Honor boosts group’s mission to aid needy

More than 40 interfaith congregations on Oahu and Maui and their allies have used their political muscle through Faith Action for Community Equity to take care of basic needs of Hawaii residents, especially the poor, sick and marginalized members of society.

"Our values and our faith really come into play in the political process," said the Rev. Samuel L. Domingo, president of FACE Oahu and pastor of Keolumana United Methodist Church in Kailua. "If we don’t raise our voices, people in power basically think they have permission to run roughshod over us. We need to care for each other, not just ourselves, but the wider community,"

Achieving social justice on many fronts earned FACE the 20th Melvin H. Boyce Award for community activism from EAH Housing, a nonprofit affordable housing developer and management company in California and Hawaii. The award was presented April 26 at the grand opening of The Villages of Moa‘e Ku in Ewa Beach, a 64-unit, government-supported affordable housing project.

Since 1996, FACE has fought for the rights of people on health, job and public safety issues, but "housing has been the big one," Domingo said.

"We’ve had all these great victories since the mid-’90s. That’s what the award is about, a culmination of the kind of work we’ve been impacting over the years," said Domingo, an organizer of the nonprofit group since its inception. The Maui chapter was added in 2008.

"Our religious values are important, especially in the area of social justice. We organize (people) so our voices are heard to convince people in power to change their minds about society," Domingo said. "We certainly want to advocate for people who have no voice."

FACE usually takes on problems that arise within its congregations, which consist largely of working families and seniors, he said. Membership includes 38 churches, a Buddhist temple, two Jewish congregations, 10 community groups and nonprofits, and the Local 5 International Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union.

One of the group’s biggest victories was helping to keep half of the downtown Kukui Gardens complex affordable to longtime low-income tenants in 2006 when owners decided to upgrade the property.

"We worked with the residents, and we went with them to visit the politicians, to the governor’s office, and Carmel Partners (the owners) to negotiate. … It’s about organizing people to take back what they’ve lost or what they think they are lacking in their lives," Domingo said.

(Carmel Partners was persuaded to sell nearly 400 units to EAH Housing and Devine & Gong of San Francisco, which would keep them affordable. Carmel Partners turned the other 400-plus units of Kukui Gardens into the Waena Apartments, at higher rental rates.)

FACE was a key player in the Honolulu City Council’s adoption of Resolution 108 in 2008, which protected tenants from eviction from 12 low-income apartment buildings owned and managed by the city on Oahu, and ensured that the buyer of the properties would keep the rentals affordable, said Domingo.

"We were trying to make sure (the tenants) wouldn’t be kicked to the curb and become homeless. That has always been our concern," he said.

With affordable housing and rental units scarce, the organization has supported public-private partnerships to increase the number of places available, and urged the formation of a city Office of Housing in 2010, Domingo said.

Jun Yang, director of the housing office, said he is overseeing the sale of the 12 apartment buildings, which have about 1,200 units, to Honolulu Affordable Housing Partners, which should be finalized by the end of the year. A stipulation of the sale was that the badly rundown buildings would be sold in their entirety to one buyer to ensure that the city wouldn’t be stuck with the worst of the lot, Yang said. Six of the buildings are in downtown Honolulu and others are in Kaneohe, Ewa Beach and Manoa.

Under conditions of the sale, the buyer must keep the units affordable for 65 years and not evict any tenants except for rules violations, Yang said. Many of the tenants have been homeless or are transitioning out of temporary shelters, he said.

Yang, a former FACE organizer until he was appointed city housing director in February, said his office has been tasked with creating incentives for developers to build more affordable housing and rental units, and "the mayor (Kirk Caldwell) has asked me to work on homelessness."

Domingo said projects FACE is working on include opening a community health center in Wahiawa in September; national immigration reform; helping residents from Tonga get training and certification to become nurses’ assistants and caregivers; and longterm care and minimum wage legislation.