Luxury care home in works

By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer

KANE'OHE — A Kane'ohe couple plans to open a luxury care home in the community and hopes to build at least nine more throughout O'ahu.

Elizabeth and Tom Slavens are building a 5,500-square-foot home on William Henry Road known as Kina Ole Estate, using such finishes as marble and granite.

The home will accommodate eight clients on a lower level and two healthcare providers upstairs. Each client will have a 13-foot-by-15-foot bedroom and a private bath. The cost will be about $5,000 a month.

The house should be finished next month and open in November.

Elizabeth Slavens said Kane'ohe was chosen because it doesn't have this caliber of care home.

"This is the kind of place that people would say, 'I would like my parents to live (here),'" Slavens said. "We want to give them a better quality of life."

The care will include daily activities, such as exercise, outings, visits to schools to read to children or having children visit the home, she said.

With the senior population in Hawai'i growing at a rate two to three times faster than on the Mainland, having appropriate and affordable accommodations for them has become a concern, said Cullen Hayashida, president of Assisted Living Options Hawai'i, a nonprofit group that promotes and advocates for the development of assisted living facilities.

Hawai'i has about about 500 care homes, and while Kina Ole Estate is on the high end of the market, it does fill a need, said Hayashida. At the other end of the spectrum are mom-and-pop businesses that take in up to five people and charge about $2,000 a month, he said.

There are about 160,000 seniors in Hawai'i who are 65 years or older — 14 percent of the population — said Hayashida, who is also state director for elderly care development. He also teaches a social science course about long-term care at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa for the Social Science Research Institute.

"We are looking at a shortage, and we do need more facilities," Hayashida said. "Some people are willing to pay for the niceties, and it's good, but we also need to have more facilities that are affordable for the vast bulk of Hawai'i's population."

For more information about Kina Ole Estate, call Elizabeth Slavens at 371-0948.

Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com or 234-5266.