 Aloha and welcome to Talk Story with John Wahee. Here we are another week and another interesting guest. With us this afternoon I have Ka'el Kealoha Lindsay, right? And he is the, I guess the senior aide, the chief of staff. Yeah, you can say that. I'm the honcho for Representative Jean Ward and in the Hawaii State Legislature. So welcome, Ka'el. We have an exciting program for all of you today and Ka'el is going to help talk me through and the name of our program today is Broken Promises, the DHHL story. Now most of us, all or many of us that are native Hawaiians have over the years been disappointed. I would use the word disappointed with the progress that Prince Kohio's legacy is made for its people. Prince Kohio, as you know, as we all know, started the Hawaiian Homes program in the state of Hawaii for the betterment of native Hawaiians. Now, but about, I said about two years ago, would it be about two years ago? Yeah. Yeah, just a little background. For two years ago, I got a pamphlet from your boss, Jean Ward, and it was called Broken Promises. And it was really a listing of the problems of the Hawaiian homestead program. And so it obviously piqued my interest for a number of reasons. Before we begin, welcome. Thank you. It's good to be here. And I thought I gave a little longer introduction than normal. But I'm so interested in your initiative for several, from a number of different reasons. But first of all, tell us about how this all got started. Why, you know, why would Jean Ward, who is actually the minority leader, isn't it? The minority leader in a Senate, I mean, in a House of Representatives, in a legislature totally dominated by Democrats, reach out and take on this particular subject. I mean, how did it all begin? I guess we can start with a little bit of back owner Rep Ward. He was a Peace Corps volunteer, I think in the late 60s. And then later on, was a country director in East Timor. And in between that time, he got his PhD from the East West Center, and it was on Native Hawaiians in business. And so his partner was Dr. George Kanahele. He was a very famous icon, really, in the Hawaiian community. Yeah. And he always says, you know, he was about 10 feet away when Dr. Kanahele was writing Kukanaka. So the Native Hawaiian issues has always been, I think, near and dear to him, just with his interest in sort of Indigenous affairs and, you know, international affairs as well. But he also seemed to have begun this initiative when he hired a Kaaheel, I mean, you know, don't you think there's some relationship to that? What's funny is I actually, so he started doing, we interviewed 18 people for the study, and he started the interview process actually a year before I started with him. Okay. And so come beginning of 2018, I come on board, and it just so happens that that issue comes up. And for those of you who don't know, Prince Kaaheel was also the Republican delegate to Congress for Hawaii. Congress, in fact, he was, yeah, the major Republican. What a lot of people don't know is Prince Kaaheel actually kicked up the whole idea of the Republican Party, made it very popular with people. But his brother, David, born in the Kaaheel, was actually the founder of the Democratic Party. I know. Yeah. So this is a real family affair in Hawaii. Okay, let's get to Hawaiian Homes. Kaaheel establishes the Hawaiian Homes program. Representative Ward actually began before you got on with this study. Now, he interviewed a cross-section of people. Right here on this brochure there is 618, at least 18 of the people that were interviewed. And this is just a cross-section of Hawaii. These are not the standard bears of the Republican Party. Some of them are, some of them are very prominent, but most of them are business people and a pretty good cross-section of Hawaii. Right. And it was, the intention behind it was to sort of get a fact-finding study. You know, we didn't want this to be a partisan piece one way or another. We're not laying blame towards any one person, any administration for what happened with the program. And so what Rep Ward did is he had his staff at the time interview, you know, various OHA trustees, I think most of the living former directors and even the current director and deputy director of DHHL. He interviewed them on the condition of anonymity. You know, we didn't want any personalities or anything to come out just to allow them to be candid about the program, the department, and their tenure. And so there's developers, OHA trustees, just to get a holistic picture of DHHL, what went wrong, and then what can be done in the future. So what were the problems that the study identified? And, you know, what were some of the proposed solutions? Sure. One of the biggest things was obviously, you know, the Department of Wine Homelands has 203,000 acres of land. And it always seems like there's never enough money to build on those projects. And so, you know, with 27,000 people on the wait list, and I believe there's about 33,000 potential applicants who would qualify who haven't yet. Well, that's a lot of people. And actually, before we get on with our main subject, you know, that statistic is in some respects actually kind of uplifting in the sense that 33,000 half-Hawaiians or more in this day and age is almost unbelievable back in 1920. I mean, 1920, people expected Native Hawaiians eventually to not be around, at least not anybody would have half blood or more. And so we have 21,000, you say? 27,000. 