Former pineapple plantation workers whose Kunia Camp homes were saved from demolition six years ago are facing a future with improved housing — but also possible displacement — under a redevelopment plan intended to end a struggle over maintaining the historic community.

The nonprofit owner of the rural Central Oahu neighborhood also known as Kunia Village is proposing to renovate or replace all 121 existing affordable rental homes and also add 79 more homes within the community.

However, many current residents — including some retired Del Monte plantation workers who have lived at Kunia Camp for decades — would become ineligible for the improved homes because of restrictions tied to tax-credit financing for an initial phase of the project, according to a report from the village’s owner.

Some residents who are independent farmers also could be excluded under conditions of a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan that would help finance redevelopment but requires that residents be employees of farm businesses.

The plan and its ramifications are laid out in an environmental assessment recently submitted to the state Office of Environmental Quality Control by a subsidiary of the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, or HARC.

Stephanie Whalen, executive director of HARC, declined to discuss the plan.

HARC said in the assessment that its plan will reverse the loss of homes from deterioration and expand the affordable-housing supply for farmworkers and retirees.

The housing renewal project is part of a bigger vision by HARC to increase opportunities for farmers to work and live in Kunia by making more use of the area’s 12,000 acres that largely went fallow after the shutdown of pineapple and sugar plantations in recent decades.

Kunia Camp, which covers 119 acres, is intended to become an "agribusiness residential and commercial center" under HARC’s vision.

But the nonprofit has had difficulty maintaining the old plantation homes, saying in its report that maintenance costs exceed tenant rental revenue. As a result, 39 Kunia Camp homes have become uninhabitable and are empty.

"(HARC) has struggled to maintain all the units in a safe condition," the organization said in its final environmental assessment published in March. "The plantation houses currently in use in Kunia Village were never designed to withstand 50 to 75 years of service and many are beyond repair."

HARC said in its report that it aims to maintain as much of the village’s social fabric and community identity as possible.

Kunia Camp was established in 1910 and is listed on the state and national registers of historic places.

Most of the homes, according to the environmental report, date to the 1920s and were part of the pineapple plantation operated by California Packing Co., which later become Del Monte.

The village also includes a church, a U.S. post office, a community center, a neighborhood store, warehouses, offices, farmland and a wastewater treatment plant.

Junior Unutoa, 28, has lived all his life at Kunia Camp. His grandfather Faimasasa Tangasolo is a retired Del Monte mechanic and part of the family of eight in the three-bedroom house on Second Street.

Unutoa said the home could use major fixing — its walls have been eaten by termites — as well as bathroom upgrades. "It’s old," he said.

Charles Cabucana, a 77-year-old Del Monte retiree, recalled living in one house, before Del Monte left, that wobbled on its foundation. His current home is better, but he looks forward to it being renovated.

Del Monte shuttered its Kunia operations in 2007, laying off 551 workers. As part of the exit, the company was supposed to remove village buildings with the surrender of its lease on the land then owned by James Campbell Co.

Campbell transferred the village to HARC in 2009 for $1 under a deal brokered by the city. Under the agreement, Campbell gets credit for providing 115 affordable homes it would otherwise have to produce at its planned Maka