"Nobody Can Evict Us": Wilmington Clinic Reopens After Forced Removal

A New Beginning for a Free Dental Clinic

After being forced to close last year, the New Hanover Outreach Clinic has received a grant that allows it to relocate and reopen this week. This clinic, which was previously known as the St. Mary’s Health Center, faced eviction from its long-time location in June of 2024. The move came after the clinic was served with eviction papers by Wilmington’s St. Mary’s Basilica.

Clinic Director Laura Vinson described the experience as deeply unsettling. “It felt violating. I’ve been with the clinic for 22 years, and that has always been our home,” she said. Vinson and her team were given notice to leave but didn’t fully move out until November. Each day she showed up for work, she encountered new challenges.

One particularly upsetting incident involved the locks on the clinic doors. “Some of my worst fears ended up coming true because one day the locks were changed. The fact that a priest would go in and change the locks, with a locksmith, and not just that disabling the other locks by putting toothpicks in them and supergluing them so we wouldn’t be able to put a key in the keyhole. And to watch that on a video live, was pretty sad,” Vinson explained.

Vinson started working at St. Mary’s Health Clinic in 2004 as a volunteer in the kitchen at the school upstairs. She was later asked if she spoke Spanish and could help out in the clinic; since then, it’s been history. “I’m a daughter of immigrants and my parents migrated to the states in the 50s so as a first-generation American, I think you just have that desire to give back,” she said.

When she was served the eviction papers, her heart broke a little. “I think that’s been the most difficult thing I’ve endured. Not so much having to move, or leaving, the inability to not care for the people I’ve been so used to helping for the past 22 years,” Vinson shared.

She recalled patients needing care, but having no place to go. “All those people couldn’t be seen. I had people call me for months, the patients all have my phone number because my phone number is the one they take home when they leave,” she said. The clinic was the only free emergency dental clinic in the city, and health professionals say losing such services can have a major impact on people living in rural areas.

Dr. Emily Hawes, PharmD, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UNC School of Medicine, highlighted the importance of such clinics. “There is a higher mortality for individuals that live in rural communities compared to urban communities. And one of the contributing factors to that is that we don’t have enough physicians supplied or health care workforce in these settings,” she said.

Dr. Hawes has spent 13 years in medical and pharmacy education, with her research focusing on state and federal health workforce policy and the development and sustainability of graduate medical education in rural and underserved areas. “Research time and time again shown that physicians who train in rural settings are more likely to stay and practice in those settings. They’re two to five times more likely to do that. But unfortunately only about 2% of training happens in rural areas,” she noted.

“As a solution, I’d like to see both state and federal efforts braiding together to both support new program development, and a sustainability and vitality of these training programs,” Dr. Hawes added.

Running a free dental health clinic took money, money Vinson didn’t have. “So there was a time that I never thought we would be able to reopen our doors because it just seemed unattainable. $695,000 is a lot of money to come up with in 3 months,” she said. However, her prayers were answered when an endowment granted that money to the clinic, allowing her to reopen near 16th and Martin Streets.

“It’s to be used as a free dental clinic, indefinitely, we can’t ever sell the building, nobody can evict us, this is our building. We have really invested a lot of time and love into this building,” Vinson said. The love and time are evident as you walk through the facility. Vinson has repainted all the walls, hung curtains, and made the facility appealing for their patients.

“I’ve tried to make every single room as friendly for patients, and as accommodating as it can be, because just because people come to a free clinic doesn’t mean it needs to be all grey or all white. It doesn’t need to be what people’s expectations are of a free place. It should be a nice, happy, place too. Why shouldn’t poor people come to a place that’s nice?” she said.

While it has a new name, the New Hanover Outreach Clinic, it will offer the same services that people have relied on for decades. “I started screaming. You know, it was overwhelming, it was like that happy, that rainbow, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, that’s what it felt like,” Vinson shared. She hopes others will be just as happy, too.

The clinic is opening its doors for the first time this Thursday. They will be open Monday through Saturday for appointments. To book an appointment, call (910)-343-1212. Or visit their facility at 1375 S. 16th Street.