50 Years of Successful Senior Housing

 

Mary Tjosvold, a vibrant 83, has been in the senior-care business long enough to remember when sterile nursing homes were the only option for families who could not care for their elderly relatives or for seniors who had nowhere else to go.

The Mary T Family of Companies that she co-founded in 1976 with her late mother Margaret now spans four states, including Wisconsin, Maryland, and Arizona. Offerings include hospice, independent senior living, assisted living, home health services, brain injury care, and a wellness center at company headquarters — a spacious former farm in Coon Rapids. Photos of her strong female ancestors hang on the walls, and arts and crafts from various countries adorn her office.

In its 50^th anniversary year, the company boasts $50 million in annual revenue and 663 employees. With only 28 job openings across the four-state operation, the Mary T companies seem to have escaped the staffing challenges in senior care — except during last winter, when the federal government had an immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

“Metro Surge became a real problem for us, as employees were afraid to drive to work,” says executive assistant Scott Rugel. “For a couple of weeks, we were having staffing issues covering shifts in some parts of the business due to the fear that ICE had created.”

Turnover is high in a field that offers low pay for long, erratic hours. Lifting and transporting patients is physically taxing for the direct support professionals who do hands-on work. People in their twilight years often experience agitation, confusion, or outright dementia — testing the patience and emotional well-being of even staff.

Eighty-five percent of senior-care workers leave their jobs within a year, according to industry analyst NIC, and burnout risk is high among nurses and aides due to “high job demands and stressful work conditions,” says the National Library of Medicine.

NIC promotes ways to recruit and retain staff in an industry that gets about one-third the number of applicants as part-time job openings in other fields. Leaning on her own intuition and experience, Mary T has long been following some of NIC’s ideas, including:

• Tap non-traditional labor pools: Widely traveled herself, Mary T serves on several international boards and in 2014 launched an international scholars’ program at the University of Minnesota, where she earned a Ph.D. in education administration. She employs “a lot of people from Africa,” she says, “and they need more than one or two weeks when they go home. And then we welcome them back.”
• Support work/life integration: The company tries to offset entry-level wages with financial incentives and heartfelt recognition. Employees can request Thanksgiving and Christmas boxes of food that include an Aldi gift card “so they can buy their protein,” she explains. The company provided 117 Christmas baskets and 123 Thanksgiving baskets in 2025.

“We do a lot to keep people,” says Mary T. She stops mid-interview to pull out a green spiral notebook and jot down a reminder to check “how many PPP points we’ve given.” These “Positively Positive Performance” points are channeled through an online system called Awardco that lets managers recognize people who have excelled in some way.

Employees can cash out their points at Amazon and other retailers, restaurants, hotels, AMC Theaters, cruise lines, and airlines — though never at Walmart or Hobby Lobby. A lifelong feminist, Mary T refuses to support those companies, given their anti-choice and other conservative political stances.

Empowerment is another form of recognition. “When I started the company, I gave people baths, helped cook the food, did direct care,” says Mary T. “But as you grow, you have to supervise people who are much more knowledgeable than you are.”

Compassion and Common Sense

At the Mary T Family of Companies, positive performance also means evaluating employees on how well they “meet the values of this company,” Mary T explains. For example, she will gift Awardco points “if I see you being tender to a client.”

“We work in an area that is very fragile,” she says. “We serve seniors who are susceptible to abuse, not only from companies but families. We see families who take their parents’ Social Security money, who don’t visit or bring them food.”

The company’s mission statement sidesteps the word “patient” in favor of “customer,” “community” and “people.” Clients are individuals who have “unique and evolving needs,” says Mary T, to be met with “quality and creative services.” Company values include integrity, cooperation, sustainability and social action.

With a strong legacy of philanthropy and activism in her extended family, Mary T views her work through a lens of compassion. But visitors soon recognize that acute attention to detail lies just beneath the warm smile and colorful clothing.

The Mary T Family of Companies has explicit rules that prohibit all-night workers from sleeping on the job or sitting idly on their smartphones, which have become a “huge issue” since COVID, she says. “People don’t always follow a very ethical path, or they’re unethical because the rules aren’t clear enough. Or it may be their first job. You would like people to act out of good faith, but sometimes that’s not enough.”

An astute businesswoman, Mary T says she “quickly learned I needed to have a private pay business” to augment government-supported services. She “got into the housing business” by opening townhomes with a specific focus, such as a men’s unit and Section 8 rentals for women with disabilities.

With a mother who lived past 100 and a maternal grandmother who bought or built four farms, Mary T has no plans to retire. Or slow down. “My mother taught me to be strong,” she says. “It has served me well. I used to think that so many companies were missing assets because they excluded women.”