I'm an engineer, so let me start the way I always do — with the numbers, each one sourced so you can check it yourself.
District 90's median age is 47.1 — well above Florida's and the nation's — and we sit in a county where more than 1 in 4 residents is 65 or older, against roughly 18% nationally (U.S. Census). That means retirement security isn't one issue among many here. In Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, and up the coast, it is the cost-of-living issue.
$56. That's what the average Social Security retirement check went up in January 2026 — a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment, from $2,015 to $2,071 a month (AARP).
$17.90. That's how much the standard Medicare Part B premium went up at the same time — a 9.7% jump to $202.90 a month (AARP; CMS). Before your raise ever reached your mailbox, roughly a third of it was gone.
$6,323. The average Palm Beach County home-insurance premium in the state's most recent published figure (FL Office of Insurance Regulation, Property Insurance Stability Report, July 1, 2026) - still among the highest in the nation, and still about three months of the average Social Security check, roughly a quarter of a year's benefit. It is falling, though: $6,614 in the January 2025 report, $6,412 in January 2026, $6,323 in July 2026. Falling is not the same as affordable.
$22,000+. What each owner at Seagate of Gulfstream in Boynton Beach — 360 units — was assessed for an $8 million concrete restoration, in a project scheduled for 18 months that reached its 26th month still roughly 70% done (CBS12 I-Team). One resident said he was thinking about selling his car. Another former resident moved to a mobile-home community. A further $5,500 assessment followed (WPTV). That $22,000 equals about 10.6 months of the average Social Security check — demanded in a lump sum, often from people whose homes were already paid off.
If you've lived on a fixed income in this district, none of this surprises you. What might surprise you is how rarely anyone in Tallahassee shows you the arithmetic.
None of this is a mystery, and most of it traces back to Tallahassee — which means Tallahassee can fix it.
Insurance got expensive because Florida became the nation's lawsuit capital for property claims. Reform has started working: Citizens Insurance approved its first statewide average rate decrease since 2015 — 2.6% for 2026, with about 3 in 5 policyholders seeing an average 11.5% cut, roughly $359 (Citizens, Dec. 2025). That's real. It's also not finished — we still pay the most in America.
Condo assessments exploded because, after the Surfside tragedy, the state rightly required structural inspections and fully funded reserves (SB 4-D in 2022, SB 154 in 2023). But those laws forced decades of deferred maintenance due all at once — and the bill landed hardest on 55+ buildings full of retirees. The Legislature passed relief in 2025 (HB 913), letting associations fund reserves with loans or lines of credit and pause reserve contributions while urgent repairs get done. Good start. Still not enough: Palm Beach County's condo median price fell to $325,000 in January 2026 with inventory at a seven-month high and two-thirds of sales cash-only (WLRN) — so a retiree who can't afford the assessment often can't easily sell, either.
Elder fraud is a growth industry. Americans 60 and over reported $7.75 billion in losses in 2025 — up 59% in a single year, averaging $38,500 per victim (FBI IC3 2025). Florida is consistently among the hardest-hit states. Crypto-ATM scams alone took $257 million nationally, and AI voice-clone scams are emerging fast.
A seat in the Florida House doesn't control Washington — I won't pretend otherwise. Social Security and Medicare are federal. But almost everything else on that list runs through Tallahassee, and here is my plan, specific enough to hold me to:
1. Keep cutting the insurance bill — the one big cost the state controls. I'll file and back legislation that keeps attacking the litigation costs behind our premiums and brings more insurers in to compete. The 2026 Citizens decrease proves reform works; my job is to make sure it reaches every senior's bill, not just some.
2. No senior forced out by a lump-sum assessment. Building on HB 913, I'll push for state-supported low-interest financing and deferral options so a safety-mandated repair becomes a manageable monthly cost, not a $22,000 ultimatum — plus basic engineering accountability on assessment projects: competitive bidding, published timelines, and penalties for the kind of 18-months-becomes-26 drift Seagate residents lived through. I've managed projects for 20 years; I know what schedule discipline looks like.
3. Vote yes on the Save Our Homes amendment — and help write the law that implements it. Amendment 3 on your November 3 ballot raises the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, indexed thereafter. Depending on local millage rates, that's real money every year on a typical district home, and homesteaded seniors who've owned longest gain most — with no income test and no annual paperwork. I'll also work to protect and simplify the existing senior exemptions Palm Beach County already offers, including the additional $50,000 exemption for lower-income residents 65+ (FL Dept. of Revenue).
4. Fight elder fraud like the billion-dollar crime wave it is. Tougher penalties for crypto-ATM and AI voice-clone scams that target seniors, and real funding for the Attorney General's Senior Protection Team and the Seniors vs. Crime program.
5. Fund the home care that keeps seniors out of nursing homes. Frail seniors sit on prioritized state waiting lists for home-and-community care. The Florida Council on Aging's 2026 request — $10M more for Community Care for the Elderly, $6M for the Alzheimer's Disease Initiative, $5M for Home Care for the Elderly — is small money by state-budget standards and cheaper than the nursing-home Medicaid it prevents. Budgets are written by the majority; I'd be in the room.
Our current representative is one of 34 Democrats in a 120-seat chamber where Republicans hold 83 seats (three are vacant). That's not an insult — it's arithmetic. It is also why minority-party bills rarely make it out of committee: HB 907, which he filed in December 2025, died in the Criminal Justice Subcommittee in March 2026 (Florida Legislature bill records). Every item above — insurance, condo relief, the implementing law for the amendment, the elder-care budget lines — gets decided inside the majority. District 90, one of the oldest districts in the state, deserves a seat in that room.
You worked your whole life and did the math right: paid the mortgage, saved what you could, earned your benefits. The least your state government owes you is the same discipline — a plan with numbers in it, and a representative positioned to deliver. That's what I'm offering. Check my math, then hold me to it.
— Ionel Roiban, Republican for Florida House, District 90
Every figure on this page is sourced. Find an error? Send me the source and I will fix it.
Updated: 2026-09-04