City purchase to add to affordable units
COURTESY MAYOR CALDWELL’S OFFICE
The low-rise apartment building at 1727 S. Beretania St. was purchased by the city for $6.9 million.
The city spent $6.9 million to buy a three-story, 24-unit walk-up apartment building on Beretania Street to be used for low-income and homeless housing.
The purchase of the building at 1727 Beretania St. — makai of Central Union Church and not far from the high-rise where President Barack Obama was raised — is expected to record today. The seller of the property was not disclosed.
The deal represents the latest project by Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration to add affordable housing and create more so-called Housing First units to ease the nation’s highest per capita rate of homelessness.
While Caldwell continues to urge landlords to rent their market-rate units to homeless people, his administration also has now purchased three buildings in town that it will operate as the landlord for low-income and formerly homeless tenants.
The city has selected Housing Solutions Inc. to manage the Beretania Street property, and “Housing First clients will be welcome at the project,” Jay Parasco, the city’s homeless initiatives coordinator, said in a statement.
Under the Housing First model, homeless people are placed in market-rate rentals where they get social service help for their problems, which could include mental illness and substance abuse.
Using lessons learned in Waianae and Makiki — where the city continues to renovate two adjacent school buildings that will provide 42 units for low-income and homeless housing — the city plans to create an advisory committee of neighbors, community leaders and elected officials interested in the Beretania Street project “to make sure the neighbors and everyone is involved,” said Sandy Pfund, who runs the city’s Office of Strategic Development.
The city’s so-called “Hassinger project” in Makiki near Hassinger Street has gotten some pushback from those worried about formerly homeless people moving into the renovated school buildings.
While the Hassinger project continues to undergo renovations for a planned opening in February, the Beretania Street building should welcome its first tenants in mid- to late November, said Liz Char, project manager for the city, who found the building and engineered the sale.
Caldwell said he believes the advisory committee will allay neighbors’ worries about the new residents who will move in.
“If we address their concerns, it’s going to be a good example of how we can do this in other neighborhoods around the island,” the mayor said.
A standard confidentiality clause in both the Makiki and Beretania Street real estate deals prevented city officials from reaching out to neighbors earlier, Pfund said.
If the city’s plans were announced ahead of an agreement, “sellers would not want to be subjected to negative comments and probably would not sell to us,” she said. “It’s important to work well with the seller to make them comfortable in negotiating the transaction with us. So they usually require these clauses.”
The Beretania Street building has 20 one-bedroom apartments and four two-bedroom units. But one apartment representing each floor plan will have to be renovated to comply with the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, Pfund said.
The building had been used as a leasehold condominium until the lease expired and the fee owner took possession, Pfund said, “and put it back on the market vacant.”
Char added, “It’s near grocery stores. It’s definitely very accessible.”
It’s also about 100 yards from where Obama grew up with his maternal grandparents on South Beretania Street.
HSI will begin accepting rental applications in December, Parasco said. Tenants must be experiencing either “sheltered or unsheltered” homelessness and make less than 50 percent of the area median income, which is $35,160 for a single person and $50,250 for a family of four.
The city bought the property through a $64 million appropriation from the City Council aimed at addressing homelessness.
Because there is no budget for operating funds, Parasco said maintenance and other costs will rely entirely on rental income.
17 responses to “City purchase to add to affordable units”
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Put solar on the roofs?
City was supposed to be getting out of the housing business as it proved incompetent in managing and maintaining the units.
Now here we go again. Wasting more taxpayer money to get back into the housing business. Will be just like rail. Another endless taxpayer funded money pit.
Yeah, and the next step is to increase the number of government employees to manage the extra housing. You know, that same amount of money could have purchased many, many, many, many, many more units on the mainland where the cost of living is lower, and help the homeless relocate there to get back on their feet – instead of keeping them in the most expensive state in the nation where they will forever be dependent on handouts.
Caldwell is turning Makiki area into a ghetto. Why don’t he build in his neighborhood.
Because he doesn’t want bums to defecate in front of his $2.5-million dollar home of distinction which he happens to have exempted and turned into a historic home and pays a petty $300 flat annual property tax on!
City should not be in the apartment-buying business. After the election, the true city finances will be revealed and it isn’t pretty. Because of rail, mismanagement and a host of other problems, the City is running out of money. Property tax increases will be proposed. Remember this post 4 weeks from now.
Kirk’s historic home property tax won’t be going up….Unlike the rest of us.
BINGO! $300 flat tax on it. Current appraised value of $2.5 million. Poor chap, must be hard paying that tax bill so he has 2 jobs. haaaaa
Kirk is dreaming of bankrupting beautiful Honolulu into the shanty town of Detroit. After he leaves Honolulu for Fiji to retire this is what Honolulu might end up looking like. http://moneynation.com/can-buy-1-detroit-home/
I was walking my dogs this morning in Waianae and witnessed an elderly homeless man defecating on the side of the road in broad daylight. Are these people worth saving?
Yes, by saving I hope you mean loading them up onto the next Young Bros or Prasa cargo ship destined for the mainland. I’ll even volunteer to help push their shopping cart full of $#%& onto the cargo ship and gladly pitch in to pay for the container fee to send them their merry way.
Just like Housing First, homeless will displace poor working class families which is the demographic that lived in that building. I rented a one-bedroom there in college for cheap. These homeless “solutions” reduce the rental pool for the poor working class. Sad…
There’s Central Union preschool across the street. Washington Middle school a block away. Maryknoll, Hanahaole and Punahou close by. But all these bleeding hearts care about is that the homeless are close to Foodland. When was the last time you saw a homeless individual buy groceries? Endanger our keiki to house homeless mainland transplants. Great Idea!
I feel sorry for central union as no one in their right mind would send their kids to a school across a known homless drug den.
Many are junkies, sex offenders, mentally ill criminals and sheer drunks. HPD will need to be hired to keep an eye out for the poor kids having to go to school from these savage predators.
So declared every place Obama has lived or been a national monument or preservation zone. That includes all the high priced restaurants.
Obama want’s us to end up like his adopted and dearly cherished hometown, Chicago! Chicago has the most murders of any city in the country!
What do the following 4 highest crime ridden and murder rate cities have in common?
1. Chicago
2. Detroit
3. Washington, D.C
4. Baltimore, Maryland
They are all 100% “D” run cities cities with 3rd world country communist mindset voters that keep electing S_T_U_P_I_D time and time again.