Posted on: Friday, November 30, 2001

Island Voices
This news deserved front-page coverage

By The Rev. Mike Young
Minister of First Unitarian Church of Honolulu

Most of the time, a dedication of the renovation of a public housing project would merit a back-page rewrite of the governor's press release.

Maybe.

The one that happened Wednesday at the Kalihi Valley Homes merited trumpets, a front-page story and perhaps even an editorial.

The event celebrated was the opposite of everything that is business-as-usual in Hawai'i politics. The project was slated for demolition. Nowhere else for the residents? Too bad.

Enter a Catholic priest and a group of his members interviewing parishioners who lived in Kalihi Valley Homes. It was part of the process of Our Lady of the Mount Church joining a new organization called FACE (Faith Action for Community Equity), a faith-based community organizing project.

What they saw and heard appalled them. FACE, whose issues come from just such conversations, went to the housing authority.

"Go away," they were told. "We only talk to the residents association."

So FACE went to the residents association.

"They pay no attention to us. Anyone who complains is shortly on the street," the residents association said.

So, FACE helped them organize the residents, including their own one-on-one conversations — not easy with six different languages in the project. And Kalihi Valley Homes joined FACE as the only member organization that is not a religious congregation.

Back to the housing authority.

It took many confrontations, much negotiating, some recruiting of reluctant legislators, and the full weight of FACE's 24 congregations and 40,000 members.

It also took five years.

But there they are: spiffy, modern, efficient apartments of which Kalihi Valley Homes residents are justly proud. Drive up the Likelike and look 'ewa. This is Kalihi? Yes! And they did it.

Not the governor, not the housing authority, not the legislators, who took their obligatory bows Wednesday.

No, Kalihi Valley Homes residents fought them all to a standstill and made it happen.

That's the story that didn't make the paper or the nightly news.

But it should have. It was truly "Man bites dog!"