Waiahole Valley preservation pact frays as state considers remedies to homestead issues

No lookouts have been posted, no roads have been blocked and no warning siren has been rigged in a tree. But a Windward Oahu community has gone on alert again.

Four decades ago, Waiahole Valley residents, including farmers, fought a landowner’s effort to evict them and turn their rural community and neighboring Waikane Valley into a “new city.” The state helped save the residents in 1977 by taking the land they leased out of private hands and allowing them to benefit from cheap, taxpayer-subsidized rent and water.

Now many of those same residents fear their livelihoods and lifestyle are being threatened once again as the state moves to address problems with their homesteads.

“If we have to, we still going fight,” declared 73-year-old Pat Royos, a second-generation Waiahole resident.

Her husband, Joe, 80, added: “We want to protect this valley for future generations.”

State officials say they also want to preserve the valley for existing and future residents as a rural place with affordable housing and farming. But the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp., the agency that serves as landlord to about 100 households there, wants to address problems that include tenants who are delinquent on rent or no longer farm on lots where it’s required.

Other issues include cesspools that by law need to be replaced, an inadequate water system, abandoned lots and operating expenses that exceed tenant payments by $150,000 to $250,000 a year.

HHFDC and consultant SMS Research and Marketing Serv­ices recently produced a strategic plan that lays out a “road map” to address the issues. SMS Chairman Hersh Singer said the firm spent about 18 months gathering community input through surveys, meetings and presentations.

“This plan is really a community-based plan,” he told HHFDC’s board recently.

Yet many residents are concerned about details to come, including expected changes in rent and water fees. They worry that decisions could lead to the same situation they fought against with fervor all those years ago: evictions.

DEVELOPMENT PROTESTS

Land in Waiahole and Waikane once largely held by families was bought up by Lincoln “Link” Loy McCandless, a mainland oil businessman who followed two brothers to Hawaii in 1882. McCandless amassed wealth drilling water wells plus a tunnel through the Koolau mountains to deliver water from Waiahole to sugar plantations on the drier side of the island.

In 1974, his daughter and heir, Elizabeth Loy McCandless Marks, unsuccessfully petitioned the state Land Use Commission to urbanize 1,337 acres of agricultural land in Waiahole and Waikane for development of 6,700 homes.

Local developer Joe Pao emerged as the project’s leader after buying the Waikane land with an option for the Waiahole side. Pao described his plan as a “new city” that would provide affordable homes for the roughly 100 households in Waiahole, as well as housing for others and land for farming.

Valley residents, city planners and state leaders opposed the project, but Pao vowed to re-seek LUC approval, and if that failed, he said he would pursue an alternative plan to subdivide the land into 1,000 house lots under lax land-use rules for farmland still in place today.

“It would be a dirty shame to take this beautiful land and put it into 2-acre-plus agricultural house lots in accordance with the existing zoning,” he said in a 1975 article in the Honolulu Advertiser.

Marks, meanwhile, raised rents for tenants, who refused the hikes and fought eviction proceedings that simmered in court for three years.

Tenants vowed not to be displaced and rallied supporters to their cause with protests outside Marks’ homes in Nuuanu and Black Point, and at financial institutions, Honolulu Hale, construction union offices, the University of Hawaii and other places.

Pat Royos, whose father farmed bananas in Waiahole, recalled how residents strategized at the Waiahole Poi Factory, rigged a warning siren in an avocado tree, communicated via citizens-band radio and posted lookouts for any authorities sent to remove them from their homes.

One day in 1977, a sheriff sent to deliver eviction orders from a judge was met by more than 200 residents and supporters who blocked Waiahole Valley Road and chanted slogans that included, “Hell no, we ain’t moving.”

Led by Bobby Fernandez, who still lives across from Royos, tenants burned eviction orders in the street. The next night, a group blocked Kamehameha Highway in two places after suspecting police were en route to carry out the evictions.

Second-generation Waiahole resident Hannah Salas, 68, recalled how some protesters learned how to use guns in the often-tense resistance movement.

“I think we were willing to die,” she said.

Then-Gov. George Ariyo­shi ended the conflict when, almost two months after the blockades, he announced the state had reached a deal to buy the Waiahole land covering 795 acres from Marks for $6 million.

RELUCTANT NEW LANDLORD

Residents got to stay, but it took two decades to create long-term leases between HHFDC’s predecessor and about 100 tenants.

The 55-year leases signed in 1998 run to 2053 and can be extended to 2073 if most tenants endorse an extension.

Rent hasn’t changed since 1998. Rates are $540 a year for an average half-acre house lot and $100 per acre a year for farmland.

The agency said rents represent 18 percent of appraised fair-market prices, meaning that market rents are about five times higher.

Leases allow HHFDC to update rental rates in 2023.

Before that happens, the agency wants to address problems it said include 15 tenants who are delinquent on rent and some farm lessees who no longer farm.

Another issue is a requirement to replace cesspools by 2050, which will cost an estimated $25,000 for each lot. There’s also a need to upgrade the potable water system for an estimated $10 million, which would follow $11 million the state spent in past decades on infrastructure improvements in the valley.

COMMUNITY LAND TRUST

HHFDC said no process exists to lease 10 residential lots and three farm lots that are vacant. The strategic plan recommends building and leasing affordable homes on the 10 lots, but notes one challenge is that some community members don’t want outsiders moving in, even though excluding new residents is illegal under federal fair housing laws.

Other plan suggestions include allowing subleasing by tenants who no longer farm and giving tenants an option to pay more for restructured leases that eliminate current issues preventing them from obtaining conventional mortgage loans.

The plan also suggests that ownership of the valley might be better for a nonprofit community land trust.

Tenants like some plan ideas, but fear expected higher rent and water costs.

“I am really concerned,” said Maxine Prudencio. “I’m a small farmer.”

Prudencio, 74, grew up in the valley on her parents’ livestock farm. Now she grows ti leaves on 2 acres with mostly volunteer labor and lives in a home built by Habitat for Humanity.

“I’m going to fight for whatever I have to fight for because this property, my parents worked hard to be here,” she said.

Norman Sadoyama, 70, followed his father into farming in the valley and grows sweet potatoes, mountain yams, taro, peanuts and papaya on 6 acres. He said he constantly battles feral pigs and chickens eating his crops and recently had to plow under a few fields of young papaya trees because of too much rain.

“We up against all kinds of adversities,” he said.

Holding up some freshly unearthed sweet potatoes with skins cracked from excessive rain, he added: “I can’t even pay my worker with what comes out of this.”

HHFDC, which notes that 65 percent of valley households earn below Honolulu’s median income, stressed at a board meeting earlier this month that it has no timetable for increasing tenant fees. The agency also emphasized that its mission is to help produce and preserve affordable housing.

Paul Zweng, a member and spokesman of the Waiahole-Waikane Community Association, urged the agency’s board to delay a decision on whether to approve the strategic plan.

“There are a number of negative aspects that we think will really harm this community and put its long-term existence into jeopardy,” he told the board as several residents displayed envelopes with the Hawaiian word “‘a‘ole,” meaning “no.”

After deliberations that included board member Mike McCartney showing a video clip on his phone of Fernandez leading a 1977 demonstration, the board agreed to delay a decision for three months so residents can offer their own suggestions to the plan that board members hope will result in support from a community well known for its dissidence.