 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Community Matters. We're talking about low income agricultural rental housing in Hawaii with Stevie Whalen, an old friend of mine from way back when. She has been the executive director of the Hawaii Agricultural Research Center for a long time and there has been a remarkable evolution with that organization. Welcome to the show, Stevie. Hey, thank you very much. Glad to be back. Yes. We have to follow what you're doing because what you're doing is very exciting and has all the prospect in the world. It's sort of a new project for a new time is what it is. So Stevie, tell us about the evolution of HRC, Hark. Okay. So Hark was the research arm of Hawaii Sugar Planners Association and where what's left of the industry and we were offered a piece of property by Campbell when they were selling out all their agricultural property at the end of their trust and it on that property had a hundred and some housing units that Del Monte pineapples workers lived in and it had a bunch of warehouses and a chapel and a gym and a bunch of other extraneous buildings on it and Bert Hatton from Campbell who was in charge of getting rid of all their agricultural lands. He came to us and said, do it as you have a deal for us that they're going to provide us with this and see what we could do to save the housing for our culture workers. So it took me a little while to convince my board and I only had 30 days to do that because they had plantation housing and they knew that it was very difficult to manage and take care of and maintain because you have to maintain all the services, drinking water, waste water, bathing the roads, the whole business. So it is a small village on its own and this particular one is in Kunia and it's quite isolated from anybody we don't have bus service, they can't walk anywhere, the roads are too dangerous and so anyway, I thought very strongly that this was the right thing to do to save some low income land, egg housing for the ag workers that are on a Wahu and specifically for Central Wahu which has a lot of agriculture but it's not exclusive just for them, it's any ag worker on the island. Well, that's a long way from what you had been doing and from the time of sugar planer association to Hark, it was all about agricultural research. Now all of a sudden a profound pivot, I'd say, why did they come to you and why did you agree? Well, I think I said it, it was the right thing to do, agricultural workers tend to be the lowest paid on the economic scale and if the plantation had to provide housing for their workers, why aren't we thinking that we need housing for diverse by the agriculture? So and this was essentially given to us, not in the best shape, I mean Del Monte knew they were leaving long before they left and so the houses are some 60 to 80 years old and look like it and lived in it like that and so it's been an interesting task and learned lots of stuff that I never thought I would be even interested in. I know as agriculture, we always don't like developers and so we have to be careful about that because that's what I am now. Yeah, that's what they made you a developer. Right. I guess they knew the kind of executive you were, they knew that you could follow through and make it happen and so that was, you know, one good reason to choose HRC. That's nice of you to say that, but that's not the one. No, it has to be though. I was there and there's been so many, so many, so many people that helped that, I mean, I didn't even know they existed before, they just come out of the woodwork. The people that helped develop our 82 unit project, which you have a picture of. That is a non-profit RCC out of the mainland, hello, and they found us and said, hey, we'll help you develop. So you look at that and the ones that are, it's kind of an L shape there, the L goes from the left to the right and then in the upper left hand corner, there's a little square pocket there that wasn't developed and behind those trees, there at the end, there's houses behind that and that's not developed and that's what we're working on now, but the 82 unit project was houses that were historic homes, so there's 45 historic homes that had to be essentially renovated and then they allowed us to tear down some of the houses that were in the upper right hand corner. There was a bunch of old houses there. We got to tear those down and that corner has brand new construction, but they look the same. There are two separate projects within this acreage and you, HRSC, Hark owns this acreage it'd be simple, which is really, I mean that breathes new life into Hark. Now you have a mission that lasts forever. We don't own it, back up here, Hark doesn't own it anymore. Hark was given it and then we created two organizations, the lawyers get into this, right? And so we created the Cunea Village Title Holding Company, which the name is such because IRS requires that and it's a 501C2, not a 501C3, and it's a land holding company for Hark. So any proceeds goes to Hark. All right, and then we had because that's a 501C2 and nobody knows what those things are and you get grants if you're a 501C3, we had to create a 501C3 Cunea Village Development Corporation and that one is the one that has a 501C3 and it does all the development work. Okay, so now the housing and the purpose of these two companies are not exactly