Executive director of Harbor House of Rochester — a home away from home for patients seeking treatment in the Rochester area — talks about his nonprofit, the challenges it faces and how he hopes to overcome them
By Mike Costanza
Q. What is Harbor House of Rochester’s mission?
A. The mission of the Harbor House of Rochester, Inc. is to meet the temporary lodging needs of families during health emergencies and periods of long-term care. We provide a safe and comfortable “home away from home” for patients and their families who travel to Rochester for treatment of a serious or life-threatening illness. By offering convenient, affordable living quarters in a home-like environment, the Harbor House reduces the emotional and financial stress for people facing a medical crisis.
Q. Can Harbor House accommodate patients as well as those who have brought them for treatment?
A. Yes. While most of our work involved housing families who have a loved one in a Rochester hospital, sometimes both the patient and the caregiver stay with us. This model has worked especially well for those receiving organ transplants. Harbor House was founded out of concern for those needing advanced cardiac care. Two of our founding members had received heart transplants, which directly led to the founding of Harbor House in 2008.
Q. Has your nonprofit had many guests this year?
A. So far in 2024, Harbor House has hosted 92 unique guests. This number is a function of how long individual guests reside with us. Our long stay of 2024 was 241 days, or eight months. While we are proud to be able to provide a comforting home-away-from-home during these extended stays, the total number of families we can assist becomes limited by only having four rooms.
Q. What kinds of people stay at Harbor House?
A. Most of our guests live in Upstate New York, coming from greater Buffalo or greater Syracuse as well as the Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, Adirondacks and the Thousand Islands regions. On occasion, guests come from much farther away, including countries such as Bangladesh, China and Egypt. Our most distant guests in 2024 came from Mexico, after their son had a devastating brain aneurysm. They stayed for 97 days until he was stable enough to return home.
Q. Can you tell the readers of some of the challenges that Harbor House faces?
A. The biggest challenge that Harbor House faces is having to tell a family in crisis that we are unable to accommodate them. We fit in as many families as we can, but similar to 2023, Harbor House is on track to turn away 70 families in 2024 because of full occupancy. While we are not yet ready to implement plans to expand Harbor House, we are now exploring avenues for future growth. As rural hospitals increasingly become acquired by large health care systems, the need for healthcare hospitality houses like Harbor House will only increase in the coming years.
Harbor House of Rochester has two paid employees, a dozen active volunteers and a current budget of $225,000. For more information, visit www.harborhouseofrochester.org.