Physical therapist Courtney Tarpey works with Irene Miller at Life Care Center of Sarasota. Tarpey is helping Miller with rehabilitation from a broken ankle. (Herald-Tribune staff photo / Dan Wagner)

The age imbalance

Sarasota County's generation gap is a strength and a weakness

By Barbara Peters Smith
barbara.smith@heraldtribune.com

Ask an older adult a question, and chances are excellent that instead of a yes or no answer, you’ll get a narrative.

“She’s got quite a story,” says Courtney Tarpey, 33, talking about Irene Miller, 82. The two are working together, gently but firmly, in the physical therapy room of a local nursing home, to help Miller regain her ability to walk after breaking an ankle. Miller would especially like you to know that she injured herself in the act of trying to protect a stranger from harm.

After Hurricane Irma sideswiped Sarasota, a neighbor dragged a toppled bush from Miller’s yard to the curb. But the bush had an ornamental shepherd’s crook inside it, and Miller kept worrying about getting it disentangled before a truck came by to scoop up the debris.

Physical therapist Courtney Tarpey works with Irene Miller at Life Care Center of Sarasota. Miller says she values friendships with younger people in her community, in particular young parents whose older family members often live far away.
(Herald-Tribune staff photo / Dan Wagner)

“I knew that steel thing was in there and I was afraid if they put it in the chopper, the metal might shred and hurt somebody,” she says.

She was leaving home in her car — which she’s only had since February; that’s a significant plot point — when she saw a trash truck go by. Afraid it might be heading for her debris pile, she executed a quick U-turn to warn the collectors.

“I went to put my car in park and I was going to get out, and I don’t know whether it slipped out of park, or I didn’t get it all the way in park,” she recalls. “Anyway, it started rolling backwards. My foot couldn’t keep up as fast as I was going and finally it just slammed me into the pavement, backwards. I thought I was a goner.”

She believes she went into shock, but is pretty sure it was the Waste Management truck driver who stopped her car. After days in intensive care at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, she emerged in good shape, considering: Besides the ankle, she had broken six ribs and one finger. For her rehabilitation, she asked to come to Life Care Center of Sarasota, where she recovered a few years ago from a double knee replacement.

“They’re so nice,” Miller says of the therapists she works with daily. “They’re nice to be around. I think they know how to manipulate you enough so it’s not painful.”

Changing of the old guard

In Sarasota County, people in their 30s and those in their 80s tend to exist in separate bubbles, perhaps only becoming aware of each other when the driving seems too slow or the music seems too loud. But here in the rehab room, and others like it around the county, young and old adults engage in a close collaboration that illustrates how much they depend on each other to survive and thrive.


If younger adults feel surrounded by elders here, they aren’t imagining things. For every seven residents in their 20s and 30s, Sarasota County has 10 who are 70 or older. If current trends continue, that ratio will look more like one young adult for every two elders by 2045.

Kendra Yeo, 38, who oversees the physical therapy program at Life Care, says she knows many therapists who gravitate to geriatrics after entering the profession through an interest in sports. It’s where the jobs are in Southwest Florida, but she says it’s also a satisfying career.

“You get to be with them longer,” she says of her patients. “You’re taking someone who comes in and is unable to complete things on their own, and watching them have an outcome that allows them to go home and take care of themselves again, like they were. You see how much they appreciate it, on top of the bond that you create with them.”

The high number of retirees and snowbirds here has long worked in the county’s favor, providing jobs and subsidizing community support for working families. Elders underwrite the public school system and other services with their taxes, but don’t draw as heavily on many of those services. And there’s also the impact of philanthropy — although not as big as many people think.

But there are signs that our growing share of the oldest old, swollen by the longevity boom, will eat away at this upside to our age gap as more boomers retire. Young families continue to struggle: The numbers of schoolchildren on reduced-price lunches and babies born to Medicaid beneficiaries in Sarasota County rose in the Great Recession and haven’t really dropped. Elders’ demand for social services is exploding as more of them outlive their savings. And the shortage of millennials — especially higher-earning professionals — does not bode well.

