Welcome to The Historic San Antonio District, City of Oakland sign ( CC-A Photo by HiMY SYeD )San Antonio is a large neighborhood / district / area in the City of Oakland whose boundaries are roughly equivalent to the former town of Brooklyn, annexed in 1872. Commonly referred to as Lower San Antonio, this neighborhood, as with most in Oakland, has a large degree of variation in the community's own perception of itself. Alternate names for part of this community include East Lake, Foothill, Fruitvale, Funktown, Jingletown and Murder Dubbs.
According to a comprehensive community survey and neighborhood definition process (conducted in 2004 as part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections-Oakland), only 13.3% of residents surveyed agreed on the name of this neighborhood. Almost half (42.3%) did not have an official name for their community. In total, of the 697 people surveyed (in multiple languages) there were 35 (yes, thirty-five) different names offered for this neighborhood where two or more people provided such a name. The number of individual names suggested was 82! The image below illustrates the geographic variation residents provided of their neighborhood boundary- 571 drawings were collected. Of these shapes, the median percentage of the official boundary that was included in each drawing was only 9.4% - indicating that the official version does a poor job at representing residents' perceptions. As a reference, similar surveys in Denver revealed percentages between 19% and 37% of alignment!
Residents' hand drawn definition of their neighborhood boundary in 2004, along with the "official" definition.
Refer to Summary_tables_maps2.14.06.pdf for more detailed information on resident perception of this neighborhood.
According to a survey of 646 households in 2006, 4% of families have lived in this neighborhood for 35 years or longer while one in five households (19.4%) have lived here for less than one year. Given the fact that the LSA is an immigrant gateway community this large new resident figure is understandable.
Looking for statistics on this community? Try this 2008 report using community survey and other data. LSA_profile_Summary_02.01.08.pdf
There is also a summary of the Cross Site Survey carried out in 2006 available: CSS SANN Presentation Handouts version 12.12.2007 SS.pdf
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