About a half a century ago the state paid $5 million to acquire a prized 5,000-acre Windward Oahu parcel, stretching from the mountains to the sea, and subsequently adopted a unique approach to protect the rural area from development.

It created a “living park” and allowed nearly three dozen families to remain in Kahana Valley, eventually awarding them 65-year residential leases.

In lieu of rent, lessees at the Ahupua‘a ‘O Kahana State Park, commonly called the Kahana Valley State Park, were required to devote 25 hours monthly to interpretative programs on traditional Native Hawaiian cultural practices.

Nearly 50 years later, the living park concept is a bust, undermined by a history of mismanagement, neglect and contentious relations between Kahana residents and the state. The unique challenge of governing a residential leasehold community within a state park also has been a factor.

And the unwillingness or inability of some residents to participate in the interpretative programs or to maintain their properties — they have less than 40 years remaining on their leases — have contributed to that challenge.

One consequence: The look of the park, which should be one of the crown jewels of the state’s property portfolio, has suffered.

Portions of Kahana easily accessible to the public are marred by dilapidated structures, boarded-up buildings, broken vehicles, junk-filled yards and a boat pier in such severe disrepair it is a safety hazard.

“The mismanagement in Kahana has been colossal,” said lessee Jim Anthony, 84, who with his wife, Grace, 67, harvests taro, breadfruit, coconuts, avocado and other crops and hosts educational visits.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources, owner of the park, has not been enforcing the 25-hour monthly lease requirement, and only about eight of Ka­hana’s 34 families are complying, according to state records and interviews with residents.

The remaining families have not participated in years, owing hundreds or even thousands of hours, the records show. As of 2016, half of the 34 were in arrears of about four to 14 years each, the records indicate. Six of the families have no leases.

Lack of enforcement

DLNR, citing multiple reasons, acknowledges it is not enforcing the 25-hour lease requirement. Doing so would mean pursuing evictions — something that got the agency into hot water in 2008 before the Legislature intervened.

The department also has yet to produce a master plan for the park, underscoring what residents say is the low priority the agency places on Kahana, about an hour’s drive from the state’s political center.

A 2001 legislative study concluded that a master plan was urgently needed to successfully manage the park. In 2009, with no plan in hand, the Legislature enacted a law requiring the state to produce one through a newly formed planning council administratively attached to DLNR.

A decade later, not even a draft has been produced.

Many of the kupuna who resided in Kahana when the living park idea was adopted in 1971 have died. And the majority of current Kahana families have neither the knowledge nor interest to participate in or demonstrate Native Hawaiian cultural practices, according to a 2018 consultant’s report commissioned by the department.

The vast majority of the 5,249-acre, 8.2-square-mile park consists of unspoiled lands, and much of that is not easily accessible to the public. Among other features, Kahana has a robust watershed, historic taro patch and an ancient fishpond.

The homes are located on only about 10 acres at the front of the valley — what people see when they enter the park.

While some residences are well kept, the natural beauty of the area is tainted by unsightly properties, mainly along Kahana Valley Road, which extends less than a mile into the valley.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser last week counted close to two dozen junked vehicles along the back half of the road. Some had been idled so long that vegetation was growing from them.

Dilapidated dwellings, unkempt yards, a long-abandoned home, a couple of boarded-up buildings and two decaying open-air shelters added to a portrait of disrepair and neglect.

The blight is all the more remarkable given the unique distinction of Kahana. It is the only intact ahupuaa — mountain-to-ocean section of land — owned by the state on Oahu. Ahupuaa were critically important land divisions in ancient Hawaii, containing all the natural resources to sustain communities.

Can it be fixed?

The lack of participation in the Kahana interpretative programs and the long history of friction between the community and DLNR staff prompted the department’s parks administrator to tell a consulting company the living park concept was broken, according to the February 2018 report issued by Townscape Inc.

The company likewise concluded the idea no longer was viable.

“The question then might be: Can this broken concept be repaired?” the authors wrote.

Residents are skeptical. They blame DLNR for decades of neglect, saying parks staff never wanted to be responsible for a residential community, lacking the expertise to oversee it.

“It was as if a child born out of wedlock was left at their doorstep, and they did not want to be foster parents,” Anthony said. “So they did nothing.”

“They’re not really landlords,” added Ululani Beirne, 79, a former state legislator who has lived in the valley all her life. “They’re park keepers.”

The department disputed the notion it has never made Kahana a priority but acknowledged the living park concept is not working.

The struggle to meet the cultural component partly reflects the fact that some families, unlike the original lessees, no longer engage in traditional cultural practices at home and have jobs far from the valley so they can afford Hawaii’s high cost of living, according to DLNR.

Some lessees also resent the requirement of logging hours monthly and reporting them to DLNR. What can be counted is rather loose, lessees say, and the state doesn’t police the reporting. Still, some residents — often a generation removed from the original lessees — simply refuse to do the paperwork.

