Mental health, psychotherapy,
Pictured: Illustration. Rosy - The world is worth thousands of pictures/Pixabay

Mental health is an incredibly complicated issue, intersecting with a large number of issues, such as race, gender, and economic status. This creates many complications in how mental healthcare is delivered by providers and professionals and how it is received by individuals. Many people struggling with homelessness are also affected by mental health issues. Meanwhile, some people with poor mental health may find it hard to live with their usual companions.

Benevolent Family Services (BFS), a behavioral health company headquartered in Hampton, Virginia, has introduced an innovation in the delivery of mental healthcare services. By establishing a non-profit, to acquire and renovate a motel, BFS was able to turn it into a care facility for people dealing with serious mental health problems, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.

The facility, located at Newport News, was acquired by BFS in late 2020 and has 15 suites, with two bedrooms and one bathroom each. According to BFS founder Standice Rumph, the facility will benefit individuals with life-changing, debilitating mental health conditions who need to have constant interventions. At the facility, these individuals are able to rest and take a break, without having to worry about utilities, food, and other concerns of daily life. The BFS team works with the individual's mental health, seeking to establish a baseline that they can build on to give them a better chance of being stable.

BFS offers a range of programs, including partial hospitalization programs for substance abuse and mental health, intensive in-home programs for children and adolescents, outpatient therapy, group counseling, and mobile crisis response.

This is one example of how BFS is innovating in the mental health space, which is often behind the times because of providers' focus on caring for people. Under Rumph's leadership, BFS is frequently looking to incorporate new technology and find new ways to do things in order to deliver a better level of service to people dealing with mental health problems.

According to Rumph, the idea of repurposing a motel building came from her mother. In the midst of the COVID pandemic in 2020, shelters and food banks were closed for safety reasons, leaving many homeless people with mental health problems without a place they can go to. At the time, Rumph was looking into acquiring a residential property to convert into a mental health facility, but the housing market was so expensive that it seemed unfeasible. This was when her mother suggested that it may be more cost-efficient to acquire an old motel. Rumph eventually found a motel that had been closed for two years after the previous owner passed away, with their family looking for someone to buy it. The property was turned over to BFS in December 2020, and the renovation process took a year to finish.

According to Rumph, after seeing the positive results of the motel investment, she is now recommending it to other mental health organizations. Having surveyed the property market, she noticed that there are quite a number of unbranded small hotels that are struggling to bring in revenue consistently, leading to owners shopping around to sell them. Financially, it makes sense, as there is a market of people seeking both mental health treatment and a place to stay. Rumph says that this model brings in revenue similar to a hotel or a short-term rental but with the consistency and guaranteed number of customers comparable to a long-term rental property.

"The facility has changed the game for us and provided real opportunities for individuals with mental health problems," Rumph says. "We were able to buy the building for around $435,000, and we put in $175,000 worth of renovation work into it. The property is now worth over a million dollars, and we are able to do great work for the community. It's a win-win for everyone."