Nineteen year old Talia Stephens loves her new apartment. It is inexpensive and very spacious. “The living room and bedroom are both plenty big enough for my needs,” Talia says. “The bathroom is pretty big too.”

Talia’s new apartment is a fully furnished apartment with a big-screen TV and the spacious kitchen has all the necessary kitchen appliances. “I didn’t need to bring or buy any furniture at all, and the kitchen has everything. Besides the fridge, garbage disposal, and dishwasher, it also has a microwave, a toaster, a food processor, and a coffee-maker,” Talia adds. Next to the kitchen is a clothes washer and clothes dryer.

“I like to go swimming in the evenings in the lighted-pool.” All residents at the complex have access to a swimming pool and badminton area. Next to the pool is a sauna, a regular hot tub and a jet-tub. At the end of the pool is the entrance to a fitness gym.

“I rented the apartment sight-unseen, and I lived there a full week before I realized it was a retirement complex,” she said.

Talia had graduated high-school and was moving away from her hometown to attend college. A friend of hers, an older lady, said she could get her a cheap apartment. Her friend sent pictures of the place to Talia and she loved it.

But the friend never told Talia it was a retirement community. “At first, I noticed that a lot of my neighbors seemed older, and that it was a very quiet place, especially in the evenings. Then I noticed that, not just some, but all of them were elderly.”

After Talia noticed this, she began to get nervous, thinking that maybe she was breaking the law by living in a place meant for the elderly. “I thought I was going to get in trouble with the government or something,” she said.

But the reason the apartment was not expensive is because it is subsidized by the government. The law only requires the apartment complex to rent at least eighty-percent of their apartments to people over the age of fifty-five. The other twenty-percent can be rented out to persons of any age. So even though Talia is only nineteen, she was allowed to live there.

“I have gotten really close to the people around here.” says Talia. “They are so friendly and full of fantastic life stories. I might write a book about it someday! But the funniest thing for me,” she laughs, “is that my nearest neighbors have told me that I can play my music as loud as I like, because their hearing is not as good as it used to be.”