South Florida's fading retirement communities

key to demographic changes

Article Courtesy of The Sun Sentinel

Published March 21, 2011

 

Don't call it white flight.

The panicky exodus from American cities in the 1960s and 70s as blacks and Hispanics moved in has nothing in common with the changes to South Florida communities revealed in the 2010 census.

What's happening, experts say, is that the waves of retirees — largely non-Hispanic whites from the Northeast — who sustained the region's vast condominium communities have dried up. Instead, this generation's Social Security set is opting for Arizona, the west coast of Florida, North Carolina and other destinations that seem to offer the serenity once promised by southeast Florida.

Replacing them are immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, giving classic condo commando territories such as Margate and Tamarac a younger, more ethnically varied texture.

Broward County saw its non-Hispanic white population drop from 58 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2010. In Palm Beach County, their numbers declined only 1 percent but they shrank from 71 percent of the population to 60 percent.

And although Palm Beach County has a much smaller population than Broward, it has 32,754 more non-Hispanic whites.

"Broward County still has a relatively significant elderly population," said Dick Ogburn, an analyst with the South Florida Regional Planning Council, but "they are not being replaced by retirees from other parts of the U.S."

Palm Beach County experienced these changes to a lesser degree, experts say, partly because its retiree communities tend to be wealthier and still attractive to newcomers, and partly because its time hasn't yet come.

Gregory Vaday, an urban planner with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, said Palm Beach County's non-Hispanic white community has been replenished by new arrivals from Miami-Dade and Broward counties, an in-state migration that's been going on for years.

"To some extent, that migration of non-Hispanic whites to our region may be replacing the non-Hispanic whites we lose," he said. "But I think the long-term trend is that non-Hispanic whites will decline. I foresee Hispanic people becoming a larger percentage, and the African-American population probably stable."

Palm Beach County also saw a much higher level of growth than Broward, (16.7 percent vs. 7.7 percent), largely due to continued housing construction in the western and northern ends of the county.

In Broward, the demographic changes are most visible in the communities once largely made up of Jewish retirees from the north, said former Tamarac Commissioner Karen Roberts, who has lived in the city since 1980.

"They've gotten older and died," she said. "Now there are young families moving in, lots of Spanish families. I can tell you on my block there are three houses that have been sold within the last three months to Spanish people."

Michelle McKoy, 37, moved from England to Hollywood, preferring the weather and the proximity to her relatives in Jamaica. McKoy, who is completing a master's degree in human resources at Nova Southeastern University, said the move gave her "an opportunity to embrace the so-called American dream and strategically it's close to the Caribbean. I have lots of family in the islands, so being in Florida gives me easy access to them.

"There's such a melting pot here," she said. "But we're not as melted as we could be."

Although there's talk — and among many English-speakers, fear — that Broward's demographics will one day resemble those of Miami-Dade County, Ogburn said that's unlikely. Broward is likely to remain a predominantly middle-class blend of Hispanic, white and black, rather than be dominated by a single demographic group, he said.

"Miami-Dade is very dramatically and significantly Hispanic," he said. "Broward already shows a diversity that goes beyond Hispanic. Miami-Dade doesn't have that kind of mix. I don't see that Broward is on pace to make it like Miami-Dade County 10 or 15 years from now.

"Broward County is very much a middle-class community and attractive in a lot of ways to many diverse groups," he said. "We don't have a simple Hispanic subgroup in Broward County. There's a lot of diversity and it's sort of moving in the direction of equal portions."


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