The following statement was released on Feb. 2 by Keiro, former operator of the Intermediate Care Facility in Boyle Heights.
=*=
Keiro remains committed to the long-term safety and well-being of all residents at Sakura Intermediate Care Facility (ICF), now owned by Pacifica Senior Living. With the contemplated closure of ICF, Pacifica has given assurance to our community that no ICF residents will be evicted during this pandemic. Keiro will continue to work with the ICF administration to help ensure that all residents are appropriately and safely cared for.
Once the current public health crisis subsides and if Pacifica determines that ICF is no longer a financially sustainable operation, Keiro will assist the ICF staff and Pacifica to meet Pacifica’s legal obligation to identify safe, affordable, and appropriate options to meet the needs of every ICF resident. Although this is Pacifica’s responsibility as a highly regulated licensed facility, Keiro commits to supporting the ICF administration to ensure that every resident is appropriately transferred and cared for.
Keiro has been monitoring ICF’s operations for the past five years and will continue to do so throughout the current public health crisis. We commend the dedicated staff at ICF working tirelessly to provide the best quality care for residents during these extraordinary times. Keiro remains in frequent communications with the ICF administration to underscore residents’ needs and continue providing necessary resources to maintain high-quality resident care in a culturally appropriate manner while reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission among residents and staff.
=*=
For 60 years, Keiro has focused on improving the quality of life for older adults and their caregivers in the Japanese American community of Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura counties. Keiro provides a range of culturally sensitive programs and resources, in both English and Japanese, to meet the evolving needs of our aging community. In everything we do, we advance our mission through a person-centered, innovative, and collaborative approach. For more information, visit www.keiro.org.
The Keiro Executive Board is responsible for the abandonment of our elders and for creating this crisis. They are not the only ones “monitoring” Pacifica Companies’ operations over the past five years since our precious community institution was sold off. The families of the actual residents have witnessed violations of the original Conditions of Sale, and Keiro has done nothing to hold Pacifica Companies accountable to these violations.
I resent that the over $70 Million in community donations that were intended to support the former Keiro Nursing and Retirement Homes are now being used to finance a propaganda campaign against our seniors and the families and to cover up the harsh reality of what they are facing.
The fact is that there exists no other facility such as the Sakura ICF in the country that provides for the same bilingual-bicultural service that the Japanese American and Japanese residents need for proper care and quality of life. This is why the founders followed through on their vision to establish these facilities in the first place. While Pacifica and Keiro can hide behind the semantics of not “evicting” seniors during the pandemic, we do not hear of any criticism by Keiro of proposals to “transfer” ICF residents to the Skilled Nursing Facility in Lincoln Heights, which has the worst COVID numbers in the nation, do we?
Transparency is required for actual democratic community input and dialogue. Are we ever going to get that from Keiro?
The families and residents deserve fact-based plans, not rhetorical fluff that attempts to deflect responsibility for this disastrous situation.