[Villages Kahuna]

You’ve discovered why people describe The Villages as “living in a bubble”.

The attitude of the locals towards Villagers ranges from indifferent tolerance to downright hatred. How would you feel if suddenly a community of 145,000 self-interested, non-working, almost entirely Caucasian, wealthy northerners dropped into the middle of your modest, unhurried, rural southern community?

We justify our existence by saying how much we’ve helped the locals by providing jobs and increased income and not thinking for a moment that the people who lived here liked it the way it was.

I remember a young woman who had to deliver something to our house in Mallory shaking her head over the massive development and saying that when she was a teenager this was all pastureland where she and her friends would ride their horses for hours on end. Now she observed, all that is gone.

That’s why Villagers often describe leaving the confines of The Villages and others who live here as “going off campus”.