Facing a mental health crisis in NY? There’s a growing alternative for getting help.

Jason Lopez was absorbed in a paperback titled “Be Strong Mentally During Tough Times” as he relaxed on a recent morning in the living room of a quiet two-story house on Flatbush’s Clarendon Road. He was surrounded by musical instruments, art and a TV with a video game console.

The soft-spoken 42-year-old said he has diagnoses of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and has been hospitalized "countless times,” in addition to being a frequent visitor to psychiatric emergency rooms. But when he was recently feeling stressed and overwhelmed and needed a break from the shelter he was staying at, Lopez came instead to the home on Clarendon Road, an 11-bed “crisis respite center,” where he stayed once before.

“ I could do things a little more peacefully and humbly,” Lopez said of the quiet surroundings.

Crisis respite centers offer intimate, homelike environments where people can recover from mental health crises for up to 28 days, while coming and going as they please. Instead of being staffed by doctors and nurses, the centers mostly employ peer specialists — trained counselors who use their own experiences with mental illness to relate to clients.

The homes are growing in popularity, amid evidence that the model has improved health outcomes and saved on costs. Statewide, the total number of licensed crisis respite centers and similar crisis residences has grown from just eight in 2021 to 43 today, according to the Office of Mental Health.

The crisis respite center on Clarendon Road, which began accepting patients in the fall of 2024, is the first to be opened by the New York-based start-up TownHome Health, a company that aims to run with the relatively niche mental health model and scale it up in New York and other states.

TownHome is backed by investors including Dr. Richard Park, the founder and former CEO of CityMD, whose urgent care clinics have proliferated across New York and New Jersey over the past 15 years.

TownHome’s arrival comes at a time when voluntary, residential mental health programs are already starting to multiply in New York, thanks to growing interest from state officials and other health care providers. These programs provide more support for clients than weekly therapy sessions, but are more flexible than hospital stays.

“ The field is definitely changing to improve access and to expand the menu of options that patients have for getting care,” said Dr. Grant Mitchell, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Behavioral Health Center in Lower Manhattan.

New York City got its first four nonprofit-operated crisis respite centers in 2013 and 2014 as part of a publicly funded pilot program called Parachute NYC. A 2018 study on the program found respite clients had significantly fewer hospitalizations and lower Medicaid costs in the 11 months following their stays than a comparable patient population that had never visited the centers.

Yet, despite that success, there were still just four centers operating a decade later in 2023. The model has newly started picking up momentum in the past couple of years — there are now 11 citywide with a total of 71 beds, according to the city health department.

“I am super excited about focusing in on this one thing to really make it more widespread,” said Donna Friedman, TownHome’s cofounder and chief clinical officer. Friedman previously served as executive director of Mosaic Mental Health, a nonprofit that operates a crisis respite in the Bronx in addition to a range of other services. She said it can be hard for a nonprofit with a portfolio of programs to focus on scaling up one thing.

A company mission that is also personal

Park, who also sits on TownHome’s board, said the company’s mission is personal, since his son struggles with his mental health and has been hospitalized for psychiatric care.

Hospitals “are not happy places,” said Park, who worked as an emergency room doctor for a decade before launching CityMD. “They're challenging, they're scary, they're intimidating.”

“To take somebody out of the hospital setting and put them into a home setting, that's a win-win-win,” Park added. “Financially, for society, for the patient, for the family, for the parents. Everyone wins here.”

While crisis respite programs are often billed as alternatives to hospitals, they do have limitations because of their lack of clinical staff and they can’t accept anyone who is at risk of harming themselves or others. Some respite centers in the city frequently operate as landing pads where people leaving hospital stays can continue their recovery, while others strive to help people avoid hospital care altogether.

So far, TownHome is providing a mix of both. Of the more than 200 clients who have stayed at TownHome’s Brooklyn respite so far, nearly 40% have been patients referred by nearby Kings County Hospital, a partner of the respite center, or other medical centers after being discharged from an inpatient stay, TownHome said.

About a third of the center’s clients self-referred, while another 22% have been referred by outpatient mental health providers, Assertive Community Treatment teams, or B-HEARD, the program the city launched as an alternative to police to respond to people experiencing mental health crises. About 4% of clients were referred to the center directly from a hospital emergency room.

Friedman said she hopes that with more education and outreach, more people will come to respites directly. She compares the centers to the urgent cares Park helped popularize, since the walk-in clinics have helped redirect people with routine medical issues away from emergency rooms.

“Once people trust it and once people understand what it can do for their loved ones, it will be the family members of people with chronic mental illness and in psychiatric crisis who will make sure that that's where people get to, as opposed to bringing them to the emergency department,” Friedman said.

TownHome Health checks in with Kings County daily to share how many beds are available and see if any patients would be a good fit.

Dr. Prashanth Ramshankar, medical director of the comprehensive psychiatric emergency program at Kings County, said the crisis respite model offers an “intermediate” space for patients to recover from mental health crises and strengthen their connections to care, and said more respites are needed to meet the demand.

“The wait time can be a challenge, especially for younger populations, since far fewer respite beds are available for youth and adolescents,” Ramshankar said, noting that TownHome takes patients 18 and older.

Friedman said she envisions a world where every hospital offering psychiatric care is partnered with a crisis respite center.

But Cal Hedigan, the CEO of Community Access, which runs an eight-bed crisis respite in Manhattan, argued that serving as a true alternative to hospitals requires more independence. Of the 121 clients Community Access’ respite served between June 2024 and June 2025, only three came from inpatient mental health stays, while most were referred by outpatient providers or other social services, according to the nonprofit.

Creating more hospital alternatives

The state Office of Mental Health started regulating and licensing voluntary, residential programs for people experiencing mental health crises in 2019 and is working to expand its presence statewide, according to Justin Mason, a spokesperson for the agency.

In addition to crisis respite centers staffed with peers, the state has also started licensing “intensive” crisis residences that remain voluntary and homelike, but have clinicians on staff, allowing them to serve patients with a broader range of needs.

Mitchell said Mount Sinai is opening one such intensive crisis residence at its behavioral health center on Rivington Street in Manhattan.

Hedigan said Community Access is also opening one on the Lower East Side by the end of the year.

“These efforts are part of our overarching goal to ensure all New Yorkers have access to mental health supports and services whenever and wherever they are needed,” Mason said.

TownHome’s goal is to open 12 respites by the end of next year in New York and other states, said Charles Raisch, the company’s CEO and co-founder, who hails from a tech and marketing background. Raisch said, given how little physical infrastructure is required, opening a crisis respite center should be easier than opening a Starbucks — but he added the company can only move as fast as state regulators allow.

TownHome is currently waiting on a state license to open a second crisis respite in a house it secured in Harlem, while planning a third in Minnesota in partnership with the Mayo Clinic, Friedman said.