Lawmakers are reconsidering their plans to sell a building on the grounds of New Hampshire Hospital, one Concord leaders had hoped to acquire, in light of warnings from advocates that the sale could further destabilize the state’s mental health system.
The Anna Philbrook Center for Children, a 16-bed adult transitional housing facility located at the corner of Clinton Street and South Fruit Street, was put up for sale last year. The state previously operated the center as a children’s mental health facility.
The House Finance Committee included the building sale in the state’s budget trailer bill, which outlines the statutory changes needed to support the appropriations made in the budget. Now, lawmakers are considering repealing their decision.
“The selling of the facility was not a bill. It did not have a public hearing,” said State Rep. Mary Jane Wallner, the prime sponsor of House Bill 1569. “Is it wise to sell a state property that has served many purposes for the past 65 years?”
Tom Aspell, Concord’s city manager, said the city is still exploring an acquisition.
“We’re looking at potentially acquiring that site or would like to have it obviously get back on the tax rolls if possible,” Aspell said at a legislative hearing last month.
He said the city is studying the Memorial Field area next to the transitional housing facility to determine whether the field needs to be expanded for parking or additional space.
The state’s budget had estimated that selling the facility would bring in $5 million. The building also houses offices for 45 staff members of New Hampshire Hospital.
Impact on statewide system
Currently, patients ready to be discharged from New Hampshire Hospital, an acute psychiatric facility, often move into transitional housing programs like the Anna Philbrook Center.
This is one of the programs that play a key role in the state’s Mission Zero initiative, which aims to end the practice of keeping patients with acute psychiatric needs in hospital emergency rooms while they wait for an inpatient bed.
Short-term transitional housing helps residents step down from the hospital, build life skills, find jobs and reintegrate into the community once they are stable.
Katja Fox, behavioral health director at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, said that the state would not lose any transitional housing beds if it were to sell the building.
She said that the 16 beds in Concord will be transferred to other facilities when the sale is finalized.
The state currently has 92 transitional housing beds.
But Susan Stearns, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness New Hampshire, cautioned that the situation is more complicated and could have serious consequences for the state’s mental health system.
She said the transitional housing program at the Anna Philbrook Center has found a new home in Newport, but that facility is already part of the state’s existing inventory.
This means the move does not add new beds; it merely shifts the 16 beds from Concord to Newport.
Stearns said that the shift could lead to the loss of 16 community residence beds currently at the Newport facility, which provides longer-term housing support, since the new program would replace those beds.
“If we keep whittling away at these community beds, whether they’re principal housing community residents or other types of beds for people with severe and persistent mental illness to live in the community, it’s just going to have a negative impact on Mission Zero, which ultimately means people are going to wind up stuck in emergency departments,” she said.