the same. Can you distinguish them? So Hark is the parent and its mission is research and we had to change the mission a little bit to allow it to do some of the agricultural worker housing and training. And then it created two subsidiaries, the Cunea Village Title Holding Company to hold the land and own it. It owns land, but all the proceeds must go to Hark. And then the title Cunea Village Development Corporation is one that can go and get grants. That's the one that partnered up with RCAC to get the tax investors and the rural development USDA to put the money into fixing up 82 of the 135 units. How much does it cost to fix up all those units? Oh, I mean, that as terrible was like almost $450,000 a house. Oh, wow. Exactly. They put a new water system just for that unit that's still hooked up to old water system, but new water system, new sewage pipes. That brings us to the story. But there are other 53 units. We have a maintenance crew who used to work for Del Monte that now works for the company that we hire to do our maintenance and manage all the water systems. And they have their head by a master carpenter, and so they do repairs. So we're repairing the other 53 units much cheaper than doing this whole big project thing. So that's what we're doing now. And we're really interested if there's anybody, this is my pipe dream, that wanted to spend $150,000 or donate $150,000 to repair a house and bring it up to code. And we put their name on it, and we tell them who lived in it. That's kind of a pipe dream. I kept thinking, why can't I get something like that? When they watch this video, you know, Stevie, they'll be knocking at your door. I hope so. I hope so. Because we need about 20 houses now fixed, and we need from 100 to $150,000 each to bring it up to code. Okay. So now one part of the project is, the whole project is for low income agricultural housing for Hawaii, which is great, because that's going to incentivize agriculture in Hawaii. That's going to allow for low income housing, which is so housing is so critical. But it's different. The requirements for a person to qualify for housing in one project, that's different than the requirements in the other. Can you break that down for us? Okay, again, so for the federally funded and tax investor one, you can't make more than 60% of the average median income, which the county through HUD puts out every year. So every year you have to re-qualify. And once you're in, you can't make more than 80%. But to get in, you can't make more than 60%. And then you only have to pay 30 people ask how much is the rent. Well, doesn't make a difference, because you only have to pay 30% of your income. And that also includes a utility's allowance. So that's the federal project, 82 of them. The other 53 is we still want to keep it low income housing, but we go by the low income housing percentage numbers. And that goes from 30% to 140% of the average median income. Some of our retirees from Del Monte, because that was another thing that we committed to, was any of the retirees that were living in it, but we would keep them and they would have a place forever until they died. That's really great. A life of state. I guess the idea is to encourage agriculture, but one of them you, we discussed this before the show. In one of these projects, you can be a farmer yourself. And in the other project, you would have to work for a farming organization. Why the difference? And what difference does it make? Okay, so for the 82 unit project, the one that was recently renovated and was already cool, that's the USDA funded for 60 years. And we have a loan. They don't give us money. We have a loan with them for 60 years. So one of their, and this is a national deal, a requirement of their program for worker housing stipulates that you must be an agriculture worker. We tried very hard to get an exception to that and almost got there and then the administration changed and we didn't have that support again. But anyway, you cannot be a farmer. You have to work for somebody. The other side, the 53 units. We're a little broader because that's not funded by anybody. It's funded by us. So we use the rents we get to help build new ones and do all the maintenance. And if anybody wants to give us money, then that's what we use. So that side, we still want to help the lowest people. So if we had two people who was making, you know, is that 30%, 60% of the AMI and another one was that 120. Well, of course we would give it to the one at 60% AMI. And they would pay less rent, but that's not our issue. This is not a for-profit organization. This is a help that agriculture workers have a place, a nice place to live and not in a dump. And some of them, you know, some of them are living in containers without batting. I mean, it's terrible with some things that are going on. Some of those people have actually come here and they're just so thankful they have a real house and yard. And I mean, it's just wonderful. But so that group, the 53, then they either, they can be a farmer as long as their income is low. We don't want like, you know, million-dollar farmers in here. So if their income is low, that's fine. They can live here as well. If they're an ag worker, they can live here. If they work on this 118 acres and any of the ag operations or any of the businesses, they can live there. And it's just a little bit broader