An empty, century-old house on Patterson Avenue will soon fill anew with hope and help for some of society’s most vulnerable people, said three mothers working to restore sorely missing services in Roanoke.
“This house is in incredible condition,” said Isabel Thornton, unlocking the front door at 1729 Patterson Ave. S.W. “We’re digging into the history right now.”
The three-story brick house was built about or before 1920, likely by a former city councilman, said Thornton, a Roanoke native and executive director at the nonprofit Restoration Housing.
The place has served as a group recovery home in the more recent past. That’s the same use city council that unanimously approved this week, as Restoration Housing and other community partners look toward the future.
Now with city council’s approval, the house will be fitted to serve as many as 16 new and expecting mothers. The mission is helping those women juggle dual challenges: raising healthy offspring and overcoming addiction.
“We know as moms, it takes a big, big village to raise a child,” said Kimberly Simcox. “Especially in a vulnerable population like this.”
Simcox, a Roanoke native who works as an OB-GYN doctor serving this at-risk population, said she is volunteering her knowledge to the cause. Mothers will stay in the home with their babies for up to six months after birth.
“When they’re pregnant, that’s a motivating time to want to get help,” Simcox said. “There are very few facilities in the state of Virginia that allow women and children.”
For 50 years in Roanoke, a residential treatment facility called Bethany Hall served mothers and their children in recovery. But that place closed when its supporting nonprofit, ARCH Roanoke, stopped operations last year.
“When Bethany Hall closed, I had a hard time keeping my moms in recovery,” Simcox said. “I can’t imagine somebody asking me, after I have my baby, to leave them in order to get into recovery. That would be a huge barrier.”
The home will provide its residents the care they need, for both babies entering into the world, and for mothers breaking free of substance use disorder. It takes a network of community partnerships to make that happen, Simcox said.
In addition to medicinal treatment, the care includes visits from people who successfully endured similar life trials, known as peer recovery specialists.
“What they do is bring their experience, strength and hope from their lived experience of being in recovery to people who are in treatment,” said Ali Hamed-Moore. “It’s an incredibly powerful model.”
Hamed-Moore works as chief compliance officer for Anderson Treatment, a Roanoke-based substance abuse and addiction treatment provider. She said pregnancy is a stressful time, and an especially crucial time for mothers who also face addiction.
“We’ll put a village around them,” Hamed-Moore said. “There are definitely some hard indicators that this type of program is needed.”
The rate of overdose among pregnant women increased between 2015 and 2021, according to national health data. Overdoses account for about 80% of accidental deaths among pregnant women in Virginia, according to recent data.
Roanoke has a high rate of children placed in foster care compared to the rest of Virginia, and a high rate of children born with drug dependencies. Those are some of the statistics the recovery home will try to help prevent, Hamed-Moore said.
“We also want to push back against the shame and stigma that many pregnant women face when they are also people who use drugs,” Hamed-Moore said. “That is a driver of overdose, and a driver of women not getting assistance. We want them to know that they can ask for help and not be ashamed of it.”
Restoration Housing bought the building for $400,000 in January. They’re fundraising now, alongside a slate of community partners, for $300,000 worth of restoration and preparation work, to get the home ready for patients by 2025.
The house is overall well preserved, with some fire system and electrical improvements needed, Thornton said. It needs fresh paint, cribs, childproofing, and an extension to add more bed room, before a newly forming nonprofit takes on day-to-day management.
“It needs a name,” Thornton said. “We know that this building needs a name.”
So the new home won’t be called Bethany Hall. But the women who are leading this effort — all mothers themselves, and all with deep ties to Roanoke — said they feel the need to fill that gap left by Bethany Hall’s closure.
“Our hope is women find recovery and are able to be fully present and loving parents for their children,” Hamed-Moore said. “That we will decrease family separation, that babies will be born healthy and get all the care they need, and that their moms will be attended to.”
And with the help of community partners, they’ll work at those hopes until a time, maybe, when such services are no longer needed, she said.
“It’s a really brave thing to ask for help,” Hamed-Moore said. “People in recovery are some of the most resilient, bravest and coolest people in our community.”
Published March 24, 2024 in The Roanoke Times by Luke Weir
