Oakland continues to rank among the top ten metropolitan areas in the U.S. with high rates of foreclosure, but the city’s Asian neighborhoods remain relatively untouched.

Chinatown, Eastlake and lower San Antonio have received few notices of default over the last three years, according to data analyzed by a local economic development nonprofit.

The notices serve as “the first line of evidence that there is a problem, and none of them are reflecting that there is one,” said Anne Griffith of Urban Strategies Council, who has mapped data of default notices and foreclosures in the city.

Realtors, mortgage brokers, and homeowners familiar with Asian culture say family networks of lending are common among Chinese and Vietnamese when buying a home. In addition, conservative spending habits and families living together contribute to financial stability.

When Bay Le, 46, considered buying his first home in Eastlake, his goal was a fixed-interest loan with a 20 percent down payment. But he came up short. So he called his sister in Ohio.

She wired him $20,000.

Four years later, he is still paying interest-free installments. “When I have the money, I send it back, little bit by little bit,” said Le, a contractor.

He and his wife rarely go out for entertainment. “Asians don’t spend money they don’t have,” he said. Instead, they save whatever they can, he said.

Le’s house is located northeast of International Boulevard, where Asians make up the dominant racial group — about 40 percent, according to the census — but occupy just under a third of the housing units.

Although only 17 percent of the residences in the area are owner-occupied, Asians are the largest homeownership group, comprising almost 60 percent.

Among renters in Eastlake, Asians and Pacific Islanders occupy the smallest percentage of rental units, less than two percent, according to the census. Blacks live in 37 percent of the rental units but make up a quarter of the area’s population.

The median family income in the area is estimated to be $34,965 this year, according to figures from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

According to Van Hanh Nguyen, an accountant who helps her husband run a realty and mortgage company in the Eastlake commercial district, families commonly pool money together for a house. The families pay at least 20 percent down for a fixed-interest loan with a good rate, she said.

“When you have money, then you can buy the other person out,” she said. Nguyen and her sister were both co-owners. Their families lived together in the same house.

“It’s a good arrangement because our mother would watch over our children,” she said. Although living with another family means less privacy, this is considered normal for Asian families, she said.

In the Eastlake area, 30 percent of households who are Asian and related have five or more family members, according to the last census. Only Latinos, at 34 percent, are more likely to live in large households.

At 6 o’clock, three cars had parked in the driveway of Zagreus Qiu, 30, and he said he expected three more to arrive before the night ended. He and his wife live with his parents and a few others. They bought the house in 1998 after the turnover of Hong Kong to China in which they had sold everything and left. But they couldn’t have put a 30 percent down payment without a hefty sum his aunt wired from England.

He pointed out all the Asian families that lived in the single houses on his block. Some were renters. And some were new. The drop in property values had enabled families to buy for the first-time, and they were settling into two nearby Victorians.

People dressed in traditional Indian clothes celebrated Diwali with food, music and prayers at Fremont’s Hindu Temple on Saturday night, October 25.

Around 3,000 people flocked to the temple for the major Hindu holiday, also known as the Festival of Lights, said Ajay Bhutoria, chairman of the youth committee at the temple, who had come to celebrate the event with his family. “It symbolizes the start of the Hindu new year,” he said.

During the festival, people decorate their houses with earthen lamps to signify the victory of good over evil, said Fremont resident Sunita Gagar. She had come to the temple, located on Delaware Drive, with her husband Raj to celebrate and watch their three children do a traditional Indian dance performance.

The festival also gives Indian immigrants a taste of home. “When you come to the temple you see all these people dressed up and the lights and you think, ‘Yes, it’s really Diwali,’” said Gagar.

Children did 20 dance performances to Indian music at a school auditorium next to the temple, said Nirmal Agrawal, a temple official in charge of the show.

Meanwhile, people enjoyed a free vegetarian dinner of traditional Indian dishes in indoor and outdoor dining areas. The meal was sponsored by Kohinoor, an Indian foodstuff company hoping to expand in the United States, said Nilesh Dalal, the company’s regional manager for the West Coast.

The temple, officially called the Vedic Dharma Samaj, actually houses two places of worship, one for South Indian and one for North Indian Hindus. Long queues of people lined up outside each to pay their respect to their deities.

On a stage inside, musicians played devotional Hindu music to an appreciative audience. Berkeley resident Jerry Barr played tabla, an Indian percussion instrument,to accompany Indian classical singer Roopa Shastry during one performance.