definition of the ag worker because the federal government has a, you know, it's about two pages of what they consider an ag worker. And if we consider them an ag worker or they're working in some kind of agriculture-related thing, then they can live in that side if they don't meet the definition of the federal government. But it's all about agriculture in any event. Everybody in the project is going to be connected in some way with agriculture, thus, thus incentivizing agriculture in Hawaii. This is perfect. So both of the organizations are tax exempt, right? They're non-profits under the Internal Revenue Code. All of our organizations are, yes. Now, is this sustainable? I mean, can you pay your bills from the revenue you get? Okay. So the housing, we try not to make money on it. We just try to make sure that it can pay its own bills like the maintenance work and the rest of it and building new, you know, repairing some of them, which most of the time there's not enough money for that. So we have borrowed money actually to do repair, to do the renovations or repairs of the units that are not livable at the present time. Okay. And so we have to pay off that loan. And then we had the commercial area, the warehouses, and they weren't occupied at the time. But since we took over in 2009, we've gotten them, at some point, they were 100% occupied. Now, they're not quite maybe 80 to 90% occupied. And the income from that then goes to support heart because it's a nonprofit research and who supports that? The sugar industry supported before, but nobody does now. So it goes to that. And it goes to helping maintain this property. So that's how we keep going. In a way, this is a natural transition for you. Because we don't have sugar planters type, you know, community out there. And the research community, you know, isn't what it was. And now this is a sort of a perfect evolution, a perfect situation for you. But opportunity is knocked on your door and you've accepted it for the benefit of everybody involved. Why don't we take a look at some other photos that we can flesh out what's what's happening for you. Okay. Okay. All right. So this is the my big project right now is to get the gym up to code and electrical sense. And it's not now. And I'm always worried about a fire there because we are using it. So this is part of the bad conditions. And you can go to the next slide. So this is actually the center of all the power and a lot of it's all that's painted. It's very old. They just don't even make things like this anymore. When I bring people in there, they go, Are you kidding me? Okay, so this is the gym. And those pieces that you were shown before are part of it. One was in the outside. And one of them is in one of the women's bathroom is where all the power is. This is in the gym, looking towards the front door, which is underneath the, oh, can I do that? That's cool. Underneath the basketball rim. And up here is exciting area. It's a loft. And up there is where we have a foosball machine that was purchased us by Hannah Rum. And it has, what's the other air hockey? And it has a basketball deal. It has all kinds of books. And now we have two computers. And we have a lounge area for the kids and all kinds of labels and toys and stuff for them to come and play with after school. But some of them come home to nobody, right? We want to make this an area they can come home. Somebody can help them with Jordan from the Habermann will help them with their homework. And and have a place to come that's comfortable. So the next one, the next slide is the other side of the gym. And that's the stage. So it's a wonderful gym on that. I didn't put in the picture where the two sides on the left and right, there's two elevated small stages where people can sit and watch or we can have other activities. And behind here, this is a women's bathroom men's bathroom. And behind that are two rooms like dressing rooms and stuff that we could, you know, put on place or whatever that kind of thing. So it's a wonderful building. If you put on the next slide, hopefully it's the Christmas party. So we have events for the community there. And that just shows one of them in the in the gym there. So this one's facing the loft before Island Palms Community helped us fix up the loft by putting an extra railing on the top. Even though they said this was up to code, it was to me, I said, you know, we're gonna have teenagers up here. They're gonna be forcing around and stuff. I wanted it higher. So they just put a barrier that made it higher. So they they and they fixed the floor, they painted it, they painted our bathrooms and stuff all in their community days. They fixed our broken windows. So they've done a whole lot of stuff up here for us. So this year for Christmas, if anybody wants to donate, we can't have this because of COVID. So we're getting trailers and trucks. And we're going to do like a parade, but just be us, our staff and the people that help us here. And we'll give out food packages and toys specific for the kids so that their name on it to each unit. And we're really excited about that. And that's going to be on December 17. And we'll go door to door to make those deliveries. So that's going to be cool this year. So we have all kinds of events. So this we started the very first year we were up here. And this is residents and they are the ag companies in