hospitality house needs more space

“They’re not here to see Monticello,” Kay Ward says of Hospitality House guests. Trauma, sickness and ongoing medical treatment in family members, not history, bring visitors to the UVA Medical Center facility. Demand has become so steep, in fact, that the hospital is soliciting proposals for approximately 9,800 square feet of rentable space to expand the affordable accommodations Hospitality House provides patients’ family members. Increasingly, outpatients use Hospitality House, as well.
“It’s amazing how many people have had the experience of needing a place to stay when they, or a loved one, needs medical treatment” in a city far away from home, says Ward, the facility’s director. As she speaks, a man in a green shirt sinks into a recliner, and the aroma of Mexican food wafts out of the kitchen’s open door as two women prepare a meal in what’s become their home away from home. Ward hopes to preserve the communal atmosphere in the new facility, which will double current residential capacity.
In its early days, Hospital House was a single, five-bedroom house that sheltered less than a dozen relatives of hospital patients. Founded in 1981 by the Hospital Auxiliary, it has since grown into two adjacent houses on Wertland Street (minutes away from the hospital), with a total of 35 beds and two fully equipped kitchens. Despite this expansion, the houses are regularly booked to capacity—overall, Hospitality House is forced to turn away nearly a third of those seeking refuge from exhausting bedside vigils. While Ward’s dreams include a huge donation from a benefactor—either in the form of an exclusive facility or the funds to construct one—in the meantime she takes what Hospitality House can get. A recent pledge of $100,000 from the Hospital Auxiliary was welcome indeed, and was immediately applied toward the expense of renting the new facility.—Amy Kniss