Today the money trail leads to the roof of the Pohulani Elderly Housing building on Queen Street in Kaka'ako.

The roof has been leaking since 2004, when a unit on the top floor had to be vacated.

The next year, residents of the other 11 units on the 26th floor had to clear out, too. That's 12 units — six studios and six one-bedrooms — that have been empty for two to three years.

Monthly rents at Pohulani range from $615 for a studio to $745 for a one-bedroom unit. It's an "affordable" housing project and tenants must meet certain age and income criteria. There are long lists of applicants waiting to move in: 103 names on the studio list and 121 on the one-bedroom list. The longest wait has been since March 2005.

Upkeep and maintenance of the building is the responsibility of a state agency, the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp. Its offices are in a commercial annex of the Pohulani complex.

In October 2004, the then-head of the housing agency (it had a different name and different director back then) selected a consultant to plan the roof repair job. The consultant, Richard Matsunaga and Associates, wasn't given the go-ahead to start work until June 2005.

That planning contract has cost $411,922 so far and was supposed to run from June 2005 through last month. It includes oversight of the actual construction work, but that hasn't started yet so the Matsunaga contract is expected to be extended through February 2008, state officials said last week.

The construction contract was awarded last month to Color Dynamics Inc. The price: $2.855 million.

Work isn't scheduled to begin at Pohulani until next month and is supposed to be finished in another year.

That's four years after the leak problems started.

In addition to replacement of the roof, the contract calls for repair of extensive water damage to the 12 units and common areas of the top floor, and replacement of the building's cooling tower.

One senior citizen on the Pohulani waiting list said, "It's just completely ridiculous that it's taking so long and is so expensive to fix the roof." The senior didn't want to be named because of fear of retaliation. "I've been waiting a long time. I don't know how many years I have left to get in there."

A historical note: After the Pohulani building and commercial annex were finished in 1992, the state spent $1.3 million to lease office space there for two years. The space was never occupied because two agencies that were going to move in changed their plans.

If you know that a particular money trail will lead to boondoggle, excessive spending or white elephants, reach Jim Dooley at 535-2447 or jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com