Tedros (Ted) Bitew recently became the new Resident Leader at Genesis Intergenerational Community, a building community developed and managed by Mi Casa, Inc. Ted has been in the position since August of 2023 but has lived at the building since its inception in 2015. The intergenerational building community is aimed at providing community-minded living for both older adults and young moms who grew up in foster care.
Since opening, Genesis has seen many successes, as well as faced challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Ted has spent his time as Resident Leader trying to surmount some of the challenges the pandemic brought, one of the hardest, he says, is adapting community engagement to the realities of the post-pandemic world.
At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Genesis leaders and Mi Casa staff were faced with the question of how to foster and build meaningful relationships in the building without any in-person activities. One proposal they adopted was to establish the Resident Leader Fellowship, the position Ted currently holds. The Resident Leader position is aimed at giving different residents the opportunity to become heavily involved in shaping and adapting their community to its current needs. Resident Fellows are paid for the duration of the fellowship, which are five month terms. Resident Leaders work closely with Karen, the Mi Casa staff liaison, as well as other residents to develop activities based on resident interest. Leaders at Genesis and Mi Casa Staff hoped that resident-lead relationship-building would pave the way for strong and sustained community engagement.
During the pandemic, the Resident Leaders were successful in organizing online events for members and expanding their community garden program. The community garden was able to engage members in-person, since it was an outside activity. These are just a few of the first ways that Resident Leaders made their mark on the Genesis community in the last three years.
Now, post-pandemic, Ted sees another opportunity for change. He was motivated to take on the role of Resident Leader to re-engage people, but not just to merely run Genesis the exact same way as before the pandemic. Rather, he wants to grow and adapt along with the residents, whose own lives have grown and adapted since the pandemic, as well. As a long term resident, Ted has seen firsthand the different phases and organizational styles the community has gone through. He believes his experience and his ease in getting along with people will prove to be an asset in his new role. “I want to see what impact that I can have to help the program and the model,” he says.
“I want to see what impact that I can have to help the program and the model”
Ted thinks that helping people understand the value of the intergenerational model is key to engagement. “It’s not just your traditional building. It’s different from all the other apartments,” Ted says. Ted believes that the Genesis model is, as he puts it, “a way for residents to represent themselves in the community and can be replicated to other spaces.”
Just since August, Ted has organized cookouts and community meetings as well as started to implement new programs. He is working to deepen Genesis’s connection with City Blossoms, the organization that helped create the community garden at Genesis, in order to re-engage residents in gardening activities. City Blossoms is a local non-profit that cultivates green spaces and gardening for children in Washington, D.C. As part of this initiative, he coordinated carpooling to City Blossoms’ 15th annual event so that newer Genesis residents could meet with the organization and see what they do in the community. He has also helped support other residents in activities such as Mommy Round Tables, where mothers and others interested can participate in conversations about parenthood, offering a space where parents can provide mutual support and advice for others in similar situations, especially single mothers. This is where, as Ted points out, it becomes particularly valuable to have an intergenerational community, so older residents can help support and guide younger residents.
Ted says that providing this kind of support is at the core of what Genesis is designed to do. It goes beyond just holding events, it is about the value of the relationships that are built through those activities. He says Genesis is about providing a diverse community living model that brings people together from all walks of life. For older adults, many of whom are on fixed incomes, Ted says that Genesis not only provides affordable housing, but also allows them to stay engaged with younger people and help build a supportive community around them.
Ted knows from experience the strength and importance of the relationships built at Genesis. He had a particularly close bond with a friend of his, another resident who was on the engagement committee at Genesis who has unfortunately now passed away. He describes learning about her culture and sharing his own with her. “She’s a senior but we had different times where we connected at her home or my house, sharing cultures. She’s from a Jewish background from New York and I’m from Ethiopia. So we shared food and she invited me to Passover with her family.” Ted’s friend was a writer and would help proofread his school and work writings. He would help her with transportation and “just being there as a person. A lot of her family are in New York or California, so she was alone a lot.” He says that being a companion to her and spending time with her enriched both of their lives.
Beyond just intergenerational relationships, Ted says another key aspect of the diversity present at Genesis is socioeconomic. There are low-income residents, as well as people who pay market rate rent. The residents are able to use the stability that Genesis provides to move forward in other aspects of their lives. This is a huge benefit to the Genesis model, Ted says. Genesis can be the “gateway or steppingstone for these tenants and residents to something more stable.” This idea is a nod to the philosophy of Housing First, where stable, quality, and affordable housing is recognized as a prerequisite to preventing and ending the cycle of homelessness. Studies have shown that when people have access to quality and affordable housing they are able to invest more time and money in other areas of their lives like health and employment (Urban Institute).
At Genesis, this concept has proven true: 100% of mothers at Genesis who have aged out of the foster care system are either gainfully employed, in a job training program, and/or in school. Ted believes this is one of the many successes and benefits of the intergenerational, affordable housing model offered at Genesis. After his five-month tenure as Resident Leader at Genesis is over, he wants to have fostered more of the life-long relationships and supportive guidance that he has seen improve people’s lives over the years.
And in the few short months since becoming Resident Leader, Ted has certainly given a lot back to his community. But he stresses that he has gained even more in return. While learning relevant management, communication, and organizational skills, he says the most valuable skills he has learned are patience and accountability. He says the residents need to know that “we’re credible and we’re reliable for them, that we are an asset to them. We have to provide these programs and events to them in a manner that’s efficient. That is a big thing I am learning. Patience is another thing. When you get oppositions or ideas or different characters, that’s another thing you have to be patient and understanding with, as well.”
“I would share with them that it is a place for connections… where they can learn and grow.”
Ultimately, the message Ted aims to convey is that intergenerational communities such as these are necessary, and can and should be replicated across the country. To anyone looking at joining or starting an intergenerational community like Genesis, he says, “I would share with them that it is a place for connections… where they can learn and grow.”
