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"Plan to Keep Kokoro in the Community Introduced"
Published in the Nichi Bei Times, June 29, 2006.
"Community support" was the catch phrase as the new plan to keep Kokoro Assisted Living in the Japanese American community was introduced Tuesday evening at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California.
Kokoro owner Japanese American Religious Federation Assisted Living Facility, Inc. (JALFI) "is looking to be reborn into a new organization that will be stronger, more fiscally sound with more input from the community," said JALFI Board President Steve Suzuki.
Earlier this year, JALFI announced that due to financial difficulties, it had decided to enter into exclusive negotiations with the goal of transferring the ownership of Kokoro — located at the corner of Bush and Laguna streets — to San Francisco's OnLok, Inc. senior health services.
After an outcry from community members, who had raised $2.8 million to help make the facility a reality and wondered why they had not been informed prior to action being taken, JALFI instead decided to pursue other options.
Since March, approximately 30 individuals representing JALFI, the churches and a variety of community organizations have formed working groups to research problems and recommend changes for a new community-based plan.
"We're looking at a new board, a new way of operating, a new way of overseeing Kokoro…We are actively searching out new members," said Suzuki. "It will be a very large change."
Armed with this new plan, JALFI will go before the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) on Tuesday, July 18 at 4 p.m. at City Hall to ask the commission to provide another $5 million to Kokoro — the appraised value of the land — bringing the Agency's contributions to the project to $10.6 million.
"The Agency would buy back the land for $5 million and lease back the property to Kokoro, lease the improvements to Kokoro for one dollar per year," said David Sobel, SFRA senior development specialist. "So it's a good deal for Kokoro," he joked.
The importance of community involvement and support was continuously stressed throughout the meeting. Among the biggest changes is a completely new board and name.
While the name JALFI reflects the strong ties to the Japanese American Religious Federation (JARF), "which was critical to get the project to where it is now," said Sobel, "it's been proposed in the working groups that (the new organization) would be called Kokoro Assisted Living, Inc."
The new name, continued Sobel, "emphasizes the broader community approach besides just JARF and JARF Housing that is needed for the long-term success of Kokoro."
The JARF influence on the board would also be reduced. Currently, 12 of the 21 board seats come from JARF. In the new plan, which also reduces the total number of board seats to between 11 to 15, only four of these would be selected by JARF.
Officials hope to have a core of the new board in place by the July 18 hearing. A new committee structure, with non-board members serving on committees, is also part of the plan.
"If you or friends are interested in helping Kokoro move forward, you're welcome to submit names to us to be considered for any of the positions — whether they're on the committees or on the board — so this truly can be a community organization," said JALFI board member Laura Takeuchi.
Volunteering for the board is "the most important thing," said Olson Lee, deputy executive director of housing at the Redevelopment Agency. "We can do the financing pretty easily, that's just numbers, but what's going to make or break the operation of that facility is not the numbers that we play with, but the leadership on that nonprofit board."
Community support is essential because if the Redevelopment Agency commission does not approve of the plan, the worse case scenario is an eventual loss of the property, as mortgage payments would eventually be impossible to make. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would then auction off the mortgage.
"Along with that process, the (SFRA) restrictions evaporate and the project could basically be turned into any type of project that the new owners would decide to use it for," said Soble. "The community resource would certainly be lost."
However, officials are hopeful that the Redevelopment Agency will support Kokoro.
"This project has always been supported by the commissioners in the past," Suzuki told the Nichi Bei Times. "There's so much invested in Kokoro with the Agency…if we don't get this…they lose the units that they have and 37 units that are in there right now that are affordable, all that gets wiped away. So it's in their interest to keep this."
If the SFRA buys the land back, the debt will be refinanced from the current $40,000 a month to $15,000. Additional funds would be used in a variety of ways to provide for the long-term security of the facility, including hiring a part-time executive director and setting up a reserve fund of for future expenses.
A refinance would allow for the repayment of the $200,000 line of credit with the JARF churches. The majority of a $500,000 line of credit with Catholic Healthcare of the West could be mostly paid off in five years, with the remainder to be renegotiated when the note is due.
And although the results of quality of care surveys of Kokoro residents and families were "across the board…very positive," said Sobel, "there's always room for improvement."
A "wishlist" of potential improvements to the facility could also be addressed, including a 10 percent increase in the food budget, cultural sensitivity training for staff and an improved in-house communications/telephone system.
If the commission approves the additional funding, the anticipated closing meeting could happen as soon as August.