Council scraps bill to repeal condo law

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff writer

Despite a City Council vote yesterday that halted an effort to repeal the city's condo-conversion ordinance, Chairman John DeSoto said he wants to keep the issue alive in the final 2 1/2 months of this council's term in office.

Council members voted 5-4 to kill Bill 82, introduced by DeSoto to repeal the 10-year-old city ordinance that gives owner-occupants of leasehold condominiums the power to force landowners to sell the property.

It was a rare instance in which the council killed a bill upon introduction, before it could be assigned to a committee for public hearing.

While DeSoto criticized council members for denying the public the opportunity to discuss the issue further in committee, he said that rather than reintroduce the bill, he will work with Councilman John Henry Felix to draft a resolution to have the council take another look at the ordinance and whether it should be amended.

The law that allows the city to condemn the property under leasehold condominium units with a petition by at least half the owner-occupants has galvanized community members on both sides of the issue, as evidenced yesterday when about 60 people testified for or against the bill to repeal the ordinance.

Carole Manuwa, a leasehold condominium owner, said that buying a leasehold condo was a way for people without much cash to move up out of the rental market.

"We're not rich people. Leasehold was the only way to start (home ownership)," she said. "It was our hope and dream that one day we would have enough money to negotiate a fair price for the fee (title to the land)."

She urged the council to not repeal the law that gave 10,000 people hope that they would be able to eventually buy the fee interest in the land under their leasehold condos.

But Phyllis Zerbe of the Small Landowners Association said mandatory leasehold conversion means that landowners are forced to sell their property to lessees under false presences.

"Everyone knows there was never an option to buy the land," she said. "As a result (of leasehold conversion), we have been victimized, harassed, threatened and put through much anguish and pain over this issue for many, many years."

Felix has been the City Council's leading proponent for leasehold reform and introduced Bill 53, which was killed last week following protests by Hawaiians backed by the Queen Lili'uokalani Trust.

Felix said yesterday, "It is the right thing to do to file (kill) this bill because to allow Bill 82 to linger would be to allow false hope as well as fears as far as those opposed and those for."

Explaining why the council would vote down the bill instead of allowing it to advance, as would typically happen, Councilman Duke Bainum said: "If you pass this out in the first reading, then you are saying, 'I want to kill leasehold reform.'"

In addition to Felix and Bainum, council members who voted yesterday to kill the repeal bill were Steve Holmes, Gary Okino and Jon Yoshimura.