Editorial: Have solid plan for Department of Hawaiian Home Lands’ funds

The century-long saga of the Hawaiian Homes Act is one of failure to deliver on a promise the federal government made to Native Hawaiians, specifically a shrinking class of beneficiaries who are of half or more native descent.

It’s more than a mere promise, of course. Under law, lands were put in trust for the indigenous people of Hawaii to enable homesteading, in order to put Hawaiians on the land and stave off their financial ruin and social decline.

Did it work? Surely not, largely because so much of that mission has been unfulfilled, with tens of thousands of beneficiaries languishing on the waiting list. Many died before they could receive their land lease.

So there is logic — an ethical imperative, really — behind the state Legislature’s drive to devote $600 million, an enormous share of the state’s budget surplus, to retiring as much of the waiting list as possible.

The chief reason is the state’s sheer obligation to fulfill the commitment, but it also addresses the state’s overall deficit in affordable housing by helping to put Hawaiians in homes. It also could underwrite a program to address a chronic problem that has kept many beneficiaries from accepting a lease, once offered: financial illiteracy.

There have been many families who apply, and are granted, the 99-year land lease the homesteading program provides. But then they find themselves unable to qualify for financing the mortgage for the house built on the lot. Eliminating this gap, working with beneficiaries to ready them to be leaseholders, must be Job 1 if such a major outlay is to have the hoped-for result.

Shameful as it is, the fact of Native Hawaiians disproportionately figuring in the islands’ homeless population underscores how far short of the goal the state has fallen.

In a story published Friday in a partnership between the nonprofit ProPublica and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, staff writer Rob Perez cited a 2020 survey of the houseless. Of the estimated 1,200 unsheltered homeless on Oahu, 1 in 5 was eligible for the Hawaiian homesteading program, and 7% were on the wait list.

And if these people can be taken off the rolls of the homeless, or moved into more stable housing than they now occupy, that will lessen the deficit to be met with other housing initiative for the general population.

But there is concern about this proposal. Big concern. The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) has a historically poor record of moving people off the list, and if it is to succeed this time, it will need a sharp strategic plan and independent, competent oversight.

As the 2022 session opened on Wednesday, House Speaker Scott Saiki announced what he called historic legislation to appropriate the hundreds of millions of dollars, which amount to more than seven times what the Legislature set aside for DHHL for construction in the 2021 budget.

This one-time infusion is comparable to the settlement reached in 1995 after a court challenge over lands taken from the homesteading trust in the past. From its inception, Hawaiian Homes has been a program that was land-rich but cash-poor, and much of the acreage was in remote locations that required infrastructure before homes could be developed.

However, even that settlement, also for $600 million, did not solve the problem. The funds allowed DHHL to develop more than 4,000 new homestead lots — roughly half the total the agency provided over the past century.

That’s not nearly enough progress, given the 28,000 applicants still waiting.

State Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, one of the chief advocates for the plan, has said budgetary surplus years are rare, and lawmakers need to make the best use of them that they can. He’s right, of course, but there are many other competing needs that the state confronts, especially after two years of a punishing COVID-19 pandemic.

So it’s not a foregone conclusion that the current plan will be enacted with that amount of money — again, $600 million — and DHHL will have to do much better this time with whatever sum received.

There is some planning already underway, and some interesting pilot projects that could be expanded. One is an initiative to help beneficiaries with down payments to buy homes not on trust lands. Other out-of-the-box programs in recent years have included development of rental projects, to provide more immediate help to beneficiaries.

However, before the state commits to a financial package even close to this magnitude, the public will need details and strong assurances that it will be spent strategically. DHHL has been known to produce homes above the price point that its own beneficiaries can afford, and that kind of bungling can’t be tolerated.

Ideally, this would be an effort managed with oversight from a court-appointed master, someone who would hold the department to strict benchmarks — and someone who is not buffeted by political winds.

It’s an election year, and already those winds are blowing. Lawmakers must make sure the plans are tied down tightly, if this state is finally to do right by Hawaiian Homes beneficiaries.