Hawaiian Home Lands resumes eviction option

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawaiian Home Lands officials have quietly resumed evicting delinquent Hawaiian homesteaders to try and recoup some $19 million in loans — money the department says it needs to place more Hawaiians into homes.

The department informally halted evictions in 1996 after sheriff's deputies and Home Lands officials served eviction papers on Hilbert C.K. "Kahale" Smith. Smith stunned officials when he suddenly set his Kaua'i homestead ablaze, killing himself.

"Nobody in the department wanted to go through that experience again," said Ray Soon, chairman of the Hawaiian Homes Commission. "However, our delinquency rate shot up. The threat of an eviction wasn't apparent any more. People started saying, 'Why should I pay my mortgage if nothing's going to happen?' "

So, two years ago, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands began the first of four new evictions. Twelve more are pending today, leading to accusations that state officials are taking away Hawaiians' birthright.

"Where do our Hawaiians go when we've been evicted?" asked Keali'i Gora, one of the founders of the Coalition to Stop All Evictions on Hawaiian Home Lands that formed after Smith died. "This is our land. We have no other place to go. Our people are going to be houseless in our own homelands. ... If the state and federal governments can't find solutions, then they should return the lands to the Hawaiian people so we can administer the land for ourselves."

The concerns clearly sting Soon. He is among the 19,000 people with more than 50 percent Hawaiian blood who are on the Home Lands waiting list.

"They say we're throwing Hawaiians off of the land," Soon said. "We're really in the business of putting people on the land, not taking them off. But people have to meet their obligations. They made a promise to pay and that's a very Hawaiian thing. You make a promise, you keep it."

The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands was formed 80 years ago to place eligible Hawaiians on 203,500 acres of land. In its history, the department had evicted fewer than a dozen homesteaders before Smith.

Monthly mortgages range from $90 a month to more than $800. But delinquent payments have plagued the department for decades. One major audit in 1979 said the department suffered from a "chronic" problem of delinquent payments.

Today the department lists 519 homesteaders who are delinquent on $19 million in loans. The delinquent payments range from 30 days to five years, said Francis Apoliona, administrator of the department's information and community relations office.

Of the 12 pending evictions, the longest has been overdue since October 1997 and is $29,500 behind in payments on a loan balance of $72,000. The others range from $22,000 to $29,000 in back payments.

All of the overdue loans combined represent more than 40 percent of the nearly $44 million the department has available to help homesteaders.

The delinquent payments won't sink the loan program at this point, Apoliona said.

"It won't be a problem if we can keep it around 40 percent," Apoliona said. "If it gets up to 60, 70, 80 percent, we may have a problem."

Waiting list affected

But delinquent payments affect the amount of money available for other Hawaiians, Soon said, and ultimately the department's ability to make a dent on the waiting list.

"If one family chooses not to meet their obligation, they end up hurting other Hawaiian families," Soon said. "If they don't pay back the loan, that just means we have that much less money to help someone else."

Hawaiian Home Lands officials consider their program "the lender of last resort," Apoliona said. "Typically these people are unable to secure a loan from outside financial entities and the department is their only hope of either building a home or making repairs to their existing homes."

Private lenders account for $160 million of the more than $200 million available for homeland loans and mortgages. And they've had far better success in getting homesteaders to pay, Soon said.

The delinquency rate for private lenders is only 2 percent, Soon said, because they aren't afraid to foreclose or evict homesteaders who fall behind.

Smith's eviction and death on the Anahola Homestead highlighted some of the worst problems of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands at the time: poor housing, disagreements over repairs, frustration

on both sides, 18 months of disputed payments and an unhappy ending.

Smith was memorialized as a martyr for Hawaiian causes. He was mentioned reverently in Hawaiian ceremonies as a "fallen hero."

Smith's neighbor and friend on Kaua'i, John "Butch" Kekahu Jr., remains angry with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands over the construction and repairs on his own 24-year-old house.

"I have the same complaints as all 64 homes," he said.

Evictions will only make life worse for many Hawaiians who waited years for a homestead, Kekahu said.

"Things are really going to get bad with the economy and lack of jobs," he said.

The department did not change its policy of evicting delinquent homesteaders after Smith died. But under then-chairman Kali Watson, it also made no plans for evictions.

Then in 1999, the department made the first of four evictions, on Ko'olina Street, in Wai'anae. And within weeks, Soon said, Wai'anae Home Lands residents who had been in default started paying their mortgages.

Loans restructured

Eviction is hardly the department's preferred — or first — option, Soon said.

Home Lands officials have worked with most of the delinquent homesteaders to restructure their loans and put them on a new payment schedule, he said. They won't lower interest rates or reduce monthly payments by much, however, because Soon does not want delinquency to serve as an incentive to get lower payments.

"I know that (Hawaiian Home Lands) has always made exceptions, extensions and sought ways to reduce the payments, things like that," said Paul Richards, president of the Wai-

manalo Hawaiian Homes Association. "The lessee realizes that they have an obligation to pay for the loan."

The Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. regularly sues the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands over a variety of issues but is also sympathetic to the problem before the department's commission.

"It appears to us that some of the commissioners are really sensitive to trying to keep the people as much as possible on the land," said attorney Alan Murakami. "Sometimes it's inevitable. The squeeze, unfortunately, is both the economy and the fact that Hawaiians are not the top income earners historically."

Tony Sang, who has been with the Waimanalo Hawaiian Homes Association for 33 years, said: "The department bends backwards trying to assist people."

And Sang, who has a $700 monthly mortgage for a four-bedroom house, doesn't have much sympathy for people who simply refuse to pay.

"I'm obligated to take care of my mortgage," he said. "Why should they get a free ride?"

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.