And it’s potentially life changing, even before retirement. Dr. Sandefur’s village, Fearrington Cares, is in a 2,500-resident subdivision rather than spread throughout a neighborhood or across municipalities.
Dr. Sandefur was an assistant biology professor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke when he moved to the subdivision with his wife, Brittany Marino Sandefur, and two daughters in April 2020. The village, which serves the entire subdivision’s mostly over-65 residents without charging dues (fund-raising and donations cover its costs), wasn’t the main attraction — a rental house in a tight pandemic real estate market was.
Dr. Sandefur started teaching remotely almost as soon as he moved in. With the extra time at home, he volunteered for Fearrington Cares, changing light bulbs for neighbors and moving heavy plants off porches. Then he discovered that, as in other villages, volunteers were encouraged to offer their own skills. With his above-average command of computers, he was soon recovering logins and setting up Hulu accounts. “People need help with technical things,” he said. “I do feel needed, for sure. I stay quite busy.”
From the beginning, villages have been committed to keeping minds active, bodies healthy and souls intact, Ms. McWhinney-Morse said. Her generation and subsequent ones no longer see nursing homes as an inevitability, she said: “We’re not as conscious or fearful of, oh, you’re going to fall or forget your meds.”
That doesn’t mean villages suit everyone’s needs. Many were started by white, middle-class neighbors and are still situated in largely white, middle-class communities (an Asian-American village in Oakland, Calif., has been successful; one geared toward Latino members is in development in Winter Park, Fla). Ms. Sullivan said efforts to diversify are underway. One involves bringing the movement to settings with broad ethnic and socioeconomic reaches, like churches.
Once established, villages don’t always thrive. When they shut down, money is often the culprit. “Villages continue to have an uphill struggle with financial stability,” Ms. Sullivan said. Since 2012, 29 member villages have dissolved. Of those, six closed since the pandemic began. Some cited money as the reason; others, stalled membership growth. A few closed because of conflicts over people’s vaccination status. Some villages that were starting to develop decided to wait until after the pandemic.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/business/generation-x-retirement.html