Increasingly pressing needs at both ends of the age spectrum threaten to undermine the social contract that has worked so well for Sarasota County, local observers say — unless residents can learn to see those needs as mutual, and not competing.

That would mean more intergenerational conversations like the ones that happen during those physical therapy sessions at Life Care.

Miller came to Sarasota from Ohio 33 years ago, “for the weather.” With children and grandchildren who live nearby, she sees no reason for people to segregate themselves by age groups.

“I’m very comfortable being around young parents,” she says. “I talk to so many young people, and they don’t have any help because they don’t have any family around.”

Tarpey, who was born in New York about the time Miller arrived in Florida, has lived here since she was 5. Familiarity with older people, she says, is “almost embedded in you. You learn a lot more from them, because they grew up and experienced a whole different period of time than you did. So I think you just learn to appreciate them more.”

A county of immigrants

Miller and Tarpey represent those two constant streams of newcomers — retirees and young families — who have long been necessary to compensate for the high mortality rate that once earned Sarasota the nickname “God’s Waiting Room.” Last year, 2,927 babies were born in the county, while 5,690 of our residents died. This persistent pattern, with losses far outnumbering gains, means we need a reliable influx of people every year simply to maintain the status quo.

For Sarasota County, unabated immigration is a matter of life and death.

“If it weren’t for people moving in, the population would be steadily decreasing,” says Sarasota County demographer Tamara Schells. “I think what surprised me about this is that we are actually unique. There are over 3,000 counties, and only 7 percent of them have the situation we have about migration. Many of them are in Florida.”

Thinking about who these new residents are, most of us may envision someone on the leading edge of the baby boom, a fresh retiree from Up North who selected Sarasota County after a careful search and is ready for a sedate version of the good life. These are indeed the folks that new condos and subdivisions are mostly built for, but they’re only part of a complicated picture.

A report last summer from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, “Moving Forward Together,” describes the average new resident as 47 years old, with a gross income of $110,000 and at least some college education. But while this individual may exist, he or she is not typical. According to Schells’ research, less than a third of newcomers fall between the ages of 40 and 64; only 15 percent have incomes higher than $75,000 a year, and a whopping 63 percent have some college education or more.

In fact, that average newcomer is a blurry mash-up of the two predominant migratory trends: older, wealthier residents who arrive from out of state; and younger, poorer ones who come from within Florida, mostly from Manatee County. While demand for lavish homes with water and city views is transforming the downtown area and other desirable enclaves, 45 percent of new residents here make less than $25,000 a year.

These are mostly workers drawn to the 52 percent of our job market that is service-based, with salaries that top out at around $27,000 for now. Young people also find careers in the local arts sector, which has the highest concentration of employment compared to the rest of the nation; the average annual pay in the arts is $19,000.

“For a young person just starting out, it’s a lot worse,” says Schells. “When you look at starting wages vs. median wages, there’s a big difference. Even when you talk about a category like architecture, the entry salary here is $28,000. And raising children now is enormously expensive.”

The age of disparity

Sarasota County’s highly rated public schools are widely cited as a magnet for young families, one that helps soften the economic blow of expensive housing and lower-than-average salaries. But it’s less well-known that Longboat Key, an affluent community with a student census approaching zero, has regularly supported the district’s local school-tax referendums in overwhelming numbers.

The same local spirit of generosity has fueled a powerful philanthropic engine in Sarasota County. Its two community foundations, with combined assets topping $521 million, rank third and fourth in the state in grantmaking — behind community foundations in Jacksonville and Miami. Private foundations abound, established by local retirees who made their fortunes elsewhere; the top three have combined assets of around $382 million.

But virtually all the area’s nonprofits, including those serving children and elders specifically, are locked in a constant hustle to raise funds to compensate for cuts in government grants. Social service organizations that eagerly assumed welfare functions decades ago in return for public funding have seen those dollars dwindle as taxes are lowered — while the legal mandates to provide those services remain in place.

