Retirees
This advertisement published in the Los Angeles Times in 1974 extolled the advantages of living in a retirement community. Image courtesy the Mission Viejo Public Library, Mission Viejo Heritage Committee Planned Community Collection
The Growth of Retirement Communities
Southern California developer Ross Cortese was one of the first to take advantage of the needs of the 55-and-over set. Reflecting on the late 1950s, Cortese wrote that he noticed "the statistics of a snowballing elderly population."
"I assumed someone would launch a major housing program for this group, but nobody did." Cortese said. "I began thinking about the kind of housing I felt elders would enjoy. I had the theory that older people wanted to own their own quarters and live independently, yet they wanted to be near their own age group and they wanted to be spared maintenance details."
His vision for an all-inclusive retirement community came to fruition in 1962 when he began opening his Leisure World subdivisions. The first was constructed in the Southern California town of Seal Beach; the second opened a few years later in the southern Orange County city of Laguna Hills, and in 1999 incorporated as a separate city, Laguna Woods. Combined, the two communities are now home to nearly 30,000 people aged 55 and older.