Plan would replace project with towers
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
One of the walk-up apartments at Mayor Wright Homes public housing.
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
Keiki play at a temporary playground that was installed at Mayor Wright Homes public housing over a year ago. Siikiss Tenen, 9, is pictured in the green T-shirt, along with John John Edwin, 4, and Kiolani Bakol and Emani Chosa, both 8.
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
Hakim Ouansafi, head of the Hawaii Public Housing Authority, shows the expanded metal fencing around the perimeter of Mayor Wright Homes. The welded metal is impervious to bolt cutters and is difficult to scale.
The once rat- and crime-infested Mayor Wright Homes in the heart of Kalihi could be torn down and reborn as a series of high-rise towers designed to shed the stigma of low-income housing beginning with groundbreaking in early 2018.
| MAYOR WRIGHT HOMES
>> Opened Jan 16, 1953; named after Honolulu’s fifth mayor, George Frederick Wright >> Size: 364 units >> Basic monthly rent for all units: $305.87 Source: Hawaii Public Housing Authority |
The idea is to level the sprawling, nearly 20-acre collection of two- and three-story buildings that currently house 364 low-income families.
The first tenants to be relocated during construction would be placed in other state public housing projects and guaranteed a spot in the two or three towers that could be built at Mayor Wright to accommodate 2,500 low-income to market-rate renters, who would generate cash flow for the project.
The new look for the estimated $300 million overhaul is intended to free up valuable land to create parks, walkways and bike paths to transform the grounds of Mayor Wright into a community gathering space. It could include a retail grocery store, a large pharmacy and other retail shops residents have requested.
“We want it to be the talk of the nation, not the talk of the town,” said Hakim Ouansafi, executive director of the Hawaii Public Housing Authority. “The formula of public housing only is dead. You will not be able to tell that this is public housing. It will have green space and community parks and walkways to get to the rail line.”
Much of the details still need to be worked out, including the critical issues of the total cost and exactly how many towers would be built — and how tall they would be.
A public comment period on the project will remain open until the end of the month.
Change in perception
In September, the City Council passed a bill that Mayor Kirk Caldwell signed that allows public housing projects to undergo dramatic renovations in so-called Transit Oriented Development districts along Honolulu’s planned rail route.
Buildings could reach as high as 450 feet, under the bill, but Ouansafi emphasized that those details still have to be decided.
Ouansafi said the concept driving the future of Mayor Wright Homes relies on a simple idea to increase the number of units and make Mayor Wright an attraction rather than an embarrassment.
“Go vertical,” he said. “Go up.”
The Hawaii Public Housing Authority continues to negotiate the details of rebuilding Mayor Wright with Hunt Cos., which already has built 74 affordable housing projects across the country, Thomas Lee, Hunt Cos.’ senior vice president, wrote in an email to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
“In Hawaii, we have worked on other affordable multi-unit projects including Kahuku Elderly Housing, Wakea Garden Apartments in Kalaeloa, Kaupuni Village in Waianae, Banyan Street Manor in Kalihi, ‘Imi Ikena on Maui and Lokahi Apartments in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island,” Lee said in the email.
More than 20 years ago, Hunt Cos. began building so-called privatized military housing in Hawaii and today manages more than 7,000 homes through Hunt’s ‘Ohana Military Communities, Lee said.
“However, in the past decade here in Hawaii, we have greatly diversified into an array of public-private partnerships and affordable multi-unit projects like Mayor Wright Homes,” he wrote.
Lee’s family emigrated from South Korea when he was a child “and my first home in this country was in low-income housing in New York,” he said. “I know that the residents of Mayor Wright Homes deserve better, and that the redeveloped Mayor Wright Homes will be that place.”
Councilman Joey Manahan, whose district includes Mayor Wright, has attended community meetings where he’s heard some concerns but mostly support.
By blending market-rate renters with tenants who could be living rent free, Manahan said the dynamic at Mayor Wright will change for the better.
