Allentown Fights Against Horizon Health’s New Therapy Location

With the world situation we all endured starting in March 2020, seeking therapy has become steadily more common over these last few years.

So you would think that a new therapy location in your neighborhood would be something that you might be excited about, but the majority of residents in Allentown were less than thrilled, to say the least.

Horizon Health Corp. had plans to open a behavioral health outpatient treatment center in the heart of Allentown, but neighbors voiced their opposition to the new town addition.

The CEO Anne Constantino told Buffalo Business First that she was surprised about the response from the neighborhood.

“Clearly, they did not want us there,” Constantino said.

The new treatment center was going to open at the current location for the Alliance Advisory Group building, which is located at 600 Delaware Avenue. As a result, Horizon Health was planning to move from its current location downtown at 77 Broadway.

Horizon Health intentionally chose this spot thinking that it would be easily accessible for people who needed treatment. Not only would the location have on-site parking and be located on a bus route, the new spot would have been close to social-service providers, including the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, which would have made it easy for patients receiving treatment to travel to referrals and other treatment services if Horizon Health determined that would be necessary. 

According to a press release by the American Psychological Association in October 2021, the number of psychologists who received referrals more than doubled from the year before (from 37% in 2020 to 62% in 2021).

 Waitlists for a therapist or a counselor have grown longer since the beginning of the pandemic, and while telehealth became a tool greatly used in the pandemic, the idea to have an in-person office is huge for those receiving treatment, especially when we are trying to get our world “back to normal,” whatever that may mean now.