Claudia Shay, executive director of the Self-Help Housing Corp. of Hawaii, is on the job in Maili, wearing a T-shirt marking this year’s 50th anniversary of the national self-help housing movement.

“Some assembly required” is printed across the front.

“Don’t you love that?” she said with a laugh.

Shay, 65, has been at this work for most of her adult life. The nonprofit corporation enlists low-income people in teams that invest their own labor in building their own homes, as well as those for their teammates. The Maili project is only the latest of hundreds the corporation has built in its three decades of operation.

After undergraduate studies at American University and the University of Florida, she worked as a VISTA volunteer in New York City, doing community organizing for low-income tenants.

Her master’s degree in public health was earned at the University of Hawaii. Then she helped to found the Consumer Housing Task Force, which worked with tenants in the islands.

But the self-help route to home ownership caught her attention and, after some exploration of the California-originated national movement, she established Hawaii’s corporation.

Shay functions as the developer, acquiring land for subdivisions, gaining the permits, and running the program of financial counseling for the future homeowners. Federal grant programs enable families to qualify financially by counting rental vouchers and food stamps as income and by making loans available for as low as 1 percent, she said. The staff includes a bookkeeper and some loan assistants who help Shay put together the financing.

The families gain skills, as well as equity.

“The repetition of the work reinforces the learning, so they become more proficient as they go on. All the houses come up together at the same time, like the old barn-raising days, like the pioneers.

“Some of the people I helped 30 years ago, some of their keiki are in my project now,” she added. “Shows you how old I am, right?” (Her own keiki, a daughter, is grown now.)

“But it’s kind of cool,” Shay said. “I like that.”

QUESTION: Are there particular challenges getting this through the hoops of government review?

ANSWER: It is difficult. There’s a lot of paperwork, and it takes longer than you anticipate it’s going to be. That’s why we phased it, Phase 1 and Phase 2, because that one already had existing infrastructure which we could pull in. The electrical lines, the water lines, and so forth. Whereas here, I built this road — 1,200 linear feet. It’s an extension of Manuaihue Street. …

This is our mason, you see the guy in the light green shirt? … And those are all of his helpers. They are not volunteers, it’s subcontracted. The excavation and masonry is all subcontracted.

But the families do all the rest of the labor, the 85 percent of the labor.

Q: Is this because of specialized skills in laying foundation and that kind of thing?

A: Yeah. It goes faster when you can subcontract that part of it out. Because you have to have all the heavy equipment.

Because I’m really a developer, I’m not a contractor. … Royal Contracting did the infrastructure for the subdivision. …

But the families do all the layout, they do all of the roofing, all the framing, all of the drywall. They do the hanging cabinets, hanging doors, laying floor tiles, painting, and all the finish carpentry work.

So here we have a two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,155-square-foot house with a garage, 490 square foot; and a one-story, four-bedroom, two-bath, 1,248-square-foot, with a 400-square-foot carport. And those cost $256,000 fee simple; that includes the land. And with carrying charges and everything now, it’s $290,000, house and lot, fee simple.

They appraised at $415,000. So the family is walking in with over $100,000 of sweat equity. But they’ve earned it, because look at all the labor; they do more than 85 percent of the labor. That’s why we can bring in people that are all below 80 percent of the area median income — 40 percent of our families has incomes below 50 percent of the area median income.

Q: How long has Self-Help been in Hawaii?

A: I started the corporation in 1984, and we’ve built 627 houses.

Q: And they are all on Oahu?

A: Oahu, Kauai, Maui and Molokai. I’m just finishing up houses in Hana. I built 14 house in Hana. That was something — bringing septic tanks over the winding road. (Laughs.)

Q: How has it worked out in the long-term for these families? Have you had any foreclosures?

A: Oh, very minimal. Traditionally for self-help throughout the country they have less delinquencies, less foreclosures than a normal portfolio of the RD-502 (U.S. Department of Agriculture) loans. …

The point being, it’s always going to be affordable to them. And because they put a year’s worth of labor into building the house, they’re going to keep their house.

