Sex, drugs and rent -- Clients describe rampant criminal activity in drug-treatment program

GREENSBORO -- There weren’t a lot of active drug users in the program, one former client of United Youth Care Services recalls; most were simply women who were desperate for housing for themselves or their children.

But if housing was the hook that pulled in the clients, substance abuse was the quotient that made them profit centers for the agency. So, faced with the threat of losing housing, many clients simply agreed to play the part.

The result was a drug-treatment program where clients were perversely incentivized to use drugs, even as staff degraded them for doing so. Clients ostensibly there to get clean were placed in rundown hotels and apartments plagued with rampant drug use, and they were often times subjected to the arbitrary authority of site managers and security guards who were themselves using and selling drugs, according to interviews Triad City Beat conducted with more than a dozen former clients.

“It’s really encouraged to do drugs,” said Zalonda Woods, another former client. “If you test clean, it’s frowned upon.”

Read more: https://triad-city-beat.com/sex-drugs-and-rent/