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Originally Posted by Laker14
I agree with you. When I decided to buy here (I'm not a full timer at this point, but I am a Florida resident spending 8-9 months here, and my medical care is all here now), I saw it as a place for my "active retirement years", but not necessarily where I will "age in place" if I live a lot of years after my activity level has been forced to slow down to the point I can't use enough of the amenities to make sense for me to continue to pay for them.
One would think that if a large percent of the people do wind up living here into their deep years of aging and infirmity, that the market for those services will drive development of the facilities and staff needed to provide them. It took time for the market to attract Walmart, Sam's Club and Costco, but it did eventually.
I don't see why it won't work that way for aging care unless there is just a shortage of caregivers, but that would likely be a national issue, and moving somewhere else would be unlikely to solve it.
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There is a shortage for sure, but in areas where there are a LOT of seniors - a shortage can be catastrophic. They need to market the area to attract more health care workers. And those will be people who actually live in the general area, and don't have to travel 40 miles one way just to get to their $15-20/hour jobs. Florida health care employees are notoriously underpaid. Nursing staff, physical therapy, radiologists - heck even janitorial services at hospitals and assisted living and memory care centers - are in bad shape here. Just look at how long those buildings across from the hospital have been for sale. They were part of a senior living center and they've been vacant and for sale for four years. No one wants to touch it, because they know there's no way they can staff it.
The property owners (go ahead and take a guess as to who that might be) need to be more reasonable about their expectations. Yes they absolutely deserve to profit from business rentals and property sales/leases. But their CUSTOMERS - people like Villages residents - also deserve to have the care we need within reasonable proximity, and not have to go halfway down or up the state, or move back north, just because we might need to spend our last years in a wheelchair and there aren't enough nurses to accommodate an aging population. That's something they should've thought about when they built the place.