“Many families and individuals participate but do not record and submit their hours,” Parks Administrator Curt Cottrell said in written responses to Honolulu Star-Advertiser questions. “Some families are steadfast believers that as cultural practitioners they do not feel it is necessary to log their hours because cultural practice is part of their lives.”

Cottrell also expressed the department’s reluctance to resort to evictions, noting the conventional western approach to addressing landlord-tenant contract violations is “challenging to apply to generational families, and the execution of this action could result in disruption of families and create more homelessness.”

Even the Kahana Community Association, made up of lessees, has struggled with the issue, Cottrell said. “The onus is not on any one party.”

What’s needed, he added, is legislative action to remove the park designation from the land where the residents live or to revise the requirements for living there.

Hands-off management

Cottrell also acknowledged his agency has taken a hands-off approach to managing the residential area, saying his staff has neither the skills nor training to oversee it. He described the situation as “benign neglect.”

DLNR believes Kahana’s community association, as in other housing developments, is the best entity to address residential issues such as litter, according to Cottrell.

Asked why abandoned vehicles are allowed to remain in a state park, Cottrell said the cars are not abandoned but belong to residents. “While there are lease requirements, does the state have the authority to tell someone how to live or define or impose a certain lifestyle and expectation?” Cottrell wrote.

He also noted the lack of a master plan stems from Kahana’s uniqueness. Crafting such a document at other parks involves dealing only with infrastructure, but this one includes people who live there, making the task too great and complex for a community-planning process established in the 2009 legislative act, according to Cottrell.

Unable to get a plan through that process, DLNR hired Townscape to identify impediments. The company produced two reports for about $200,000, according to Cottrell.

One key concern is the residential leases, which expire in 39 years, and whether those should be changed. A bill that would have permitted the Kahana lessees to purchase the fee interest in their lots died at the Legislature this session.

The uncertainty of what will happen in 2058 has created problems for Kahana lessees, who are seeing the equity in their homes shrink with each passing year. The uncertainty also can be a disincentive to invest more money into the dwellings, even if the lessees could get loans under such circumstances.

Six Kahana families, all with homes in a flood plain, still can’t get leases because of problems related to sewage disposal. On one of those lots, a two-story home is under construction without a permit and DLNR approval, according to lessees and the agency.

There’s also the question of whether the Kahana leases should change, given the failure of the living park concept, and whether DLNR’s Parks Division or some other entity should manage the residential community.

Resolving those issues is essential before a master plan can be written, residents and DLNR say.

Symbol of neglect

Kahana residents view the severe disrepair of the boating facility as symbolic of their plight at the hands of the state.

Big chunks of the pier and adjacent parking lot are missing. Concrete barriers are strewn about, apparently knocked out of place by the surf. The parking surface is dotted with potholes large enough to cause damage to cars.

And as the facility has deteriorated, tourists have fallen or slipped, injuring themselves, according to regular users of the ramp.

“This is a disgrace,” Kahana lessee Vann Kamakaala said as he stood in the parking lot last week.

The problem is not new.

Beirne said that as a member of the Legislature in the early 1990s she unsuccessfully requested state funds to repair the pier area. “It’s getting worse and worse,” she said.

If the facilities were in Kahala, Hawaii Kai or Lanikai, fixes would have been completed years ago, the Kahana residents claim.

“It would have taken just one phone call,” Anthony said.

But because Kahana residents tend to be from the lower end of the socio-economic scale, have little political influence and are far from Honolulu’s power center, their concerns get little attention, Anthony and others said.

DLNR told the Star-Advertiser, however, that repairs are on the way.

Planning is being done to install concrete and asphalt paving in the parking lot and to fix a portion of a damaged rock revetment, according to DLNR. Construction on the $700,000 project will begin at the earliest in September.

The department also is working with state Sen. Gil Riviere, whose district includes Kahana, to get money from the Legislature to fix the boat ramp. About $1.3 million for that project is in the bill for state capital improvement projects, according to Riviere.

Some successes

Cottrell maintains that the traditional park elements in Kahana — the campgrounds, restrooms and the like — are managed well by his staff.

He also said participation by outside groups in staff-conducted interpretive programs at the park has grown exponentially over the past 10 years, and some Kahana residents have been involved in those.

May Au, 88, who raised her kids in Kahana in the 1960s and ’70s, moved away and then moved back in 2008, said she meets with college groups at the visitors center to explain Hawaiian history and hand out items crafted by residents.

But many of Kahana’s younger people don’t have time for cultural activities because they have to work during the day to support their families, Au said. “Unfortunately, the knowledge has not been passed down,” she added. “There’s just a handful of us trying to keep it going.”

How long they can keep doing that is uncertain.

But residents and DLNR agree changes must be made because the living park concept is not working as the original planners envisioned.

With so much uncertainty ahead, valley residents are uneasy.

“People’s lives are at stake,” Cottrell said, “and initiating any change from the status quo — while imperfect — can be daunting for families who just want to live their lives now.”