A Native American Health Center Is Building Housing in the Bay Area. Here’s Why

By Stephanie Lam

Along International Boulevard in Oakland, a metal fence surrounds a sealed off block. There’s the typical signs of ongoing construction: skeleton frames, workers and trucks full of supplies rolling in and out of the area. Come next year, however, the dilapidated site will transform into affordable housing units and a dental clinic.

The future five-story building, named Flicker, will have 32,500 square-feet of space. The ground floor will feature a cultural community center and a dental clinic with 20 patient rooms. Above, 76 brand new apartments will be built for local families in need. The completed project is expected to bring more than 50 long-term jobs to the community.

It’s an initiative spearheaded by the Native American Health Center (NAHC) in collaboration with Satellite Affordable Housing Associates, a Berkeley-based affordable housing developer. Housing advocates say Flicker’s arrival provides much-needed relief to Oaklanders as the city, and wider Bay Area, grapples with rising income inequality among residents and skyrocketing housing prices.

Chirag Patel, NAHC’s director of planning and development, says many of NAHC’s members who need affordable health care also struggle to find a stable place to live. Oakland is especially in need of more affordable housing options, he says.

“As an Oakland resident, you see tent cities, and all these [housing concerns] happening in the community,” he says. “I see the need out there growing and compounding year after year.”

The NAHC is a nonprofit that serves the Bay Area’s Native population and other underserved communities. The region’s population of Indigenous people native to the Bay Area is currently around 18,500, and is projected to grow over the next few decades, according to U.S Census data. The center provides a mix of health, vision, behavioral and dental care for 15,000 members annually across its 17 facilities in Alameda, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties.

In the past few years, the Bay Area has seen real estate prices rise due to high market demands but limited housing options. Residents say they are struggling to afford even the simplest apartments and rental spaces. In Oakland, for instance, city data reveals almost half of all rental households are rent-burdened, meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their annual income on rent.

In Alameda County, which Oakland is a part of, renters need to earn $49.66 per hour — three times the city’s minimum wage — in order to afford the average monthly asking rent of $2,582. In Oakland, a family of four needs to make roughly $120,800 or less to be considered low-income, according to California’s Department of Housing and Development.

The new housing project is already revealing how great the need is for affordable housing, according to Nicole Guzman, a project manager for Satellite Affordable Housing Associates. The nonprofit is overseeing Flicker’s housing applications, which opened and closed in July.

For the 76 spaces available, there are more than 1,470 applicants, Guzman says. The building contains one-, two- and three-bedroom units, and rents will range from 20 to 60 percent of the area’s median income. In Alameda County, that range is between roughly $31,140 to 93,420 for a family of four. “We are aiming to start moving in by the end of the year,” Guzman says.

The apartments themselves are called Flicker Bird Homes. NAHC chose the name to honor California’s Native people, who use feathers from the Northern Flicker bird in traditional regalia and headdresses. “These feathers are deeply meaningful, representing strength, continuity and spiritual connection,” according to the center.

The development, which began construction in 2024, will cost about $90 million. Funding for the building comes from NAHC funds, community donations, and state and federal dollars; Patel says one of the biggest federal sources was $8 million in Community Project Funding requested by former State Sen. Nancy Skinner.

Flicker is the NAHC’s largest housing and health center. The center collaborated with other affordable housing developers to open a similar model — Seven Directions Apartment, also along International Boulevard in Fruitvale — in 2008. The first and second floors of the complex are a health clinic while the upper floors have 36 housing units.

“We’re seeing this model as something that’s innovative and new and exciting and clearly speaks to multiple community needs at once,” Patel says. He says the Seven Directions project has received positive feedback from community members. Many said they appreciated the convenience of having dental and medical clinics so close to their homes.

In addition to housing, Flicker will welcome 20 new dental treatment rooms. These facilities will help serve 10,000 new NAHC members. The NAHC noticed that dental services especially were in high demand, according to Patel. The surrounding clinics currently don’t have the capacity to meet the community’s dental needs, with some NAHC members waiting six months to a year for an appointment.

To help grow the number of Native American cultural spaces in the Bay Area, a community center will also be built at Flicker that can fit up to 300 people. The site will be a welcoming place for critical services, cultural events, community gatherings and educational workshops, Patel says.

Patel says the overall sentiment for Flicker, especially for the cultural center, has been a mix of “curiosity, excitement and gratitude.”

“It’s a big need in the Oakland community to have a safe space for folks to gather of that size,” he says.

Lorena Rivera, executive director for the Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland, says she is excited to have these cultural and housing resources available to the city. This past year, the organization hosted a community information session with NAHC for members to learn more about the building and housing application process.

Intertribal is an organization that provides different Native American tribes in the Bay Area with cultural programs and spaces. The organization has around 8,000 people participating in our programs each year, from more than 100 different tribes.

“Anytime we can acquire more space for the community is a win,” Rivera says. “I’m excited for that too.”

This story was co-published with Next City, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on solutions for equitable and just cities.

This article first appeared on California Health Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Previously Published on calhealthreport.org with Creative Commons License

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