27,000 on the waiting list, 33,000 additional potential applicants who haven't applied yet. So that's like what? That's like over 60,000 people who are half Hawaiian or better. We really need this program. And the good part, the good news is the population is growing. The bad news is the population is growing. So how do we do it? So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but what are some of the problems? Sure. So the main one is, you know, land-rich cash-poor. And so, you know, there's never enough funding, I believe, in a recent request from the Department for a federal grant. I believe if they were trying to house every person on the wait list with an average of $350,000 to build a turnkey home, what they would need is about ten and a half billion dollars to just fund them. Yeah. Wow. And that's assuming we can even get that much from the federal and then not counting any sort of repairs to infrastructure. I think that was an additional 450 million. And so we have, you know, this big problem and it seems like there's never enough time or never enough money to house these folks. But is there enough land? There is definitely enough land. The DHHL land typically isn't from my understanding the best, you know, land for residences, but it's available. And just to be able to get more money into the program and manage it a little better would help us to at least chip away on that. Okay. So the number one problem appears to have been just not enough resources to carry out its mission. With any others that you might have identified, I guess management over the years, there's been some problems with management. How about prioritization? Did the state always prioritize this program like it ought to? I don't think so, especially obviously with the Nelson case. I believe in 2012 is when they started that. And it got to a point where beneficiaries had to sue the state just to get what they believed was sufficient funding to keep the lights on. And eventually, they came up with the figure. I believe it was 21 or 28 million just for operating costs. And the state appealed. And so, you know, you're still kind of in that cycle of, okay, we have this program. It's been around for over 100 years. The responsibility was transferred to the state in 1959. But we still haven't been able to, you know, really put this as a priority. And I believe even last year, the Governor Ege had mentioned that this was the most money appropriated to DHHL for administrative costs. And so given all of that time that we've had the program in 2018 is where we've reached. Okay. So now you find out that, and the crucial, the critical issue is resources. And so what happens next? I mean, you have the study, it identifies this. It points out the deficiencies of the program. And it's got a great title, by the way, because it is a promise. And it's got a great picture of Cuyil. So if you folks ever see this line around, take advantage of it. It's actually a very easy read. I mean, it's made so that it can be quickly read and convey information. So anyway, you have this. What happened next? I mean, what's the next step? So in addition to the written study, we also last year hired a videographer to sort of encapsulate these ideas into a film. So there's an eight-minute short film and a 26-minute documentary featuring former trustee Oz Stender, trustee Peter Apol, and Mr. Peter Savio of Savio Realty, in addition to Rep Ward. And so it just sort of gave the overview of the problem, the history, and then solutions. Okay, so we're going to get back into the solutions in a little while. But so you do this video, you do all of this. I mean, you take it out to the community. What was that? And so once the video is finished, we waited until July 9, 2018, to debut the film and the written study. And so July 9 was when the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act was passed as amended in 1921. And so we wanted that to be sort of a symbolic release. We had a lot of OHA trustees show up. Even Bumpy Conaheli was there. And so after the showing of the film, we were grateful enough to have a full, big conference room in the Capitol, full of people to watch the movie. And I just have a discussion afterward. What can be done next? What can the people who were involved and who want to be involved take actionable steps forward to fulfill a promise? Yeah, because obviously this study wasn't done just to add another study to the stack of studies about government. So I understand that this was actually done as an action piece, that it was, you know, from this effort, something hopefully good would happen, right? So you named three people, Oz Stenda, who was a former Bishop of State trustee or Kamehameha Schools trustee, who's a former OHA trustee. And I actually pretty long time advocate of Hawaiian issues in Hawaii. Peter Apo, who was OHA trustee for many years, and also pretty much a Hawaiian activist. But you also mentioned Peter Savio. Now, what is Savio got to do with any of this stuff? What's interesting there, I guess two things about Mr. Savio. On the one hand, he is the biggest private affordable housing provider in the state. He doesn't take any state funds. He always goes above and beyond to help his tenants to move into home ownership. Obviously, we're stuck in a rental cycle. So he's not funded by any government funds? No, no. So what he does is he, like I said, goes above and beyond with his tenants. He'll sort of create a kind of a profit sharing program to help his tenants save up for a down payment. And he's also very, very passionate about Hawaiian issues. In the movie, one of the things he says is that his mom comes home, she was also a realtor, very frustrated because she had, you know, was trying to close on a native Hawaiian client. And he didn't want to buy because he was waiting for a lease from the DHHL. And at the time, you never got the lease. Yeah. And at the time, you couldn't have own property while also be on the waitlist. Yeah, my dad was in the same position. Oh, really? Yeah. I grew up on the homestead. By the way, are you a homesteader? No, no. Okay. I grew up in Kamawela. Oh, wow. Well, they call it Kamawela now. It's actually Waimea. We refer to it as