PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A plan to open two new health centers in the lower northeast has hit a snag over a historic building, and Philadelphia City Council member Quetcy Lozada hopes to get the project back on track with a series of community meetings beginning Tuesday evening.
“I was completely taken aback by the opposition. I never expected it,” Lozada said. “The Health Center is a big need in the community.”
There are nearly 50 public health centers in Philadelphia but only one, City Health Center #10, serves the entire area north of Frankford Avenue. Wait times for appointments there can take from five months for children, to as long as one year for an adult.
The Department of Public Health (DPH) began planning for two new health centers in 2015 and chose two locations because of their accessibility: The Frankford Terminal and the campus of Friends Hospital.
It’s the Friends Hospital site that has generated opposition.
“We know that the need is there and we need a health center,” said Mari Carasquillo, president of the Northwood Civic Association, which opposes the site. “It’s just what we’ve been disputing is the location.”
Carasquillo said the community’s problem with the site is that it requires the demolition of the “superintendent’s house,” which is historic but has become dilapidated, even hazardous, with disuse.
“The community said if we could put the building with the health center, we would be happy with that, like maybe the entrance or something,” Carasquillo said.
The architect has ruled that out. The Historic Commission has OK’d the demolition. Still, the Civic Association has not dropped its objections.
“I feel like money could be invested there. I feel they are taking the easy way out and it can be repaired,” Carasquillo said.
Lozada said neighbors have also argued the health center should be relocated because people in the immediate area of Friends Hospital don’t need free health service.
To advocates of the new health center, the protests sound like NIMBYism, a term derived from “not in my backyard.” John Dodds of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project cited 200-400% increases in the poverty rate in neighborhoods such as Mayfair, Lawncrest and Rhawnhurst as evidence of the need for the health center.
“In the lower northeast we have way more people in need than we have facilities to treat them,” Dodds said. “These new health centers would provide 46,000 people with health care, so I don’t know if the people in Northwood feel that need, but for them to overrule the concerns of thousands of people in the northeast just seems unfair.”
Carasquillo said that’s not the case.
“What we were saying is there’s not a need for two health centers less than a mile away from each other because the other one is at Frankford and Pratt,” she said. She said neighbors asked for, but have never received, a list of all the locations DPH looked at before settling on Friends Hospital.
Lozada says she wants to make sure everyone has a voice in the process, so she planned three community meetings.
“We need to figure out how to move forward but I don’t want to move forward unless I have heard from everyone who will be impacted by the project,” she told KYW Newsradio.
She says she’s also asked state legislators from the area to attend.
“It is a decision we’re all going to have to make together,” she said, “but all of us recognize there is an absolute need for another health center in this community.”
Check out the meeting schedules below:
- Tuesday, Feb. 20, 6 p.m. at Houseman Rec Center, 5091 Summerdale Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa. 19124
- Wednesday, Feb. 21, 6:30 p.m., at Juniata Boys & Girls Club, 1225 E Cayuga Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19124
- Tuesday, Feb. 27, 6:30 p.m., at First Presbyterian Church of Olney, 5435 North 3rd Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19120