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Mary Ebens, 69, and her husband, Richard, 75, stand on the porch of their $305,000 home at The Villages at Quail Run in Hudson, Mass., an age-restricted housing community for people who are 55 and older.

HUDSON, Mass. - The condominium that retirees Richard and Mary Jean Ebens bought three years ago for $305,000 has some nice amenities: 2,000 square feet of living space, a garage, a basement, a deck looking over the garden, and a reasonable 45-minute drive to Boston.

But the social benefits are what make it special to Richard, 75, a former Episcopal pastor, and Mary Jean, the 69-year-old former operations manager for a computer company. That's because The Villages at Quail Run, the 150-unit "active adult community" the Ebens call home, is only for people 55 and older.

Age-restricted developments - which typically lack the medical care and services available in nursing homes and assisted living facilities - expanded in the 1990s in Sun Belt retirement havens after Congress granted developers exemptions from federal housing anti-discrimination statutes.

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Thanks to accommodating local zoning rules and officials' desire to attract older residents who aren't a drain on the tax base, the projects are becoming increasingly common outside the Sun Belt, particularly in expensive housing markets in the Northeast. But some housing advocates claim it's edging young families and others out of the housing market.

"Now you're seeing a boom going on all around the country," said Jeff Jenkins, assistant director of 50-plus housing for the National Association of Home Builders. About 60 percent of such developments are now outside the Sun Belt, with the growth in northerly states driven in part by many buyers' wishes to stay closer to family and the communities where they spent their working lives, he said.