Students live alongside seniors at this Minnesota residential facility

Dylan Kassela attends Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota. He’ll become a social worker when he graduates. Currently, he volunteers at Watkins Manor, an assisted living center with 45 residents in a tree-lined neighborhood near the university. Oh, and he lives there too.

Kassela is part of a cohort of students who are living at this intergenerational, co-living center. Intergenerational communities have largely existed on the sidelines for many years in much of the United States, but are gaining traction — and so too are the residential communities designed to bring generations together.

“I get to form connections with older adults and learn more about them from their past. Because they experienced a lot of different events, and they went through a lot of stuff that I probably haven’t gone through,” he said.

Hannah Edman also lives at Watkins Manor, the first in her family to go to college. She is a nursing student at Winona State who will graduate in May, and is also a nursing assistant with the memory care team.

“I mean, we can learn from each other. So the older residents teach us a lot, but we also get to teach them a lot,” she said. “And I think that’s been really helpful, like getting me through college and helping them with technology and just like younger language, younger energy. And then we can also learn skills that they have that they can teach us.”

So what do residents think about the young students living with them?

“They are wonderful, wonderful students, learning all about the process of education and their careers. It’s wonderful,” said Nancy Newman, who is 85 years old.

“We learn from them because of their lifestyle, their technology,” said 93-year-old Alan Thompson. “The world has changed so much that we never experienced, even as they have not experienced what we did.”

Winona is a Mississippi River town of some 26,000. The J.R. Watkins Company, known for its all natural products, was founded in 1868, and the Watkins Manor House was built in the 1920s by the company’s second-generation leader. The English Tudor-style mansion is now part of the Watkins Manor Assisted Living complex, which is owned by Winona Health.

The assisted living residents live in a building built in the early 2000, and it’s attached to the manor house; the students live on the second and third floors of the manor.

“We’ve had students that have paired up one-on-one with residents that have trouble with eyesight and they need help reading things, those types of things. They will spend some just really intentional one-on-one time with them,” said Cheryl Krage, director of assisted living and hospice services for Winona Health.

There are eight students in the program. Their rent is $400 a month, and, in return, they volunteer for 10 hours a month. Their rent is reduced if they put in more hours. They eat for free in the residence dining room; utilities are covered.

Research shows that critical to the success of a designed intergenerational community is everyone gets their private space, while there are common areas for connection and conversation.

“We’re talking more about multigenerational communities,” noted Jennifer Molinsky at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “And I think that there are a lot of people who want to be surrounded by people of all ages and have those daily interactions and I do think we are seeing different organizations respond to that.”