By Adelaide Chen

As health care costs continue to rise, the expansion of the largest clinic in Oakland’s San Antonio area for uninsured and low-income patients has come at a needed time.

The San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center that once operated out of a house in the late ‘70s is expanding into a development that will cost altogether $9.85 million.

The renovated two-story warehouse on International Blvd. is located next to the building that housed the health center for the past three decades. The old building will be under construction until June. Once completed, it will double the size of the health center.

The new main building has a waiting room with twenty wide chairs, a long reception counter stretching almost the entire side, and ample space for kids to run around. The previous building had one long hallway and rooms on both sides. The former waiting room had ten chairs.

“We outgrew that space a long time ago,” said Jane Garcia, CEO of the parent organization La Clinica de La Raza, greeting donors who contributed to the expansion at an October reception.

The San Antonio site is one of 26 locations in the Bay Area. But it ranks second behind the flagship location in the Fruitvale Village in terms of patient numbers and size.

“Once we acquired the warehouse, we set a fundraising goal of $3.7 million,” she said. The organization exceed their expectations and raised $4.1 million.

But perhaps the most crucial element, the exam rooms, will double, from 10 to 20. During construction, some of the exam rooms are being used for medical files and as a pharmacy. But once these departments are able to move into the old building, the expansion will begin.

With the increase in exam rooms, the number of patients is expected to double as well, from 6,000 to 11,000 over the course of five years, according to Renata Fineberg, clinic manager.

The growth of the clinic is an important step towards serving the needs of the community, Fineberg said. The clinic accepts Medi-Care and Medi-Cal patients, and charges fees based on a sliding scale.

For example, a patient that doesn’t qualify for a program such as Medi-Cal pays a flat fee of $80 per visit at most. The amount slides towards zero according to the patient’s income level and a scale based on federal guidelines, she said.

About 60 percent of the patients of the clinic fall below the federal poverty line. For the annual income of a family of four, the amount comes out to $21,200, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Even though almost three-quarters of La Clinica’s patients are Latino—at the San Antonio location, a third are Asian. The clinic offers doctors who speak Asian languages such as Vietnamese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. And a Cambodian speaking doctor comes on Tuesdays.

A doctor and his wife, a nurse, started the neighborhood clinic during the ‘70s in a modest single-story house behind International Blvd. to address health care needs of the residents.

Dr. Joe Selby said they had always hoped the clinic would grow.

“The need was there,” he said. “It was medically underserved.” While living in the area during the ’70s, there was not one clinic that addressed the needs of the neighborhood, he said.

But on the residential street where he purchased the house, opposition came from the neighbors.

“We had to go before the zoning board,” Selby said, due to a claim filed by a resident. Fortunately the board sided with the clinic, he said.

“We eventually won them over,” said Nan Murrell, who worked for the clinic as a family nurse practioner. She bought the house from Selby when the clinic moved. She remembers one of her neighbors being part of the opposition.

“We provided good health care for this neighborhood,” she said. “People came from all over. We saw a lot of patients here.”

She said after purchasing the house, people would continue to show up on her doorstep asking for the clinic.

For client Jaime Andrade, 27, whose wife is receiving pre-natal care for their first child due in spring, said he is pleased with the renovated building.

Not only does it have more space, it’s cleaner and more organized than the previous building, he said. The service at the reception counter is faster too, he said.

A local nonprofit developer has purchased land in Oakland’s Eastlake area to build affordable rental units for low-income families. But some residents say the influx of new households will bring parking and traffic congestion to their relatively calm neighborhood.

Wedged on three sides by the 880 freeway, the commercial East 12th Street, and the football field of Laney Community College, this portion of the city was once designated for residential and light industrial use. Victorian houses exist side by side with automotive shops and contractors.

But now the winds are changing. Stretching one block long and about half and block wide, a dirt lot is the proposed construction site for a four-story, affordable housing development.

A chain link fence topped with razor wire encircles the lot, littered with construction trucks and materials, including spools of industrial wire. But even though it’s an eyesore, many neighbors say they would prefer to keep the property as is.

For most of her life, America de la Pena, 25, has lived two houses away from the dirt lot surrounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and construction trucks coming in and out.

“It’s better like that than all the people,” she said.

The people she refers to are the families that will occupy 55 rental units.

In order to qualify as tenants, a four-member household would have to make below 60 percent of the area median income–less than $51,660 annually, said Robert Stevenson with the developer, Resources for Community Development.

On the high end, a family of four might pay $1000 for a three-bedroom rental, he said. The units will have between one and four bedrooms.

Almost a third of the rental units would be set aside for Section 8 housing, where a tenant would pay rent using a calculated percentage based on their income. The Oakland Housing Authority would then cover the difference in rent.

Resident de la Pena said the garage parking, one or two per unit, would not be enough to keep parked cars off the street.

Neighbors have written letters and made their way to meetings with the city council member to publicly voice their feelings. But for the nonprofit housing developer, such sentiment is normal–even in low income neighborhoods such as this one.

Once they see the other affordable housing developments, they know they are constructed with high quality and well managed, said Stevenson. RCD has built more than 1400 housing units in Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano Counties since 1984.

“All poor neighborhoods get affordable housing,” said homeowner David Ryan, 43, who lives and works across the street from the lot. The city doesn’t build them in well-off areas such as the hills, he said. “I thought we were past this.”

Ryan said he had asked the developer to consider families of all income levels, instead of just low income. But the answer was simple–the proposal would qualify for more public funding if it could benefit more people that need affordable housing.

The proposal is set to receive $6.25 million in public funding, about three-quarters from city redevelopment funds, and the rest from federal funds, according Jeffrey Angell, housing development coordinator with Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency.

“It looks like a big junkyard at the moment,” said Angell, “Being converted into residential use will be an improvement.”

But Ryan said he doesn’t mind the eyesore that is there now.

“I love it because I get to look at empty blue sky,” he said. Currently there is no building on the property across the street from where he works and lives.

The design of the building, four stories high, has been altered to address residents’ concerns. The fourth story now recedes from the front so that it’s not as noticeable, said Stevenson.

The main tenant that occupies the lot, Ray’s Electric, is a contractor that installs streetlights. An employee, who asked not to be named, said the owner has been given notice to vacate the property. The company plans to move to another location, he said.

Juan Guerra, 55, an automotive shop owner who lives and works across the street, said the owner of the property, a downtown Chevy dealer, had originally used the lot to store new cars.

He said it was the owner’s wife’s idea”to sell (the land) to somebody to be beneficial,” he said. “She’s always liked working with the community.”

But even though he works and lives across the street, he doesn’t think his voice will count.

“When I see they come with a steamroller. I know you can’t stop them,” said Guerra, who stopped participating after attending two meetings. “You put two and two together. You know how it works. You can’t stop a federally funded project.”