Barr, who formally became a Hindu last year, said the music led to him adopting the religion. “The essence of the music is devotional. The more I got into it the more I wanted to learn about Hinduism,” he said.

Diwali officially fell on Tuesday, October 28 this year, but the temple arranged its major activities for Saturday so more people could attend.

Franklin Elementary is one of the few schools in Oakland where Asians – many born outside the United States – make up the largest racial group. Combined with the Latinos, the district considers half the school’s students as English Language Learners.

That means the majority of the students speak another language besides English at home. Their families come from Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Laos, and, most recently, Burma.

For many of these immigrant parents, who face language barriers themselves, it can be difficult to help their children with homework.

“When kids do homework, new immigrant parents mostly don’t know any English,” said JinXia Liu, whose son is in the fifth grade. “So when they finish their homework under the supervision of high school students, we don’t have to rack our brains,” she said.

An after-school learning center run by the nonprofit East Bay Asian Youth Center aims to address these challenges in a culturally sensitive manner. EBAYC has five other after-school learning centers in Oakland. Operating with 250 kids, nearly a third of the student body participates. There are about 700 students at Franklin this year.

Every month, Liu attends a meeting along with other immigrant parents. Mostly mothers with little ones in tow, they fill the cafeteria tables, each one designated for a different language: Vietnamese, Cantonese, Spanish and English.

“They divide us into language groups, and get a high school student to translate what’s being covered today,” said Liu. The program staff includes 40 high school mentors, many who are bilingual.

There are other reasons why the Franklin learning center is popular with parents – it’s free. A federal grant covers the cost for Franklin. The families of the students are limited income earners; 70 percent of the students qualify for free lunches.

But with federal funding come other requirements. The after-school learning center uses the students’ scores from the California Standards Test to measure improvement and to hold themselves accountable to administrators of the grant.

Similar to the state testing requirements that begin in the second grade, EBAYC accepts students starting in the second grade.

Principal Jeanette MacDonald said that, since 2000, there has only been one year when the California Standards Test scores did not improve.

The latest scores put Franklin Elementary at 835, according to the Academic Performance Index. Schools that surpass the 800 benchmark are considered “excellent,” according to the California Department of Education.

“Absolutely (the test scores) have everything to do with the after-school program,” said MacDonald. “We work very closely.” Tommy Lee, director of the after-school learning center, and a designated teacher liaison collaborate on the program content based on the needs of the school.

High school mentors tutor the students in two subjects measured in the standardized test that ultimately determine the API score — reading and math. Currently, the students are focusing on remedial English in small groups.

“There’s a lot of pressure to focus on test scores and monitor them,” said Anthony Trujillo, a 20-year teacher at Franklin who now works as a liaison between the learning center and the teachers.

“But the real effects have been more time spent with reading, more time spent with math,” he said. “Subjects like science and social studies have suffered.”

But Trujillo said he doesn’t know if that’s good or bad.

“You certainly want kids to leave elementary school knowing how to read and function in math so they can go on to middle school and do well,” he said. “So that’s kind of a give a take. But it certainly looks like they’ve improved on test scores.”

The activities extend the school day by about two and a half hours.

Second grade teacher Angela Yapor said she appreciates having an extra hour at the end of the day to spend with ten of her students who need additional help.

“I think every teacher always feels frustrated because she can’t do enough individualized teaching,” she said. “There aren’t enough moments in the day to sit alongside a child or focus on the particular things that one child.”

On a recent afternoon, the class had a discussion on what languages they spoke. The second graders sat at their desks and went around—Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Cambodian, and Spanish. Two spoke Turkish.

“Only English,” said one child, regretfully.

“Oh, a lot of people wish they could speak only English,” said Yapor.

Students switch classrooms for the second hour, where high school mentors lead small groups in reading and comprehension using a set curriculum called Soar to Success.

Twice a week, students and staff put away pencils and books to engage in two hours of activity. Karate, soccer, arts and crafts, painting, hip-hop, Asian and Latino dance are among what’s offered—and there’s no pressure to pick based on gender or race.

Second grader Brandon Tran, 7, goes to cooking class.

But he gets embarrassed when his mother May says he could use improvement in pronunciation and vocabulary. She’s at school after the parent meeting, checking in with her child’s mentors.

“It’s helped him a lot because (the mentors are) all English speakers,” she said. “I speak with him in my own language at home because I want him to practice it more. His English has gotten better.”