Waimea on the Big Island. And he had that same situation. He could not get a Hawaiian homestead until he actually got rid of any property that he owned. And he happened to have inherited a small piece from his, from my grandfather, which he actually had to sell. And then he got a house lot in Kamawela. It was a very trying time. A lot of people were in that situation. So, Savio experienced something firsthand. He did. And I guess the kicker to this point is when he had come, his mom had come home frustrated. He asked her why, you know, what was going on. She couldn't close on the client. And she had met with, he can't remember who exactly a politician, a banker, someone. And he had told her, you know, don't rock the boat. This is intentional. We don't want this to succeed. And that, I think, has been something that's been sort of driving him and having worked with him over, you know, the past seven months since the debut, he really does have a heart for. Well, I tell you what, we want to come back. And the second half of our show, folks, will be about the solutions that people like Apollo and Aus Tender and Peter Savio, and I guess many others, put out there. And so we will take a short break right now and we'll be right back to some of the solutions for fixing broken promises. Aloha and Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii with ThinkTech Hawaii. We come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch, for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, Mabuhay and Aloha. Hey, Aloha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on ThinkTech Hawaii live from the studios. I'll bring you guests, I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters. Aloha. Aloha. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahee and our guest this afternoon, Ka'eo Kealohalindzi. What a fantastic Hawaiian name. That's about every dynasty that's still around. But anyway, we're talking about the Hawaiian Homes program and an initiative that was started in Gene, Representative Gene Ward's office called Broken Promises, which is really a story of the Hawaiian Homes Act. We're going to start talking about solutions in a few minutes. But I thought that just for general information, people ought to know some of the very important dates and why the Hawaiian Homes program is where it is today in a sense. So tell us a little bit about it. Just a little bit about the history. We all know that Prince Ka'eo started it in 1920. But there's also been a lot of things that have happened in the modern era. So go and just tell us, give us some of these important. Sure, sure. So after it was passed in 21, Ka'eo actually died a year after it was passed. And so normally what we learned from Robin Danner recently is that once, usually when federal laws are passed, there's administrative rules that also accompany those. Because he had died and didn't have the opportunity to oversee what went on with the program, those rules never came into effect. And so we went from 1921 up until 1959 when it was previously run by the commission. And then there was a mutual agreement between state and federal government, where the state then governs the trust. So 1959 is very important because it's the statehood. So I have heard it said, and correct me if I'm wrong, that actually one of the conditions of Hawaii statehood was that they would undertake the trust responsibility for implementing this act. So, you know, our existence depends on carrying out this trust. Is this like an exaggeration or is it? No, it was actually incorporated into the statehood act that Hawaii or the state of Hawaii would manage the trust. And the next important day, which I'm sure that you could speak to was that funding for DHHL became mandatory at the 1978 Constitutional Convention. Okay. And, you know, from there, there's just kind of a little bit of gap in the document. And then, you know, that's when the Nelson case starts in 2007. Which comes out of the concon. Yeah. And what the Nelson case basically said was that the Hawaii state constitution requires adequate support. At least for four different reasons. But the case itself was about whether the program was receiving adequate support for its administrative cause. The idea being that the more money you spend on administration, the less you can use to build houses. So that takes us right into where we are now. What's the solution? What's the solution? So one of the biggest things that came out of it, I guess a little bit more background. So after the film started or was debuted, we sort of solicited volunteers to say, hey, we're going to have a working group. We're going to kind of come together blank slate. Let's see what kind of solutions can come forward from here. And so we had, you know, a few of the people that were in the interviews, Trustee Oppo, Trustee Stender was the chair of the group. And we just had maybe about five or six meetings in the last half of the year just to talk about what they want. And so one of the things, there were three priorities that came out of it. One of them was financing, which I'll get into a little later. The second one was housing products, you know, some wines want to live off the grid somewhat, you know, Punah housing or, you know, community centers, less of just the brick and mortar turn to housing. And the third was the quantum issue. Obviously, you know, we do have those 32,000 potential applicants, but Kuhio wanted 132nd when the act was originally passed and they had to, you know, come with a political compromise of one half. And so dealing with that issue long term is going to be something we're going to have to face. So the financing type of home, wow, that's the spectrum and the blood quantum. So you took on all of them. Yeah. And we just, you know, kind of shot ideas back and forth of what, what could the Hawaiian