THE VILLAGES — One of the world’s largest senior living communities, The Villages in Central Florida is known for its endless golf courses, the highest median age in the U.S. and traffic-jarring golf cart parades that typically support a Republican presidential candidate during campaign season.

What it is not known for is children.

Nevertheless, over the course of the decade, the area in which The Villages is located has become the fastest-growing metropolitan area for young children in the United States.

The number of children ages 14 and younger has increased by 18.4% in the Wildwood-The Villages metropolitan area this decade. The main reason for this is that the working-age population has increased by 19.1%. This is also the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the U.S. for this age group this decade, according to population estimates released this summer by the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Someone has to provide services for this growing number of retirees, and many of those workers will be young adults with children living in the county,” said Stefan Rayer, population program director at the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

These workers include lawn care workers, plumbers, electricians, financial advisors, nurses, construction workers, real estate agents, roofers and physical therapists for a senior living community that has evolved from a remote and rural enclave into one of the fastest-growing places in the United States since the 1990s.

The Wildwood-The Villages metropolitan area had more than 151,500 residents last year, most of them retirees. In 2020, the population was 130,000.

Due to the region’s demographic development, raising children is a challenge.

Morgan Philion, 31, has to drive her 2-year-old son to a neighboring county in central Florida to see an obstetrician or pediatric dentist because there are no appointments available locally. If they want to visit a children’s museum, they drive 80 miles southwest on Interstate 75 to Tampa.

Story time at the local public library has become a lifeline for Philion and other young families in the Wildwood-The Villages metropolitan area.

“It’s really hard to find something to do, and this is the only activity they offer for kids,” Philion said.

On weekdays, librarians, including Anita Stevenson, lead between one and two dozen preschool children in singing songs about reading, shooting bubbles from a handheld device and telling stories with titles like “Betty Goes Bananas” and “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! Quack!”

“A lot of new families are moving here,” Stevenson said, pointing to the newly built homes further down the street.

Eldresah St. Fleurant, 28, her husband and their two young daughters were among the families who moved into the apartments next to the library after struggling to find housing as many housing complexes in the area cater only to people 55 and older.

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“It’s good and it’s bad,” St. Fleurant said of raising children in the area.

On the one hand, the rapid growth offers countless jobs and new store openings, but the district lacks family-friendly facilities such as an emergency center for children. The library’s story hour is an exception.

“If you don’t come to something like this, you won’t find young families driving around here,” she said.

Sarah Feeney’s 3-year-old son wears hearing aids. She said it was “a nightmare” trying to find an audiologist who treats children in the Wildwood-The Villages area because all medical services are “geared toward the older generation.” Now they drive 60 miles on the Florida Turnpike to Orlando for those appointments. They also struggled to find a church with youth programs.

Despite all this, the 40-year-old has been enjoying life in Wildwood since moving here from St. Petersburg less than a year ago.

“It’s less crowded. It’s less stressful and more manageable,” said Feeney, who also has a 5-month-old boy.

No one under the age of 19 is allowed to live in The Villages, and at least one member of the household must be 55 or older. Because of the age restriction, there has been an increase in young families in some small communities outside of The Villages, such as Wildwood and Oxford.

Recognizing the growth of young people, The Villages recently opened Middleton, a planned community next to the senior residence aimed at workers and their families.

For older residents of The Villages like 60-year-old Chris Stanley, the influx of families is a boon, but she worries about the growing shortage of affordable housing and overcrowded schools. The school district has 13 schools for its 9,400 students. The highly rated Villages Charter School is primarily limited to the children of employees.

“We’re here until we die. We’re frogs,” Stanley joked. “We’ve built this huge infrastructure here and we need people to run it. If we don’t have young people here with kids who can afford to live here and pay for daycare and housing, we’ve got a real problem here.”

The median age in Wildwood-The Villages was 68 last year, the highest in the country, but due to the influx of young people, it has fallen from 68.4 at the beginning of the decade. In the U.S., however, the median age has risen from 38.5 to 39.1 this decade.

Children still make up a small percentage of Sumter County’s population (7.2 percent last year), compared to more than 21 percent for the U.S. as a whole, but that percentage is growing, up from six percent a decade ago.

This growth stands in stark contrast to the trend across the country, as the number of children under 14 in the U.S. has declined by 3.3% this decade. The largest U.S. metropolitan areas – New York, Los Angeles and Chicago – have lost a total of 614,000 children since 2020.

Sumter County Commissioner Andrew Bilardello has known the area long enough to remember when it had only one traffic light. Back in the 1980s, high school graduates either joined the military, went to college or moved within the state to Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa to find work.

Few young people have stayed, says Bilardello, so he is pleased that the number of children and people of working age has increased this decade in a community with some of the oldest residents in America.

“We want to keep the young people here,” said Bilardello. “This is our future.”

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By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press