“You’ll have new shops, streets, sidewalks and new gathering places,” he said. “You’re not segregating people. You’re bringing people together, bringing communities together. You’re really breaking down walls and changing the status quo.”
Clean sweep
Mayor Wright Homes — named after Honolulu’s fifth mayor, George Frederick Wright — opened in 1953, before statehood.
Over the decades that followed, Mayor Wright Homes earned a reputation as a haven for crime, and there were few improvements except basic upkeep.
Ouansafi’s vision for a future Mayor Wright Homes began taking shape five years ago when he took over the Housing Authority and quietly moved undercover into a one-bedroom apartment in Mayor Wright’s Building 19, using the alias “John.”
Ouansafi, who is married with three children, planned to live at Mayor Wright by himself for about a week to experience firsthand expected problems, such as no hot water and rampant crime along with cockroaches and garbage.
He ended up staying four months.
“I moved in the day after a murder,” Ouansafi said. “A couple of months before, there had been another murder. Occupancy was at 60 percent because nobody wanted to live there.”
Posing as “John,” he learned from neighbors that drug dealers regularly cut through the flexible cyclone fence that surrounded the property. In an area right behind Ouansafi’s apartment, they threw shoes over power lines to announce to drug buyers that they were open for business.
He heard from neighbors that some supposed low-income tenants owned their own houses, but were using a loophole to claim they were taking a loss on rental income in order to qualify for public housing. A check of property records found that at least 34 Mayor Wright Housing tenants owned property.
The stint in public housing prompted Ouansafi to initiate change.
He ordered broken and unusable mailboxes repaired and moved to in front of the office for better security. He exposed darkened areas with floodlights.
And Ouansafi tore down the porous cyclone fence that drug dealers cut through almost daily. Crews replaced it with a much sturdier one — decorated with hibiscus stencils — that now keeps trespassers and drug dealers out. The new fence has yet to be damaged.
Ouansafi installed security cameras and increased the number of guards who now patrol the grounds on bicycles to make them more mobile and responsive.
The upgrades cost about $1 million but Ouansafi said it changed the way residents feel about their home.
And now occupancy has gone from 60 percent to 99 percent — a critical key to getting federal funding based on the number of occupied units.
At nearly full occupancy, the housing authority now receives an additional $1.79 million annually in federal funding just for Mayor Wright Homes.
“Agency wide, we were losing $4 million a year that’s just sitting there and we’re just not grabbing it,” Ouansafi said.
Mayor Wright Homes now has a waiting list of 14,000 families trying to get in.
For longtime residents, the changes are obvious.
“Murder — no more,” Ouansafi said. “Stabbings — no more. No more thefts. And disturbances are down 60 percent. There were a lot of evictions and we did kick out the bad apples.”
Today, said resident Calvin Rivera, 74, “I feel safer.”
Rivera has lived in a one-bedroom Mayor Wright Homes apartment for 27 years and his wife, Rita, has been there for 40.
“Security has improved a lot,” Calvin Rivera said. “I see a lot more kids running around now. It’s all good.”
Still, Rivera worries about the details of how residents will be relocated to other public housing units — at the Housing Authority’s expense — until they can return to the first newly built Mayor Wright Homes apartments sometime in 2020.
“Where they going to put everybody when they bring everything down?” Rivera asked.
Overall, though, Rivera said most residents of Mayor Wright Homes like the idea of returning to new apartments, parks and retail shopping.
“We’re supportive,” he said. “It sounds all right.”
36 responses to “Plan would replace project with towers”
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Talk of the nation ? Really wow sounds like a waste of money. Keep those and build more high rises somewhere else.
We needs LOTS of affordable units ! Stop wasting taxpayers money.
The idea is worth pursuing, although similar high rise housing projects have created crime-ridden slums in places such as New York and Chicago. And while the Hunt Companies may have a proven record refurbishing military housing, I believe the corporation is connected to the Hunt brothers responsible for the collapse of the silver market bubble in 1980, resulting in countless investor losses and bankruptcy. In August of 1988 the Hunts were convicted of conspiring to manipulate the market.
