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‘City of Roses’
Volume XLV
Number 41
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www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • October 12, 2016
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Photo by C ervante P oPe /t he P ortland o bserver
Dr. Jill Ginsberg oversees the remodeling of a commercial space at 714 N.E. Alberta St. into new medical offices and the future home of her North by Northeast Communi-
ty Health Center, a free and low cost clinic to serve the under-respected and underserved.
New roots for legacy clinic
Move to Alberta
keeps focus on
underserved
C ervante P oPe
t he P ortland o bserver
North by Northeast Community
Health Center (NxNE) has been a lifeline
for minority and disadvantaged popula-
tions since its inception by a Kaiser Per-
manente doctor and African American
pastor over a decade ago. On Oct. 17 the
free and low-cost clinic will have a new
home that thankfully will still be located
in the heart of the community it serves.
“We knew we were going to have to
by
move and we had been planning it for
awhile,” says Dr. Jill Ginsberg, the medi-
cal director and co-founder of NxNE. “It
was a great opportunity to think about
what we want this new space to be, how
much space we need, what we can afford
and where it should be.”
The new location will open at 714
N.E. Alberta St., just a few blocks from
the clinic’s current location at 3030 NE
Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., a site be-
ing redeveloped by Cascadia Behavior-
al Healthcare to accommodate new af-
fordable housing and upgrade its mental
health services with a new ground floor
clinic.
Faced with the impending move,
NxNE turned to the community to help
decide where their next location should
be.
“There was a very clear agreement that
people wanted us to stay in the neighbor-
hood,” says Ginsberg.
“A lot of people see this neighborhood
as home, even if they’ve had to leave.
They come back maybe for church or to
see their friends or go to the barbershop
and it was really important to people
that their health clinic was in their home
neighborhood.”
Ginsberg stressed her displeasure with
the displacement she’s seen happen to
minority and low income residents in
inner north and northeast Portland and
didn’t want her clinic to be another one.
She has grown close to the predominate-
ly African American clientele the clinic
has served since she founded it with the
late Pastor Mary Overstreet-Smith in Au-
gust 2006.
The clinic’s history of serving up-
rooted citizens runs deep, as its begin-
nings were somewhat a response to
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when Pastor
Overstreet-Smith helped relocate 30
storm-displaced families from the New
Orleans area to the Pacific Northwest.
“I felt very overwhelmed and I had
no idea what to do to help with all of
that,” says Ginsberg. “When I saw what
she was doing I was inspired by it, and I
thought maybe she could use some help.”
Ginsberg rallied her neighbors to help
collect items like diapers and food for
the families, but Pastor Overstreet Smith
C ontinued on P age 4