In December, Molly finally got tired of running from the law. She checked herself into a drug treatment center in Northeast Portland. Last Friday, she was just three weeks away from completing her treatment program when she and the other patients were called into an emergency meeting.
“I was told on Friday at 5:30 pm that I had to leave,” Molly said. “They told me I had to leave immediately if I had somewhere to go.”
Volunteers of America (VOA) Oregon, the organization that runs the Women’s Residential Treatment Center, made the decision last Friday to abruptly close the center temporarily due to internal management issues. The temporary, albeit sudden cessation of services has raised serious questions about the drug and alcohol addiction treatment center’s operations and legal compliance. Meanwhile, nearly 50 patients have had their care interrupted or ended. Multiple women claim the facility’s management failed to arrange for adequate alternative treatment options for them, despite VOA Oregon’s claims to the contrary.
At first, Molly asked if she could have a few more days to figure out a place to stay, but says she felt pressured by staff to leave that evening. “It wasn’t necessarily somewhere I wanted to go,” she said. “I had a plan to go somewhere once I graduated, but it wasn’t ready just yet.”
Instead, Molly ended up back at the same place she was just before she entered her recovery program.
“It’s basically where I was before when I was actively using,” she explained. Molly relapsed the day after she left the treatment center. “I went back into the same environment where I was and was not prepared for it. It was so overwhelming,” she says.
VOA Oregon didn’t provide details about what led to the sudden decision. In a news release, the organization cited concerns about operational procedures around safety and medication, among other factors.
“This decision follows a comprehensive internal review that identified concerns related to medication management, safety protocols, and consistency in program operations,” a news release from VOA Oregon states. “These findings were informed by incident reports, client feedback, staff observations, and clinical oversight.”
Brian Hess, chief development officer for VOA Oregon, confirmed that 47 clients were impacted by the service interruption.
Patients were given until Wednesday, April 8 to be discharged from the facility. The decision meant many were involuntarily transferred to other locations.
VOA Oregon says it will take the month of April to evaluate and improve its processes, saying a “structured timeline” is in place, but stopped short of setting a reopening date for the Women’s Residential Treatment Center. The organization says safety improvements are being implemented, with a goal of resuming admissions “once these measures are fully in place.”
The organization’s other treatment centers remain open.
The Oregon Health Authority was not available to answer questions about regulatory and licensing requirements for drug treatment centers, or legal responsibilities in the event of a facility closure.
As the Women’s Residential Treatment Center works to improve operations, clients say the abrupt closure has jeopardized their sobriety, and for some, it’s put them in legal precarity.
“We weren’t given options or notice,” one woman whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy, told the Mercury. “Everybody’s struggling. Everybody’s really scared and we’re just expected to deal with it. [Some] of the women panicked and left.”
Like many of the women at the site, she’s participating in a court-ordered treatment program. She’d just gotten to the center about 10 days before the shutdown after a long stint in incarceration. She was just starting to readjust to life outside a prison cell when she got the news of another impending facility transfer. The timing—late on a Friday right before a holiday weekend—meant neither patients nor treatment center staff were able to immediately contact caseworkers, or probation or parole officers.
Securing a treatment bed on short notice can be challenging in the Portland area–especially as the need for detox centers and inpatient treatment centers has jumped since 2020 amid an opioid addiction crisis.
“They’re ripping the rug out from underneath us.”
Women’s Residential Treatment Center client
Four patients who spoke to the Mercury on background said they were told on Friday that VOA Oregon had secured beds for everyone at a few alternate treatment centers, only to find out that wasn’t the case. In one instance a patient listened in while her counselor called to confirm her transfer to NARA NW—one of the organizations VOA cited as a partner accepting client transfers—when she and others within earshot heard NARA NW had yet to confirm any specific client transfers from VOA Oregon. In fact, she said, many of the women at VOA Oregon aren’t eligible to receive treatment at NARA NW because the organization has different eligibility parameters than VOA Oregon. Two other patients also said they tried to call to confirm transfer arrangements and were confused to learn those arrangements hadn’t been solidified.
NARA did not immediately respond to requests about how many VOA patients the organization was able to take.
The mixup left several of the center’s residents panicked and scrambling over the weekend to arrange new treatment options for themselves. Others gave up and bolted.
The woman participating in a court-ordered treatment program was able to find a facility that would take her, but it’s a slightly lower level of treatment than she’s been legally mandated to receive. VOA Oregon is unique in that it accepts clients with dual diagnoses for a higher level of treatment than many other centers are able to offer. “I told the counselors about it,” the client told the Mercury, noting that by her check-in on Tuesday, she still hadn’t gotten confirmation from her parole officer whether the new facility would be considered an acceptable transfer.
In another woman’s case, she was told she could transfer to a CODA treatment facility–one she immediately knew she wasn’t eligible for. She got lucky and phoned a friend who was able to secure her a spot at a different center, but says she still feels blindsided by the ordeal.
“We’re this far in our treatment and now we’re starting back at ground zero. They’re ripping the rug out from underneath us,” she told the Mercury, noting she was looking forward to finishing out the program, and proving to her family that she’d changed her life.
“I wanted to finish for my son and I wanted to be able to give my son that certificate,” she added.
A Women’s Residential Treatment Center employee who spoke to the Mercury on background for fear of repercussion, said changes have been afoot for the past year, since VOA Oregon hired a new CEO. Maree Wacker was tapped to lead the organization in 2025 after previously serving as CEO of Fora Health–another local treatment and recovery organization. Staff also noticed changes in the weeks leading up to last week’s announcement. The center’s longtime director left suddenly and unexpectedly a few months ago and almost immediately afterward, staff say medication protocols became much more stringent.
The employee confirmed that VOA Oregon’s administrative leadership didn’t notify the center’s staff of the plans until late Friday afternoon, leaving staff feeling just as caught off guard by the decision as the clients.
“First and foremost, our responsibility is to ensure the safety, dignity, and well-being of the women and families we serve,” Wacker stated in the VOA Oregon news release about the closure. “Pausing services at our Women’s Residential Center, while difficult, was the right and necessary step to ensure we are delivering care that meets the highest standards.”
The late day announcement left little to no time to call treatment centers to confirm placements for individual clients.
“We get that there were issues,” the staffer said. “We do not get why this had to happen the way it happened. “We have been triaging what is an unnecessary emergency.”
The employee said VOA Oregon didn’t communicate a clear plan for the shutdown, noting staff have been working around the clock to help facilitate transitions for everyone.
“We were told, ‘Get these clients out as soon as possible,'” the treatment center employee said. “The staff is literally sick over this entire experience. We are tired, we haven’t been sleeping, we are emotional, and we’re drained. A lot of us are scared, because we are licensed professionals. We feel forced into doing undue harm to the clients and we feel forced into taking part in an unsafe continuation of care process and discharge process.”
As the center’s staff reckon with the ethics of the situation, clients are grappling with their own situations.
For Molly, the stress of being kicked out after logging months of sobriety soured her. Like most of the other women in the center, she’d worked hard to stay clean and rebuild herself. She says feeling discarded and unrecognized for her months of hard work while being thrown back into an unhealthy environment set her up for failure. She said she’s slated to begin an outpatient program later this month.
“By next week I’ll be good, but I could’ve just ruined my life completely because of that,” Molly said. “They’re a huge [organization]. How can they not figure out how to implement the necessary changes without shutting down?”
