A California developer plans to expand an affordable-housing community in Kalaeloa that has served U.S. veterans for roughly a decade.
Cloudbreak Hawaii LLC, an affiliate of Pasadena, Calif.-based development firm Cantwell-Anderson Inc., plans to build 50 new studio apartments for veterans as part of a $7.5 million expansion plan for the community known as Hale Uhiwai Nalu.
The addition represents a new phase for the community that was started a little more than a decade ago at the former Barbers Point Naval Air Station by reusing old military barracks as transitional housing for homeless vets.
Hale Uhiwai Nalu has about 240 beds in two buildings, and a third building houses support programs providing residents with services that include job training and substance abuse and mental health treatment.
Tim Cantwell, manager of Cloudbreak Hawaii and president of Cantwell-Anderson, said construction could begin in the middle of this year if an environmental review process and lease language with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs can be finalized without difficulties. Construction is expected to take 10 months.
“All the pieces and parts are coming together,” Cantwell said.
Financing for the project is in place and includes a $4 million loan from the state’s rental housing trust fund. A $450,000 loan to Cloudbreak and First Hawaiian Bank was announced Tuesday and is being provided by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle through a competitive affordable-housing award program.
“This (loan) will go a long way toward transforming lives by making affordable and transitional housing available to Hawaii’s veterans,” Bob Harrison, First Hawaiian’s president, said in a statement.
Darryl Vincent, chief operating officer of the U.S. Veterans Initiative, said the need remains high in Hawaii to help vets move from homelessness to transitional housing and long-term housing.
“There’s a great need for more affordable housing,” he said, adding that vets are 50 percent more likely to be homeless than their civilian counterparts.
The Veterans Initiative, also known as U.S. VETS, provides services at Hale Uhiwai Nalu.
The 50 studios will be used for long-term housing that frees up space at Hale Uhiwai Nalu’s fully occupied transitional housing. The new units will be for vets earning no more than 80 percent of the annual median income in Honolulu, which is about $55,000 for a single person. Some units will be available to tenants earning less than 30 percent of the median income, or about $20,000.
Cantwell said there are future plans to build more long-term housing on the 7-acre site leased from Veterans Affairs, but Cloudbreak has found that it is difficult to obtain financing for more than 50 units at a time for such projects in Hawaii.
Cloudbreak is a mission-driven affiliate of Cantwell-Anderson that has developed roughly 3,000 units of affordable housing for veterans and other special-needs groups in five states.
The Hawaii project had a grand opening in 2003, though the former barracks had been housing vets for a number of years before that. Units were renovated in 2009 to create upgraded and additional apartments. At that time the project had housed more than 1,350 vets and provided services to more than 2,000 vets, including placing 621 in jobs.
