The Retreat at Twin Lakes is a

gated community A gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences ...

in the US city of

Sanford, Florida Sanford is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Seminole County. As of the 2020 census, its population was 61,051. Known as the "Historic Waterfront Gateway City", Sanford sits on the southern shore ...

. It was the site of the

killing of Trayvon Martin On the night of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, United States, George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American boy. Zimmerman, a 28-year-old man of mixed race, was the neighborhood watch coordinator for his ...

George Zimmerman George Michael Zimmerman (born October 5, 1983) is an American man who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black boy, in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, 2012. On July 13, 2013, he was acquitted of second-degree murder in '' Flori ...

. The community initially consisted of 1,400-square-foot (130 m²) townhouses which sold on average for $250,000, but had values below $100,000 by February 2012 due in large part to the

financial crisis of 2007–2008 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fi ...

History

In 2004, Engle Homes began construction on the 263 two-story townhouse development which is located 18 miles (30 km) northeast of downtown Orlando. The community, near Interstate 4 in a suburban section of Sanford, was marketed as "an oasis where nobody could park a car on the street or paint the house an odd color." The remaining lots were acquired by

Lennar Lennar Corporation is a home construction company based in the census-designated place of Fontainebleau, Florida, with a Miami postal address. In 2021, the company was the second-largest home construction company in the United States based on the ...

following the 2008 bankruptcy filing of Engle, and the neighborhood was finally built out in 2011. George Zimmerman moved to the community in 2009. At that time, the United States was experiencing the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

. This caused a "demographic transformation" of the gated community, where 1,400-square-foot (130 m²) townhouses had once sold on average for $250,000. However, by February 2012, that value "...had fallen below $100,000." With the change came a "spate of burglaries" which were largely due to the "...large-scale foreclosures in the wake of the housing crash led investors to rent, rather than sell, the spaces, which brought a new, transient type of resident." These events were the background which led to the fatal shooting and the controversy of the

stand-your-ground law A stand-your-ground law (sometimes called "line in the sand" or "no duty to retreat" law) provides that people may use deadly force when they reasonably believe it to be necessary to defend against certain violent crimes (right of self-defense) ...

s which were in effect in the entire state of

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. After the shootings, the community was in the "national spotlight."

Demographics

According to the ''

Columbia Journalism Review The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...

'', The Retreat at Twin Lakes has a demographic that mirrored that of the city it was in, which was "relatively diverse—50 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, and 20 percent

black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...

." In 2010, the community reported 326 crime incidents which ranged from homicide to burglaries. According to another source, the community was one where "very few black teens like rayvon Martinlive." In an opinion piece in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'',

Rich Benjamin Rich Benjamin is an American cultural critic, anthropologist, and author. Benjamin is perhaps best known for the non-fiction book '' Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America''. He is also a lecturer and a publ ...

blames the gated communities for contributing to the death of Trayvon Martin saying "gated communities churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Retreat at Twin Lakes, The Gated communities in Florida Sanford, Florida Killing of Trayvon Martin 2000s establishments in Florida