Perched atop a hill just north of Zephyrhills, Bentley Commons provides its tenants with concierge service, chef-made meals and transport to doctor's appointment.
Residents pay for these benefits with their monthly Social Security checks.
Jan Butterfield, 74, moved to the year-old complex from Ocala.
"I'm able to live here, but just barely," Butterfield said over lunch in the central dining room.
Bentley Commons is part of a growing trend in housing, aimed at senior citizens -- a population with steady, if fixed, incomes, said Mary Bujold, president of Maxfield Research, which studies senior-citizen housing.
While the new market-rate complexes offer lots conveniences, they also cost more than living in a house or mobile home, Bujold said.
Census figures released this year showed senior citizens largely insulated from the economic downturn even as poverty rates grew among children and working-age adults.
Butterfield and her Bentley Commons neighbors live in Florida's 5th Congressional District, stretching from Zephyrhills north to Levy County, which has 272,000 Social Security recipients -- the highest number of any congressional district in the country.
National deficit-watchers say Social Security and Medicare could consume the federal government unless something changes. Deficit-reduction plans call for reducing benefits and raising retirement ages.
Butterfield and her friends at Bentley Commons worry their lives will change for the worse as leaders in Washington try to rein in the federal budget deficit - a deficit driven largely by entitlements paid to senior citizens.
"It's going to hurt," Norma Medlicott said. "Somebody's got to be smart enough to cut things back without hurting people."
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