Around 500 people packed the First Southern Baptist Church in Gardena to oppose the sale of Keiro, an elder care facility in Los Angeles and Gardena that is operated by a nonprofit in the Japanese American community.

Keiro is a nonprofit care facility serving the Japanese American community, mainly supporting Japanese-language care.

The board of Keiro is selling the facility to Pacifica. This is NOT the radio station; it's a real estate developer that will operate the facility as a for-profit operation. The price is $40 million.

Keiro has tried to keep this sale SECRET!

* Information about the sale was announced at arts and crafts classes at the retirement home. They made little effort to inform the residents.

* When nonprofits are sold to for-profit companies, there is supposed to be a hearing. However, the Attorney General can waive that hearing. Keiro's board requested the waiver, and got it. Thus THERE WAS NO PUBLIC HEARING ABOUT THIS SALE.

* There are different facilities, including a retirement home and a nursing home. The retirement home is solvent, but the nursing home is 70% people on Medi-Cal and Medicare. These residents are at risk of being thrown out.

* The price was based on a 2-year old appraisal. The Boyle Heights facility is within a rapidly gentrifying area, so that price may be much lower than it's present market value.

Mo Nishida started a movement against the sale. It has grown to hundreds, perhaps thousands of community people. The petition opposing the sale has over 9,000 signatures.

This is a fight not only for this facility, but to protect the idea of nonprofit elder care, and in a broader sense, against treating dying, elderly people as a profit center. Community people who rely on nonprofits are affected by boards that want to cash-out of a nonprofit.

This now has the support of local politicians, most notably Maxine Waters and Judy Chu, who are aligning themselves against Attorney General Kamala Harris.

There is a push for a lawsuit to oppose this sale. Even if the sale goes through, there will be an effort to get the assets to make the residents there whole, to have a home until they pass away, perhaps even as far as twenty years into the future. Making a new facility has also been raised; there is sufficient money if the facility is sold.

Meetings of the Ad-Hoc Committee to Save Keiro are Saturday at 1PM, 333 San Pedro, just south of Little Tokyo.