Homes program look like in the 21st century? And, and one of the biggest things, biggest solutions was leveraging the land assets. And so that came within, I guess, a little subcommittee within financing of. When you say leveraging the land assets, what are you talking about? Specifically referring to the lease. So you get obviously a beneficiary receives a lease and has to pay a dollar for it. However, there are a lot of native wines. I don't know the percentage offhand, but once they get the lease, they don't have the financial means to for a down payment to either build their home or to buy it. And so that that means that that in the past was handled like by a special program, depending on the funds available from the department. So what you were looking for is the way to get private sector money into buying into the hands of native Hawaiian homesteaders. In effect, yeah. And it's what we came to is using the system that's already there. And with specifically referring to the lease. Mr. Savio always say that if you look at a DHHL lease and compare that to a modern lease Bishop estate, the formatting is very different and it's an older lease. And so there are a limited number of programs that a DHHL beneficiary can go to. I believe it's FHA and the USDA. So right now the beneficiary can borrow money, but because of the structure of the lease, the financing is not as readily available as if the lease came from Kamehameha schools. You can finance, but the problem is mainly a down payment. And then just the hardest time, you know, a lot of, we all know how expensive it is to live over here to have, you know, anywhere from 20 to $50,000 right offhand to pay, put a down payment on a mortgage is often not really realistic for a lot of native Hawaiians, unfortunately. And so what the main part is using the lease and the value that comes with that land. So for example, you get a lot in Kapole. It's valued at maybe $200,000 for the land itself. You, a beneficiary cannot use that value if it wants to go to sort of a more mainstream federal lender, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. But what about the fact that the white homelands can't be alienated? And so what that would happen if you, you know, were to foreclose that what we're proposing is the lender will have to sell to someone either on the wait list or which by the way is what happens now. I mean, I just want to get that point real clear because some people may think that this initiative is a way of selling off white assets. I want to get real clear that right now if you do everything conventional, the way that it is in existence and but you can't do your payments and it's foreclosed on by the department or by you know, as the land owner that that land goes out to for purchase to another home homestead qualified recipient. So this is not really anything that is different. No, no. And then, you know, a lot of it was a little controversial coming out with it. Because I think there is fear that we would privatize the trust and that has never been never the intent never, you know, so this is a way of expanding the options, not changing the ultimate ownership of the property. There will still be trust property. Absolutely. And so it's it's just allowing a native wine beneficiary to use the value of the lease to help them with one of the things they ought to consider, which I heard is the fact that we still pay only a dollar a year. You know, I mean, at least in it should be if we just took the inflation, at least at least 20 bucks, I would say that if you can pay $100 a year for something that is yours for 199 years, right, that's, you know, that's pretty, it's pretty fair. But that's just me, you know, I think that I want to move on though, because I don't want to kill all the time on this thing, types of housing, types of housing that the department have all has always taken the traditional view that, you know, what the homestead meant a house and a huge lot and you know, or a farm or is there any traction through the idea of modernizing the types and the uses of property We're hoping so. Obviously, the 1921 Act was created where our economy was very agriculturally centered. And so it only makes sense for someone to have a homestead at that time, you know, a lower population as well. So what are you looking at, senior housing, apartments, the spectrum? Yeah, all of the above. What would it take to change this, to make that spectrum available? I think an issue at least for, particularly with off the grid housing, you know, we've also heard ideas of, hey, just give me the land. Yeah, it's tried before and didn't always work. Well, sometimes it did. All right. And so there's some problems with county zoning and, you know, infrastructure there. If we say that, hey, I don't want any city and county plumbing or anything like that, then they also won't, you know, pick up your trash or do anything. I don't want to, I don't want Hawaiian Electric to be sending me a bill. Right. That's a big one. Anyway, I know we're out of time. I'm going to leave the idea of the blood quantum for another show, because that will probably take up a couple of shows. But, you know, congratulations on trying to get the program modernized. I know that you're at the legislature and dealing with the executive branch with the governor's office and the rest to at least acquaint them with all of these solutions. And, you know, I think it's wonderful to see such a bipartisan effort being led by the minority leader of the whole House of Representatives. And if he ever wants to come on this show and take credit personally, we are glad to have absolutely folks. Thank you so much for joining us. And I heard, I hope you learned a little something about a pamphlet called Broken Promises, which is talking about the Department of Hawaiian Homeland Story. Aloha.