A decision on the sale of the 857-unit Kukui Gardens apartment complex just outside Chinatown may come as early as Monday.

With that in mind, scores of mostly elderly and mostly immigrant residents of the low-income Liliha residential community stood in the rain yesterday at the gates of Saint Louis School and Chaminade University of Honolulu in Kaimuki holding signs opposing the sale.

Under the guidelines of the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation, which owns Kukui Gardens, the two Catholic schools are among the three entities that would receive proceeds from a sale of the complex. The St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii is the third.

Officials with all three community organizations, along with the five-member Ching Foundation board, make up the Kukui Gardens Corp., which will meet Monday morning to discuss the impending sale.

Representatives of the Kukui Gardens Residents Association and the organization Faith Action for Community Equity, or FACE, sought an audience with officials from the three nonprofit groups yesterday.

School officials and executives at St. Francis' Nu'uanu headquarters were not available yesterday.

The group did meet with Sister Earnest Chung, executive director of Hawaii Catholic Charities and an appointed member of the Kukui Gardens Corp. for St. Francis. She expressed sympathy but made no promises, according to Nancy Young, a FACE organizer.

Sharz Divsalar, a FACE organizer, said residents simply want a say. "We want the board to meet with us, and not keep us in the dark, and hold off their decision until we can be part of the process so that we can ensure permanent affordability," she said.

Divsalar noted that state lawmakers, with backing by Gov. Linda Lingle, are attempting to craft legislation that would allow the state to purchase Kukui Gardens and preserve it as an affordable housing project.

"We just want them to hold off for a little while," said Carol Anzai, president of the residents association, who estimates about three-quarters of the tenants are of Chinese ancestry, most of them immigrants with limited English skills.

R. Stevens Gilley, a real estate consultant for the foundation, said that rents at the complex must stay within certain guidelines through 2011 under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And while nothing will be written into the sales contracts, "all three of the final bidders plan to keep (the complex) as it is," Gilley said. "There would be a gradual increase in the rents, but nothing that would be major at all, over a three- to four-year period."

Gilley added, "The whole intent is to keep the property the way it is physically and to keep the current tenants on the property — that's their intent."

But such promises are being met skeptically by Yok Chuen Chan, a Hong Kong immigrant who has been living at Kukui Gardens since 1983.

Chan, 63, is a retired Halekulani housekeeper who lives with his wife, still working at Halekulani, and a son, 26, who works with computers.

Chan said his son intends to move out soon and that the couple won't be able to afford paying much more than the $851 a month the family now pays for its three-bedroom apartment.

"If the rent is too high, we would have to move to the countryside," Chang said.

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com.