Hooray, another KPT, look how well that turned out and is still a beacon of compassion. Remember how they finally filled the swimming pool because repairing it was getting to costly because some of the residents kept using it for a parking place. The police can tell you all about KPT, but wait that would be racist wouldn’t it. Oh well kiss your tax dollars goodbye because they will be taking care of people who only take and do not contribute anything. I was raised in a housing project and it was nothing like it is today. They had inspections and rules that were enforced or out you went. Yes you had to pay rent too.
I agree. No more high rise tennement housing.
“Much of the details”?
Yes, let’s have 450 foot tall buildings all over Oahu.
In downtown/Krakaako, yes.
It’s the reality… you can only go UP if you want to house people and for those on the dole, then UP is it to squeeze em in.
Beggars can’t be choosers. Unless you’re mayor KROOKWELL lying to the state legislature for more Rail Fail money…
Everyone else but HI knows that high rises do not work for this kind of housing. And the state can’t maintain what it’s got – imagine when the elevators go out, or the chiller goes out, or the railings on the 20th floor are loose from spalling, or the trash chute is clogged. A nightmare for the tenants and the budget.
So so true… hasn’t worked in the mainland either.
Many thanks to Mr. Ouansafi for his good administration & willingness to stay in that job, which must be thankless. We taxpayers should be grateful & say so when we have public servants like him.
Re: high-rise replacements. Agree that they do not have a track record of success elsewhere in the US (Cabrini-Green in Chicago?), but can see that there’s a need to increase density in order to provide affordable housing for more people.
Exactly. While he solved the problems at this housing complex, he is ignorant on the ways of the Nei and high rise public housing.
From the link below, “Less than 20 years ago, Chicago stacked up poor people like cord-wood. Massive high-rise housing projects like Cabrini Green and the Taylor Homes were socially limiting and unsafe for the people who lived there, their dreams deferred. Chicago’s high-rise ghettos were the shame of the city, perpetuating and increasing racial and economic segregation. Ref: http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/editorial-cha-tears-down-walls-but-has-long-way-to-go/
High rise public housing will not work in the Nei for many reasons. Ouansafi fails to understand the Nei has a perfect track record for decades in willfully funding for and doing the required preventive maintenance on government facilities. The main reason why our roads and other infrastructure are in such sorry shape.
Ouansafi would have us believe the funding and maintenance work would all be done on time, on budget, on standard in public housing. Not going to happen. Within years of opening the elevators would be breaking down, water pipes leaking, doors broken, locks not working. The list of problems would be endless, stacked up like cord wood.
Ouansafi needs to understand the errors of his thinking. This is the Nei, not utopia. Keep what you have going and be thankful to have it. Just the way it is.
Doh!!! Should read, “decades in willfully not funding”
We figured it out… no more tennement housing.
Congratulations to Hakim Ouansafi for doing a tough and sometimes thankless job. Great to see a politician working for his constituency! Please keep up the good work, despite the whiners.
What are you, his mother? He’s getting traction on and props for a horrible idea.
Act 55 Public Land Trust Corporation was repealed in 2012. But political insiders and private developers still found ways to advance their agenda through the public housing land instead of DLNR land.
And ow many of the units would be market-rate — 95% or more.
please look at the towers of Kuhio Park Terrace. Wasn’t there a plan to remove the high rises because of a concentration of the lower income people?