As a result, the volunteer boards and staffs of local nonprofits spend far more time and attention on fundraising, notes Siesta Key philanthropist Graci McGillicuddy. When she joined the board of the Child Protection Center in 1986, she says, public funding accounted for more than 80 percent of the organization’s budget. Now, confirms executive director Doug Staley, government support to prevent and intervene in child abuse cases hovers around 50 percent of the amount needed each year.

“We do have to raise the bulk of our funds from donations, events and writing grants,” McGillicuddy says. “Children don’t have a voice; we need to be their voice.”

Overall, conditions for Sarasota County’s young families may have eased slightly since the Great Recession. According to United Way Suncoast’s 2017 report on the county’s ALICE population — short for asset-limited, income-constrained and employed — some 39 percent of the county’s households fell below the survival threshold in 2012, and that dropped to 33 percent in 2015.

This is far lower than in the other Tampa Bay counties monitored by the United Way chapter — including Manatee County, where 43 percent of households are below the threshold. But the statistic masks a drastic difference in the welfare of our children that cuts along racial lines, says Holly Bullard, the chapter’s regional director for financial stability initiatives.

“It looks rosy on the surface,” she says. “But the disparity for black individuals and households for our county is wider than in any of the counties we serve.”

Schells, the Sarasota County demographer, recently compiled a snapshot of the county’s 60,000 children — the most racially diverse generation ever to reside here. Nearly a quarter of them receive public assistance, up from 14 percent in 2010, and a third of single female-headed households in the county fall below the poverty level. The cost of child care alone, for a working family with two young children, comes to more than $1,000 a month, according to the ALICE Report.

From the All Faiths Food Bank’s summer meal program to a multitude of reading support initiatives, county investment in its younger population remains the envy of neighboring communities. But older residents, traditionally the suppliers of such largess, may prove a less reliable source in coming decades. And more of them are likely to be on the receiving end of charity.

Not only will the share of county residents 75 and older increase dramatically, but their circumstances are projected to decline. Demographers predict that a smaller percentage of American retirees will move to Florida from other states, at least partially because fewer will be able to afford it: Retirement readiness among baby boomers and Generation Xers is far lower than it was for previous elders, due to their own spending patterns and macroeconomic trends.

While affluent retirees will continue to seek out and settle in Sarasota County, the wealthiest among them might not spend enough time here to develop local ties. And their influence on the community may be offset by residents already on the scene, who are expected to be less healthy and wealthy as they age. These are the 50-to-69-year-olds now nearing the end of their working lives, who make up almost a third of the county’s current profile — and have begun to push their way toward the top of the population pyramid.

Already — as boomers leave the workforce so soon after the Great Recession took its toll, and longevity gains boost the number of people outliving their assets — the Sarasota-based Friendship Centers are seeing more elders who clearly need nutrition and health care services they can’t afford on their own, says CEO Erin McLeod.

“We don’t have good data like what’s available on kids. Elders don’t register for school lunches, and two-thirds of seniors eligible for food stamps in our area don’t even apply for them,” she reports. “But their clothes are threadbare, and they’re trying so hard to stay independent in their own homes. We have a hard time just getting them in the door. When you reach a certain age, you have pride and dignity that are precious commodities.”

The widely shared stereotype of rich retirees may have, over time, desensitized this community to the phenomenon of elder poverty. Residents 60 and older represent 41 percent of the county population, and 10.7 percent of them are believed to be living within 125 percent of the poverty line. But Sarasota County human services grants for this fiscal year overwhelmingly went to nonprofits supporting children and their parents — 62.7 percent of the $4.25 million budget, compared to 7.5 percent allocated specifically for elders.

As the cost of housing in Sarasota County continues to rise, everyone whose income can’t keep pace with living expenses will feel the squeeze, says Jon Thaxton, a longtime county commissioner and now senior vice president for community investment at the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.

“The reality,” he says, “is that for both this aging population and these young families first starting out, Sarasota is a very challenging place to be.”

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