Kanahele group seeks follow-up on loan goal

Advertiser Staff

A group pressing Bank of America to provide $150 million in mortgage loans promised to Native Hawaiians is asking federal attorneys to investigate why that commitment has fallen short.

Pu'uhonua "Bumpy" Kanahele, a longtime Hawaiian activist and head of a nonprofit organization called Aloha First, also said yesterday that Bank Aloha — the proposed Hawaiian-controlled lending institution that would help meet this commitment — has never materialized.

In 1994, Aloha First was part of the Hawaii Fair Lending Coalition, a group that charged Bank of America with discriminatory lending practices toward customers of Hawaiian and Filipino ancestry. A federal hearing on the complaint led the bank — then negotiating its merger with Liberty Bank — to settle by making the lending commitment.

Very few loans had been made by the federally mandated 1998 deadline, Kanahele said.

A nonprofit group called Hawaiian Community Assets Inc. was formed, and three years ago applied to become the first Native Hawaiian-controlled and -operated community development financial institution that could deliver those loans. Bank Aloha was never chartered, he said.

A spokesman for Hawaiian Community Assets could not be reached for comment yesterday.