Almost two weeks after abruptly discharging nearly 50 patients from a women’s inpatient substance use treatment center in Northeast Portland, Volunteers of America Oregon (VOA) announced it will permanently close the site and lay off all staff, effectively immediately.
Staff were laid off Thursday, April 16. VOA Oregon did not confirm how many employees were impacted. The announcement was made after the organization said earlier this month it would temporarily pause services at its Women’s Residential Treatment Center and close the site to re-tool operations. The closure saw 47 patients discharged in rapid fashion, some of which didn’t have a stable place to transition to and relapsed immediately afterward.
News of the indefinite closure comes as VOA Oregon faces mounting operational expenses to operate the center. It also comes shortly after the nonprofit organization came under the state’s microscope following complaints filed with the Oregon Health Authority over potential legal and ethical breaches surrounding the abrupt client discharges.
VOA Oregon’s money pit
In a statement provided to the Mercury Thursday, VOA Oregon said it initially hoped to address internal organizational issues and reopen the center, but a closer evaluation of the center’s costs triggered the decision to close permanently.
Most of those costs stem from a hefty building purchase five years ago. In 2021, the Women’s Residential Treatment Center moved from a modest building on SE 7th Avenue to the sprawling campus of a private Christian college, with VOA touting a “campus concept” that would allow the organization to co-locate some of its services on the 5.67-acre property. City property records show VOA Oregon paid $3.5 million for the site. The college shuttered in 2024, leaving VOA Oregon to shoulder more of the infrastructure costs of the site on its own.
VOA Oregon said it initially intended to reopen the center, but a closer examination showed the site requires an estimated $4 million to $8 million in fire, HVAC, security, and seismic upgrades, according to Jonathan Toshio Lee, a communications manager for VOA Oregon. Those expenses, along with the closure of the Multnomah Campus of Jessup University a few years ago that meant VOA could no longer share support services or infrastructure costs, “made reopening the facility no longer viable,” Toshio Lee stated. “We are grateful to our staff for their dedication and the meaningful work they have done in service to women and families.
The organization’s latest tax records show it ended 2024 with $1.1 million in reported income.
The fallout
Staff at the women’s treatment center said they welcomed programmatic improvements, but found their employer’s attempt to execute those improvements hasty and deeply troubling.
There had been no pre-planning, and pausing operations, even if temporarily, meant VOA was responsible for finding suitable inpatient treatment centers for 47 women with varying clinical and legal needs, at least five of which were mothers staying at the site with their infants.
Employees were notified of the center’s impending “temporary pause” Friday afternoon, April 3–just hours before they had to inform their clients, and hours before they were scheduled to leave for the weekend. Half a dozen employees who spoke to the Mercury before they were laid off Thursday took issue with the swift and seemingly disorganized process used to involuntarily discharge and transfer clients from the center before they had completed treatment. Clients at inpatient residential treatment centers have rights similar to tenants, and providers are supposed to ensure they can receive continuity of care if they are involuntarily transferred.
VOA Oregon, they said, treated the situation like an emergency requiring drastic measures. The result traumatized staff and clients.
“We just traumatized and destabilized 47 clients at 5:30 on a Friday,” one staffer, who agreed to speak on background last week before the layoffs were announced, remembers thinking. “None of this is okay.”
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) confirmed that the state agency conducted a site visit at the center last Friday, April 10. OHA declined to divulge the purpose for the visit, but several treatment center staff members said the agency has been interviewing employees in the wake of complaints filed by some of them.
OHA staff made a site visit to the center last Friday, April 10, the state agency confirmed, but declined to divulge more about the nature of the visit.
As reported by the Mercury last week, clients at the women’s inpatient center were notified April 3 that the center would be halting operations temporarily, and all of them would be transferred to different locations, or asked to leave if they were nearly done with their treatment program. Those with babies were offered beds at the Letty Owings Center for mothers with young children. Other clients were asked to end treatment immediately and leave that same evening if they had somewhere to go.
The process doesn’t reflect typical protocol.
“In most cases, residents must receive at least 30 days advance notice before being discharged or transferred, though shorter notice is allowed if there has been serious physical harm,” Kim Lippert, a behavioral health communications officer for OHA, confirmed. “OHA is committed to ensuring that individuals in residential settings are treated with respect and have the opportunity to plan for safe and appropriate transitions.”
The women at the VOA center had no more than five days to vacate the premises.
VOA Oregon leadership did not respond to the Mercury’s questions about why it rushed the discharge process. The organization initially said the closure was precipitated by concerns over medication management, safety protocols, operations, and overall quality of care.
The organization, which also runs a men’s treatment center and an outpatient treatment facility, said the initial decision was made after reviewing “incident reports, client feedback, staff observations, and clinical oversight.”
A staffer at the women’s center confirmed that the center was still accepting new clients right before the shutdown was announced. A new client had been admitted the day prior and another was awaiting a bed and scheduled to arrive three days later.
The sudden closure sent clients into a tailspin. Some who were asked to leave early relapsed after leaving the center. Others who were expected to wait for a transfer walked away from the facility and were marked “AWOL.” While VOA Oregon’s upper managers said they coordinated with a handful of partner organizations to request beds at other treatment centers for clients needing to transfer, that didn’t guarantee each patient had an appropriate place to go.
Treatment centers offer varying levels of care and operate with different intake requirements. Some can treat clients with dual diagnoses and offer care for those prescribed medication-assisted treatment. Others can’t. The Women’s Residential Treatment Center offers a higher level of care than what many other centers in the region can offer.
As staff explained during background interviews, most of VOA Oregon’s administrative leaders aren’t clinicians, meaning they don’t have the necessary credentials or professional training required to assess client needs in terms of treatment level and appropriate facility placement. That meant counselors and caseworkers were left to triage the situation and try to figure out where to place clients hours before they were scheduled to be off for the weekend.
“They came in and told us they had secured beds, but no clinical information had been shared for the clients, and that is a large part of figuring out where a client is going,” a VOA Oregon staffer told the Mercury on background.
The Mercury interviewed six clients who were impacted by the closure and rapid discharges. Four of them ended up locating alternate treatment facilities and arranging their own transfers.
In an April 7 email, VOA Oregon confirmed a small number of clients were “stepped down to outpatient services with continued support” while others made their own arrangements.
“Some clients have chosen to pursue alternative providers of their own preference, and our team is also actively supporting those transitions to ensure continuity of care, transfer of records, and medication management,” Brian Hess, a chief development officer at VOA Oregon, stated.
Upper management at VOA instructed staff to have clients fill out discharge forms before leaving, indicating where they were offered a bed and whether they accepted or declined treatment there. The Mercury viewed a copy of the discharge forms that were distributed. Many of the clients refused to sign them.
That became a problem the following week. Staff say they were advised to fill out the forms on clients’ behalf. It didn’t go over well. The forms implied some clients had declined services when in reality, many of the clients weren’t eligible for the services offered. In some cases, they were denied services.
“Falsifying a document, that’s not legal, and I don’t think it’s informed consent,” another staffer who worked directly with the clients before they exited, said.
Staff told the Mercury they were instructed to fill out the forms or they’d be put on administrative leave. Eventually, management agreed to let them add their own handwritten notes, but some still refused to complete the forms.
During the April 16 layoff notification, employees were told they’d get two weeks of paid leave.
Closure of the Women’s Residential Treatment Center means the region now has fewer substance use treatment beds at a time when Multnomah County is fervently working to add more.
VOA Oregon is one of the primary partners Multnomah County’s Behavioral Health Services department refers people to for treatment services.
