at 2 years - and the departing employee can take the total entitlement net present value as a locked in fund to self-manage.)
Life expectancy was lower, so the expected contributions were smaller. The market and interest rates were less volatile, so les issues with keeping the fund funded. Wall Street got involved and pointed out that pensions were a drain on company finances, especially when the market was poor and the fund needed to be topped up from market losses. On top of that, as things like airlines and Detroit City demonstrated, lazy executives used big pension promises as a means to buy cheaper current labour peace - knowing full well when the full bill came due, they’d be sitting on their golden parachute not having to deliver. (Except Ghislaine’s daddy - when it came out he’d fuddled the company pension plan, he jumped off his yacht and drowned himself.)
But to circle back to the OP - there’s an aging population that is fairly well off thanks to pensions from a time long gone, and looking for a good option on where to live out their days until they need more in-depth care.
To be fair, when I grew up, we were in the suburbs, and pretty much white-collar (and just plain white). People working union-type jobs that might offer early retirement, or government jobs, simply were not that common. Where I live now, a large percentage of people are federal employees, or military, or some combination of both (e.g. retired military going into federal civilian service or contracting), and it’s something I hear about much more often.
55 itself is still not that common, but not as unheard-of as when I was growing up. Not that I was especially aware of retirement age back then, but my memories are of 65 being the standard.
My first job here was at one of the Big Eight (now Big 4, I think) accounting firms. Partners in the firm had to retire at age 62, I think - non-negotiable. Their share in the firm would be bought out. Rarely, some would put in a little time here and there as independent consultants.
My father was a sales representative for a packaging firm. Mom wasn’t involved on nearly the level we saw on Bewitched, for example - e.g. we never had the boss over for dinner - but Dad periodically went to conventions and other outings, and Mom frequently went along. I remember the time, when I was in my early 30s, when Dad had a trip to Hawaii. Mom was kind of waffling about going along. I told her that if she had a chance to go to Hawaii, and did not take it, she was crazy. She went, and had a great time.
Occasionally we got lucky and they’d bring one or two of us kids along - that’s how I visited Williamsburg for the first time. I was 16, and wound up spending a fair bit of the weekend babysitting another family’s kids (so I saw sights AND made money- woohoo!).
My father was a college professor and many of our vacations (Williamsburg, Toronto, Montreal, London) involved us tagging along when he was scheduled to deliver a paper at some conference.
My father was a professor too, and a royal cheapskate. he never mentioned what he was doing, but many of our earlier vacations I’m sure related to him going to some conference or other. He could drive, thus with gas and lodging reimbursement we cost almost nothing to take along and it meant my stepmother could get a few days out of the house too.
I wish I had moved 8 years ago. Not so much to be around other old people-although the condo complex I saw skewed old (the original owners)
But the condo is one level. Elevator building. Sunroom. Shuttle bus to Metro.
Now I feel too old to likely make any trips into the city.
My front steps 6 steps are just torture to carry things up or down. I have a dead tv in hallway that I can’t get downstairs. Moving for the future is appealing to a lot of people. 55 used to mean away from kids, but parenting grands kind of spoiled that.
I’m not sociable so I would be paying for things I don’t use.
From what I hear there is a one to two year wait list for independent living apartments. So I should see about getting on a list or two somewhere. My sister thinks I should be looking at North Dakota since it is cheaper. (family history but I have not lived there) Then she hates that I might move 25 miles away. Can’t win with that logic.
As to the original question which got answered right away- Ignorance fought!
Yes they did change laws to allow senior only. I image it was lowered to 55 in the sausage making process. For the landlords sake and the congressmen’s trophy wife.
Typically the requirement isn’t that everyone must be under 55, just that one member of the household must be. And no kids. We almost bought in a 55+ community here in SoFL. At that time my wife was 56 and I was 53. No issues w our ages qualifying.
I’m saying the landlords wanted to eliminate kids and the cities were mandating that they could not. This was the best they could come up with. Your wife doesn’t have to be 55 but are there restrictions on kids? For example The Villages has a 30 day limit for “visiting” children under 18
Those situations vary a lot depending on the local laws and community rules. The spouse might have a limit too but it might be 45 years old. Also the Federal law is that at least 80% of the units must have one over 55 person. They may legally sell to younger people if the threshold is met but the specific community rules probably won’t allow it.
That’s certainly one of the reasons. The other reason that occurred to me is for a development that isn’t fully sold and they want to have the maintenance account fully funded.
Supposedly some of the ones in Florida will allow younger owners only if they inherit it - e.g. Mom is 75 and wills it to her 40 year old kid. The one we own does not allow for that, I gather. I think we could have purchased it even not being 55, but would not have been permitted to actually move in. As we were just shy of turning 55 when we bought it (and it’s for the parents), it was never an issue.
We’ll sell it as soon as we no longer need it for its intended purpose. I have roughly zero interest in ever living in Florida - I’m seriously considering that we should retire to Vermont!
The two often have very different people in them. 55+ communities (generally only one person if its a couple needs to be 55) have residents that are very active. Lots of snowbirds in the Florida cities. 62+ communities tend to have much older people in them. I have no idea why it works out that way, but I’ve stayed in both off and on ever since I turned 55. The 62+ place I live in now, at 71 I’m the youngster!
They have both types in many, many states. Our national population is aging. I’m in Little Rock, and there are maybe a dozen senior apts here, and the South has very few compared to the rest of the country. People in the South generally still have deep generational roots, so granny or grandpa often come to live w/ the siblings. To my knowledge, there are no senior mobile home parks in this city of around 200,000, whereas St Pete, Fl had something like 55 of them when we lived there.