Q: Do you have any numbers on that?

A: I don’t. But I know even nationally, it’s less than RD-502 portfolio, statistically.

Q: Which is a few percent?

A: It’s less than 5 percent. …

(Points to a partially completed house.)

When the family finishes, you see the back area here? They can enclose the whole downstairs and build another unit. Right now (on the bottom) it’s just a garage and the foyer and the stairs going up, but once they’re finished, and with all their skills …

Q: Do you have to persuade the families that they can do this?

A: Not really. I have a huge waiting list. … This is Team 3, this is Bank of Hawaii financed. And again, because the loan is much less than the value of the house and lot, conventional funders like to work with me, too. …

Q: So automatically, there’s less risk for the lender?

A: Yeah. They’re solid. It’s worth $415,000 and the loan is $290,000…

Q: Did any of the people on these teams know each other before?

A: Well, almost everybody’s from Waianae — which I also love, because I built this with resources from Waianae and it was supposed to be for the people of Waianae. …

And so it turns out that a lot of people know each other, not because they came in together but because they went to school together. Waianae is a pretty tight community. …

Q: But I wonder if building the house is a kind of bonding experience?

A: Well, that’s the most challenging part, the group dynamic, how well you get along. Usually most groups are pretty tight in the end, and all of their children grow up together. …

Q: So the challenge is to make sure everybody puts in their time?

A: Yeah. Occasionally, you’ll have a family that won’t put in their 32 hours a week of labor. So we have a loan assistant that goes and talks with the families.

Everybody signs a membership agreement, which iterates their responsibilities, and the fact that they mutually have to put in the 32 hours a week of labor, and the rest of the team is counting on them to put their labor in.

They can be foreclosed on, if they don’t fulfill their labor requirement, because that’s how they got the house for 50 percent of what it normally would cost.

Q: Is there a typical story of the families who get involved in this? Were they renting?

A: Yeah. They were all renting. Many of them were very crowded, doubled up with extended family, most of them in pretty substandard conditions, and all of them with a pretty high cost burden for their rent, much higher than 30 percent, sometimes 50 percent of their income.

Most people — in fact, all of them — their mortgage is going to be less than their rent.

Q: How long does it take, on average, from recruitment to get them ready for construction?

A: It really varies, because it depends on what stage they’re at. Do they have to pay down debts? Do they have credit problems? …

Q: Do you ever run into a family who is so far under water that they can’t … ?

A: Oh, yeah, sure. But that’s OK, because we keep everybody on our list, because we’re a HUD-certified housing counseling agency. We’ll work with them however long it takes. If they can’t make it for this project, maybe they’ll make it for the next project.

Q: Do you ever get approached by people at median income?

A: Oh, yeah, but we can’t … Some of the funding went through HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development); they have to be at 80 percent (area median income) … That’s my interest, anyway — low income — that’s really our mission, to help those at lower income.

Q: The labor on the teams — men and women?

A: Oh, yeah, it’s all equal. Everything is equal on our construction site. … The women are a big part of building our houses. There’s a lot of single-parent women who build the houses in my project. We give priority to those most in need, when we qualify families. … But they have to have two people every weekend, to help them build … because if they’re sick, someone from their ohana still has to show up. The rest of the team is counting on them to be there.

Q: How do you foster good working relationships with the team?

A: Well, I mean, we’re with them for a long period of time. By the time they get to us, they’re looking for direction.

There’s a lot of financial illiteracy in our community. A lot of people don’t have savings because everybody’s living hand to mouth. … People don’t know how to budget their money. They never thought they could ever be a homeowner. So they’re coming to us for assistance. We put them on a household budget and we work with them, work them through …

They’re already grateful for that assistance. And the idea of owning a house — they never thought they could own a house in Hawaii! And not only that, but it’s going to be much less than their rent. Wow! That’s fantastic, you know?