Project to provide 160 homes for Native Hawaiians

More than 100 Native Hawaiians are inching closer to homeownership as the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands works to complete a long-planned subdivision in Kapolei.

The department plans to hold a lot-selection ceremony Saturday, when leaseholders will choose lots in the Ka‘uluokaha‘i subdivision, where DHHL is developing 160 turnkey homes.

The department in 2008 awarded future homeowners so-called undivided interest leases in a then- undeveloped 25-acre parcel near the Salvation Army’s Kroc Center. The interest-only leases will be replaced with standard leases for a specific house lot.

The order in which beneficiaries appeared on the department’s housing waiting list will determine the order for selecting lots. Homesteaders will be leasing the land under their homes for $1 a year and purchasing turnkey, single-family homes at below-market prices with subsidized financing. A three-bedroom, DHHL-­developed turnkey home is typically priced in the low-$300,000 range.

The Ka‘uluokaha‘i subdivision is the first phase of a master-planned community known as East Kapolei II that the department is developing mauka of the Ewa Villages Golf Course. At full build-out the community is expected to have 1,000 single-­family lots, according to DHHL.

Infrastructure improvements for the subdivision began in 2009, using $11 million in infrastructure funding from the Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act program. Another $3 million in federal funding came from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development. The work involved mass grading, installation of sewer and water lines, and the construction of Maunakapu Street.

Gentry Kapolei Development began home construction on the site in September, and the first residents are expected to move in next summer.

The lot awards come at a time when the department is facing intense criticism from some lawmakers to produce housing units amid the state’s housing crisis.

Congress nearly a century ago passed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, setting aside 203,000 acres in a land trust to benefit Native Hawaiians with at least 50 percent Hawaiian ancestry through long-term leases of $1 a year for land to live, farm or ranch on. The number of eligible beneficiaries awaiting residential leases totals more than 22,000 individuals statewide, with roughly half of the wait-list applicants on Oahu.

Jobie Masagatani, DHHL’s director, has said that in general the department has transitioned from providing turnkey — or ready-to-move-into — homes and returned to a previous practice of awarding land lots with infrastructure to allow beneficiaries to build their own homes. The state Constitution, she said, lays out DHHL’s primary responsibilities as “development of home, agriculture, farm and ranch lots,” and financing loans for those lots.

The department says it awarded 35 vacant lots over the past year to beneficiaries in Waimanalo, 45 vacant lots in Upcountry Maui and 22 vacant lots in Anahola on Kauai.

The last turnkey homes DHHL awarded were in the Kakaina subdivision of Waimanalo in October 2016, according to a department spokeswoman.