A fire destroyed the largest halfway house in Paterson, N.J., on Saturday, displacing about 200 residents who the city’s mayor said had been trying to turn their lives around while recovering from addiction.

Plumes of smoke from the fire, which broke out around 11 a.m. at the Straight & Narrow halfway house, could be seen for miles.

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Paterson, which runs the house, said no one was injured and all of the residents were accounted for and were being relocated to other properties it owns, including a gymnasium at a nearby community center.

“Where are they going to go from here?” the mayor, André Sayegh, asked on Saturday evening. “Those who were living there at Straight & Narrow may have lost everything.”

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Among those relocated were 59 women and 10 infants who had been living at a drug treatment shelter next door to the halfway house. The shelter was not damaged but the residents were moved as a precaution, said Msgr. Herbert K. Tillyer, president of the board of Catholic Charities.

On Saturday evening, he said he could still see smoldering remnants of the three-story building, which was once an airplane parts factory.

“Everybody tonight is going to be sleeping in a safe place, including all the children,” Monsignor Tillyer said.

The displaced halfway house residents were being transferred to two other Catholic Charities facilities — the Father English Community Center in Paterson and a Straight & Narrow center in Passaic, N.J.

To make room at the Passaic site, individuals getting treatment in a weekend recovery program were being moved to hotels. Patients in a detoxification program were sent to St. Joseph’s University Medical Center in Paterson.

“These are people who are trying to defeat addiction,” Mr. Sayegh said. “They’re in recovery. This may serve as a setback.”

Monsignor Tillyer said it was fortunate the fire happened during the daytime.

“The most important thing is no lives were lost,” he said. “Thank God it happened during the day when everybody was doing things. That is the gift, the blessing in this terrible situation.”

He said the Red Cross was working with Catholic Charities to provide clothes and other essential supplies to the displaced residents.

“Many of them, they have jobs,” he said. “They don’t have any clothes at this point, except what’s on their back.”

Firefighters from several neighboring communities responded to the fire, the second to befall the local Catholic Charities in recent years. In 2017, a fire gutted a popular food pantry at the Father English Community Center.

Monsignor Tillyer said that the community rallied around Catholic Charities then, and that he expected it would again.

“Put it this way, nobody’s saying ‘no’ to us,” he said. “Paterson is a tight-knit town.”

Neil Vigdor is a breaking news reporter on the Express Desk. He previously covered Connecticut politics for the Hartford Courant. @gettinviggy • Facebook

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