The Paper Patients
The CBS News article had a photograph of the building directory. I studied it for a moment. A salon. A law office. A modeling agency. And eighty-nine licensed hospice companies, all registered to the same three-story stucco office building in Van Nuys.
I had to read it twice. Not because it was confusing.
The building’s name is the Merabi Professional Medical Plaza. It is 32,000 square feet. It has a long tiled hallway. The directory on the wall lists the tenants. One of those tenants is a modeling agency. Eighty-nine of them are in the business of caring for people in the final six months of their lives. The building’s owner told CBS News his tenants appear to be legitimate—they provide standard documentation showing they are valid. He also said he’s “not a police or keeper of what they do, how they do business.”