Hawaiian Homes project teams with Habitat charity
By Scott Ishikawa
Advertiser Staff Writer
Honolulu Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit group that helps lower-income families build and own homes on O'ahu, is joining with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to build 45 homes for Native Hawaiian families in a Kapolei subdivision starting this fall.
The planned subdivision, along Kapolei Parkway across from Kapolei High School, is Habitat's biggest project yet, and will more than double the number of homes the organization has built since 1988.
The project is part of the 226-home Department of Hawaiian Home Lands Malu'ohai subdivision, which already includes 111 commercially built homes and 70 rent-to-own units.
It will be the department's first self-help housing project on O'ahu done on a grand scale, according to spokesman Francis Apoliona.
Groundwork begins in September, with families building their own homes in November.
Construction is expected to last 18 months.
After the homes are built, each family will be able to purchase a three-bedroom, two-bath unit for $70,000 through an affordable mortgage plan, with payments of about $400 a month. Homeowners will lease the land from the department for $1 a year for 99 years.
The project targets Hawaiian families that earn a maximum of 80 percent of the median income.
Qualified families will be awarded homes based on their ranking on the waiting list for Hawaiians seeking homesteads. Habitat for Humanity is narrowing 350 Hawaiian applicants down to 45.
Apoliona said the department's O'ahu waiting list of applicants has grown to 7,200 since the success of its recent housing projects in Papakolea and the other parts of the Kapolei's Malu'ohai subdivision.
"With these new housing projects, such as in Kapolei, we're trying to build communities now rather than houses here and there, so we're seeing a wide cross-section of Hawaiians moving in, from upper class to working class," he said.
"Owning a home is already an accomplishment," said Jose Villa, Honolulu Habitat for Humanity's executive director, "but for our portion of the project, you're going to have homeowners building each other's homes, which I think is something the neighborhood can really take pride in."
Habitat for Humanity has built only a couple of homes per year on limited money, so Villa said there were many skeptics when the organization successfully applied for the self-help housing portion of Village Six in the Villages of Kapolei.
"We had to think out of the box to take on this project," Villa said.
To make up for lack of financial support needed for large-scale building, Habitat for Humanity
became partners with Menehune Development Corp., a Big Islandibased developer. Brought in as mortgage lenders were the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development branch, North American Mortgage (representing FHA) and the U.S. Veterans Administration.
Aside from meeting income standards, the normal "sweat equity" requirement to own a Habitat home is 500 hours of volunteer construction, half the time on the applicant's home, and the other half on other Habitat housing projects.
The Kapolei self-help project will be done slightly different, Villa said, with home building handled in segments.
The families will be divided into four huis, or co-ops, of 11 or 12 families each. All families within each hui will work on all 11 homes.
"No one will be allowed into their homes until all the homes in the particular hui are completed," he said. "We hope that is a motivation as well to complete the homes."
Habitat for Humanity International was created in 1976 and has built 140,000 homes worldwide.
The O'ahu affiliate, Honolulu Habitat for Humanity, was formed in 1988 by a group of clergy and lay people concerned with problems of substandard housing and homelessness in Hawai'i.
Reach Scott Ishikawa at sishikawa@honolululadvertiser.com or 535-2429.