But looking across Liliha street from Mayor Wright housing yes its a nicer community and i remember the Advertiser having write ups that there are people who own a home and stayed there because its safe.
so if another KPT is built ensure that in place of the present apartments people like Mr Lee (I’m sorry to have used your name) is an occupant vs a life long welfare resident who rather sleep in than walk their child to school.
please consider the type of tenants who will occupy the towers
Grew up across the street in Kukui Gardens. Tenant living in Mayor Wright housing compared to Kukui Gardens is a fundamental social/cultural difference. Public housing projects like Mayor Wright, KPT, Kalakaua homes, Palolo instilled dependency on govt handouts. Similar to plantation/village mindset where it was (and still is) just take & take. Kukui Gardens was a private project governed under federal HUD restrictions.
in addition, hi-rise towers has mixed results here in Honolulu. KPT is on one end of the spectrum with egregious maintenance issues. But look at the City-related towers in Chinatown area. The white Kukui Tower/Maunkea Tower complex across Hosoi Mortuary. Hale Pauahi. Chinatown Gateway. Marin Tower. Even Kauluwela hi-rise up the road. significantly different results.
have to agree with da bruddah! it all depends on the team operating the project. the same brick and mortar challenges existed but to very different results. some teams are much, much better than others. how about moving a successful team to a new site to assess, address, and implement fresher perspectives on solving the new site’s recurring problems? rotating the management teams around to the various sites will invariably expose the weaker teams and the stronger teams – then the necessary adjustments in staffing can take place as is needed (if our leaders have the stomach for it). this is a very effective business management tool that simply has not been used for reasons we all know but are unwilling to express – governmental union contracts – there i said it!
Let’s not equate elderly housing with low income housing.
The differences are obvious. Just ignoring these differences is faking the facts…
care to differentiate which of da bruddah’s examples are elder housing and which are low income? – i’m talking about effective management teams in governmental institutions! what are you talking about, wee-wiliki-winky??? then we can have a coherent discussion – otherwise apples and oranges! does management style differentiate between the two? if so, what makes them differ to management style and/or efficiency and results. please respond coherently!
The Projects of The Bronx coming to an island near you.
Exactly. Nei bureaucrats haven’t got a clue what has gone on in mainland cities where low income high rise projects became slum towers with gangs and drug lords.
Lets look at Kalihi Valley Housing. A slum for decades, money was finally made available to upgrade units. Front rows look nice to the public, back rows just got a paint job, minor upgrades. Fact is the responsible government agency let the housing degrade, lack of maintenance, lack of professional management. Failed to put the people first.
State would do well to require every public housing project to comply with the same finance reserves required of condos and townhouses. Ensuring each project has their own banked funds for required maintenance and upgrades. Money untouchable from raiding by our utterly clueless elected bureaucrats.
Fail and these public housing towers will soon have maintenance backlogs in the 10s of millions. Following the failing lead of UH Manoa, half a billion and climbing in maintenance backlog.
Fail to perform. Standard for the Nei.
HAVE TO AGREE WITH THE ESSENCE OF THIS COMMENT – governmental bureaucracies have not had a good track record in dealing with problems of any type. they are primarily interested in padding their staffs, management offices, their high payrolls WITHOUT GETTING THE PERFORMANCE FOR THEIR FUNDING!!! eye wash, public relations posturing, unrealistic maintenance programs (and oversight) ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EFFICIENTLY PLANNING, IMPLEMENTING, AND MANAGING THE PRODUCTS FOR THE RESOURCES THEY RECEIVE. it’s all nothing more than IDLE IDYLLIC IDEALISM. our politicians should all follow the lead of OUANSAFI, who actually lived the life for 4 months, and do the same to see for themselves. the once a year photo op tour just does not cut it. it just leads to more misplaced and erroneous idealism! aaaah, the height of bureaucratic inefficiency knows no limit!
Please change the name of that place to something else…like Fasi.
The idea of concentrating the poor or other undesirables into confined geographic areas is a very old one – look up the origin of the word “ghetto”, as this has been happening for at least five centuries. The use of high rises has been tried in other cities and abandoned, most notably with the recent demolition of the Chicago “projects”. The stigma doesn’t come from the form-factor of the housing itself, as lots of people live in two-story walkups throughout Honolulu. The stigma comes from being concentrated into public housing – you might as well pin a badge on everyone that says “I’m poor.”
