Kahuku holdouts missing fair deal

On the surface, the contentious dispute that has persisted for years in Kahuku Village V appears to mirror a story line familiar to any longtime Hawaii resident: Rich mainland real-estate developer buys precious land and moves to oust poor, local tenants.

But as business reporter Andrew Gomes revealed in a three-part series in the Star-Advertiser this week, the situation at the former sugar plantation camp on Oahu’s North Shore is more complicated than that, and has riven the once tight-knit community.

As Gomes writes, Kahuku Village V was a pocket of rural living stuck in the past, and efforts to bring it up to date have been anything but smooth.

At its peak in the 1930s, Kahuku Plantation was a bustling village, with 4,000 acres planted in sugar cane for production at the Kahuku Sugar Mill. Roughly 1,200 workers — brought in from China, Japan, Portugal and the Philippines — and their family members lived in nearly 1,000 homes in ethnic camps throughout the plantation. By the 1940s, demand for Hawaii sugar was waning and in 1971 the plantation closed down.

That was 42 years ago, well more than a generation. As at shuttered sugar-cane plants throughout Hawaii, most of Kahuku’s workforce and their descendants transitioned decades ago into different work, and different lives, no longer depending on their employers for housing. Many residents bought their plantation homes or replacements at affordable prices. Others resettled in Oahu’s urban or suburban areas, as owners or renters.

But for one plantation neighborhood — Kahuku Village V, or KV5 — time seemingly stood still.

Today’s KV5 residents are mostly the children or grandchildren of former sugar cane workers, who managed through various means to avoid resettlement all these years and remain in a total of about 72 plantation homes. Renters pay an average $650 a month, well below the going rate in Kahuku.

In 2006, then-landowner Campbell Estate sold the KV5 tract and other Kahu-ku parcels to a Florida company, Continental Pacific LLC. The new landlord offered tenants the option of buying their homes and large lots for $150,000, well below the market price. Some residents took the offer and are now homeowners, happy with the deal and praising Continental as more than fair. Others rejected the offer, deny it was even legitimate and decry Continental as heartless; they’re fighting in court Continental’s attempts to evict them.

The company intends to sell the real estate on the open market. Once neighbors and friends, residents find themselves locked in an increasingly bitter fight that should have been resolved long ago.

The latest salvo is a 233-page lawsuit filed in state court on Monday on behalf of families facing eviction. The lawsuit claims an array of misdeeds by the developer and by city and state officials; a lawyer for Continental dismisses the accusations as "utterly base- less."

While the issue drags out in court, the rural life goes on in KV5, no longer as tranquil, but no longer stuck in a time warp, either.

To date, Continental has sold or is in the process of selling 20 homes in the village, including 15 to current residents.

Perhaps as more tenants let go of an outdated sense of entitlement and recognize basic property rights, they’ll take Continental up on what seems like a pretty good deal.