BAKER CITY — Hannah Balthazar had just successfully completed a treatment program for drug abuse but instead of celebrating her sobriety she was, in her word, “terrified.”

“I had nowhere to go,” the 31-year-old Baker City resident said.

That was in February of this year.

Four months later, Balthazar sat in a meeting room at New Directions Northwest in Baker City and talked about the house that changed her life.

And possibly saved it.

In February Balthazar moved into what’s known as an Oxford House.

That’s the name of a nonprofit corporation started in 1975 in Maryland. Oxford Houses are places where people recovering from addiction to drugs or alcohol can live together and support each other during their recovery.

Neither drugs nor alcohol is allowed in Oxford Houses. Residents pay rent, and those who don’t work are required to do a minimum of 20 hours per week of community service.

There are more than 250 Oxford Houses in Oregon.

The first in Baker City, at 3065 B St., opened last spring. Seven men live there.

Baker City’s second Oxford House, which has space for seven women, opened in August 2023 at F and Grove streets.

(Oxford Houses are not co-ed.)

New Directions Northwest bought both houses with money from a $1.4 million state grant for housing, said Shari Selander, New Directions CEO.

New Directions, the Baker City agency that among other things offers addiction counseling, paid $255,000 for the B Street house and $364,000 for the Grove Street home, according to Baker County Assessor’s Office records.

Balthazar, who moved to Baker City in late 2017, said that although she had finished the treatment program at New Directions’ Baker House 90-day program, she had no confidence in her ability to remain sober.

Balthazar was on probation after pleading guilty, in June 2023, to fraudulent use of a credit card, second-degree theft and identity theft after using someone else’s credit card.

As part of her plea agreement, charges of possessing fentanyl and methamphetamine, were dismissed.

Balthazar, who said she struggled after her husband was murdered, said she didn’t trust herself to stay away from drugs once she left the Baker House treatment program.

She was especially frightened of being alone.

“The big killer in recovery is isolation,” Balthazar said. “In early recovery you’re still crawling, you’re not walking yet. It’s a dangerous time.”

But then Balthazar learned about the Oxford House.

She applied and was accepted.

She moved into the house.

She was not alone.

But perhaps more important, she shared a space with six other women who knew, as only other people in recovery could know, the challenges that Balthazar dealt with every day.

“They understand my apprehension,” Balthazar said. “Without the Oxford House I don’t think I would be alive. It would not have gone well.”

But instead of continuing her recovery alone, fighting the urge to seek out the places where she once felt comfortable, places where she knew drugs would be available, Balthazar was part of a family.

She calls it a “rebirth.”

At the Oxford House she has found “love, support, family, unity.”

Less than a year after pleading guilty, Balthazar is working as a waitress.

She has goals that would have seemed unattainable not long ago.

“I couldn’t imagine even renting an apartment, and now I want to own my own home,” Balthazar said.

But she feels no pressure.

Oxford Houses have no time limits for residents, said Jess Wise, an outreach worker for the organization who helps oversee Oxford Houses in Eastern Oregon and who has lived in a house in La Grande for almost a decade.

(There are four Oxford Houses in La Grande, three for men and one for women; four in Pendleton, three for men and one for women; and one, for men, in Ontario.)

The lack of a deadline is comforting, Balthazar said.

She is in no hurry to leave a setting that has proved so instrumental in helping her change her life for the better.

“I have a beautiful home with beautiful people,” Balthazar said.

Other Oxford House residents extoll the virtues

Devan League, 33, grew up in Elgin.

Like Balthazar, he is in treatment for addiction.

League said he has tried multiple programs.

“They didn’t work out for me,” he said.

But then, last year, he moved into the Oxford House in Baker City.

“It saved my life,” League said. “Having a safe place to go, and sober people around me.”

Like Balthazar, League said he didn’t trust his own judgment as he continues to recover from addiction.

“I wasn’t responsible enough to do things on my own,” League said.

But as a resident of the Oxford House, he doesn’t have to.

Instead, League said, he’s part of a team.

The seven residents meet every week, and sometimes more often, to parcel out chores and discuss other matters of mutual interest.

“We all are equal in the house,” he said. “We work together.”

League said the camaraderie is essential to his recovery.

“I knew when somebody’s having a rough time because I can relate to it,” he said.

League said he has also embraced what Wise said is a focus for Oxford Houses nationwide — community service.

League said he and other residents of the Baker City house strive to help neighbors, even with things as simple as carrying groceries from car to house.

“We have a chance to give back,” he said.

League is also contributing in a way that more directly relates to his own experience — he’s a peer support worker at New Directions Northwest, helping others who have trod the same troubled ground that he did.

Darion Grove, 29, has lived in the Baker City Oxford House for women since it opened last August.

She also helped to bring in other residents.

Grove said the stability and reliability of the house, and the women she shares it with, including Balthazar, are vital elements as she continues her recovery from addiction, a journey that she started about two and a half years ago.

“This is a good place for me,” Grove said. “I love being where I’m at. I’m building a foundation.”

Although Oxford Houses don’t require residents to leave after a certain period, Wise said they do have occasional openings as someone decides he or she is ready to live either on their own or, perhaps, to return to a family they lose due to their addiction.

Darion said she talks with a former housemate in Baker City who moved out but continues to thrive in her recovery.

Devan said a former resident of the Oxford House where he lives has left but is “doing amazing.”

“It’s because of what you learn in the house,” he said.

The need for housing remains

Selander, the New Directions Northwest CEO, said the opening of the two Oxford Houses in Baker City has provided a “missing component” in the system that helps people recover from addiction and become productive citizens.

But the need remains, Selander said.

There are waiting lists for both Baker City houses.

The shortage of affordable housing is not limited to people in recovery, of course.

But Selander said people who have just completed treatment confront challenges beyond the purely financial.

Without a place to live where drugs and alcohol are not allowed, Selander said recovering addicts can struggle to resist their cravings.

“It makes it very difficult to maintain their recovery,” she said.

David Fry, program manager for addiction services at New Directions, said he has seen people struggle for that very reason.

“When they don’t have housing, things fall apart,” Fry said.

He said he met recently with residents at the Oxford House men’s house in Baker City. Fry called the house the “biggest blessing.”

He said people who have not maintained their sobriety are succeeding now because they have a supporting place to live.

Bob Forsyth, who is a recovering addict who also works at New Directions, agreed.

He called the opening of the two Oxford Houses in Baker City a “huge step forward” in the effort to help people maintain their sobriety.

Baker City Police Chief Ty Duby said his department hasn’t had any problems related to the two Oxford Houses.