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.

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.”