In Oakland and elsewhere, health care is investing in affordable housing

When an apartment building sells in gentrifying parts of Oakland, California, tenants often brace themselves for the worst. Rent hikes, disruptive renovations and evictions can follow. But when one building recently changed hands, city officials and housing activists celebrated.

Kensington Gardens, a 41-unit building in the working-class, immigrant neighborhood of San Antonio, was sold last November. “I was feeling somebody was going to get it and they were going to raise the rent,” said Ameria Lipscomb, who lives in a first-floor studio in Kensington. Tenants there generally pay below-market rents.

When the building changed hands, Lipscomb expected a rent hike and for many of her neighbors — retirees on fixed incomes, janitors, childcare workers, a couple of families with children— to be pushed out. But neither outcome came to pass. Why? The new owner is the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, a nonprofit affordable housing developer.