Here’s an idea – remember that “affordable housing” requirement on all those multi-million dollar high rises? How about actually making it stick, rather than just granting a waiver for every exception? Those high rises are knocking down the two-story walkups, the very places the poor used to live in. You have to actually provide equivalently priced units for them.
Ah the Caldwell legacy of Towers and twin towers. And the worse is still yet to come.
Whatever is built, please stop painting them that do do brown color. Having the affordable housing units the same color as the dilapidated beach park bathrooms doesn’t help with the beautification of a neighborhood.
Haven’t we had enough bad experience with low income tennement style housing? Townhouse low incomw housing works better.
I am very glad to see some action to improve Mayor Wright and am going to give them the benefit of the doubt because there is so clearly a need for even more low-income housing. Something needs to be done because the people who live there now deserve better. I can’t even imagine the desperation of 14,000 people who are on the list to live at Mayor Wright, but that tells you how much more housing needs to be built there, where it’s so convenient to Downtown — even if in towers, which surely don’t have to be the mainland-style infamous, horrible housing projects that we hear of.
Aloha, It’s unfortunate to see some statements and some insults made without knowing the entire story. Not all the facts can make a newspaper article otherwise you’ll need 4 full pages. This is NOT 2500 public housing towers. Mr. Ouansafi’s and the HPHA believe that having all public housing in one area is a mistake and that is why the new development is a Mixed-income Mixed use development. The public housing units will be replaced one for one only (364 existing now will be replaced with 364) and the rest will be housing for all different income levels including some market as well as some commercial component in order to run it without relying on state tax payers’ money. As the article stated, negotiations and due diligence, studies, EIS are ongoing but let’s assume the final plan calls for 2500 units, then less than 15% will be public housing and the remaining 85% will be for all income levels with a substantial affordable component. As you know, in Honolulu the AMI Area Median income is $87,900 as published by the Federal government. Which means that if a family of 4 is making (80% of AMI) $80,450.00 per year, they are considered Low Income.
Instead of fixing the current 364 units that are taking 20 acres costing the taxpayers tens of Millions of dollars, Mr. Ouansafi and his team called for a private public partnership to have private developers, with sounds balance sheet and extensive experience, bring private money and equity and develop the entire site while the state retains ownership of the land and ensures that affordable units remain affordable for life. At the end, the taxpayers will end up with more housing for all income levels, 364 public housing units and all amenities that the community wanted through the multiple meetings that already took place with not only the tenants but the entire community at large. This will cost tax payer tens of millions less than it the HPHA did it alone…. Stay tune for more details once all negotiations are completed! Have a great weekend
This project is going to be a dismal failure. Back in the 1960’s low income high rise housing projects were built all over the country which is when Kuhio Park Terrace was built.
All of these projects were dismal failures and soon became hotbeds of crime and hell holes for the people living there. Most of these housing projects were eventually demolished
and became the poster child of what not to do and yet the idea of building another high rise low income housing project is again being pushed here which makes no sense.
If anybody had the opportunity to visit Kuhio Park Terrace back in the 1970’s you would have seen how bad conditions there were. My first visit there I saw people throwing cans, bottles and trash
over the balconies. The stairwells reeked or urine and the elevators were in bad shape.
During my second visit, I was there with a fellow student and while we visiting with a family there, we returned to his car to find that someone had removed the front bumper from his car.
That’s the kind of place it was and the same thing is going to happen if this project is built. It will be a disaster.
It took litigation to finally compel change at Mayor Wright Housing.
http://www.hiappleseed.org/mayor-wright-housing-litigation
High crimes and illegible tenants were from the only problems. Lack of demand was, and still is, never the limiting factor to high occupancy rate. To say that it was is just more bureaucratic spin to hide real problems.
4 months longer that a family in need on the waiting list was denied relief.
Pure undercover boss gimmick to divert attention away from the real problems.