this whole area. And any of the vendors or any that want to help. And here we're planting trees. And we actually push back a berm so there'd be a walkway so that people don't have to walk on the road. That's the only place they could walk. And so we have two of these events every year. Of course, this year we couldn't have any, but what we do is landscaping, paint our rocks yellow so people run off the road because we have no, we have no lights. We have no street lights because they were taken down when the new project came in, because they didn't meet code. So they wouldn't put them back. And actually we have a solution that that's formulated in another new set of partners that you know, I can talk about later if you want. But anyway, this is the community days and we'll have our next one in April. They use the April and October. And so we're, you know, very excited about trying to pull on this is what one of the renovated houses looks like inside. I mean, this is beautiful. Some of these very nice. Some of these people who come to live here came from containers or shacks or whatever. And this is what they come to. And they're so appreciative. They can stay too. I mean, as long as they're associated with the agricultural community, they can stay even for life even. Well, we're trying to work on that. So we really want to try to figure out how to get a retirement area on the property because if everybody retires and we have no place for active workers. Good point. You know, that's a little bit way off. So we'll deal with that later. But we're not, we're still thinking about how we're going to deal with that. Yeah. Okay. Well, I want to ask you, you know, you showed pictures of the gym and it reminds me of the comment you made before the show about a show we had only a couple of days ago with Hapamana and Jordan Conley and Peter Hoffenberg. And you talk about their connection with your project and that gym. Okay. So Cunea Country Farms and the Kahana Rum, their owners are Jason Brown and Robert Dawson. And they knew this Danny guy I mentioned before, Danny Mahia, about the sand courts. And then he knew Jordan. And that led us to Jordan. And we were so excited about him because he actually had clinics once a month, free to kids, Saturday and Sunday, free lunch, free water, free jerseys, free everything. And we were so great, we were having that every month before COVID. But he's still a partner and they're still working on this and how to, you know, do more of it. And another partner I think I mentioned is IPA, the school. And they didn't have one of the people that came to our community day saw his daughter went to that school and they don't have a gym and we had a gym not being used. So they put us together. So now we have a partnership with them and they come and use the gym for practice because all their games are in gyms and all they have is outdoor facilities. So that's worked out. And then they help clean. And whenever we have a volunteer day, they're all part of it. And then the third partner there, so the school and Danny, that's the three of them. Yeah. So they're all three partners and we just all work together working on trying to improve this place. And then the other thing we're working on is there's a little building right next to the gym. We want to turn that into a exercise weight room area. That's another little vision that's down the road. Well, I get I get the sense of it. This is, you know, a community as a lot of people involved. And you're the hub of a wheel that goes in many directions with many kinds of people who either live there, who help you build it out, who can tribute money, who connect with government for you. I mean, it sounds like a pretty ambitious enterprise to keep it all in place. And you have contractors, you have contractors who you said maintain, you're telling me you have contractors who act as property managers. This is a major episode out there, isn't it? Yeah. And those contractors, they're all part of the family. They are so helpful. They help in everything. Every event we have, you know, if we have a problem, some of those contractors live here, the workers, and if we have a problem in the middle of the night, they're out there for a water break. They're out there. How, you know, how long it takes you to get somebody to come to your property, especially like us. But they, they do all that kind of stuff for us. It's just, it's a great family to be a part of. What's the future of it? I mean, you're, you're just sort of getting it all together now. But how do you see it unfolding in the future? Okay. Well, I hope that once we get all the houses that we have repaired and filled that we have a waiting list, that we can go to phase three, because with the county we came up with three, four phases. First phase was the 82 units done. Second phase is fixing up all the other 53 were in progress. Third phase was do an infill, because when Del Monte was here, they would demolish a house here, there, everywhere. So those are empty lots, but they all will have infrastructure. So that's the first place to put a new house. And then the four, once we would do that, then the fourth phase would be another spot on the property to build those development of houses, whatever. And so can we can go up to 200. So right now, though, my goals are, okay, drinking water or our storage site was off site, not on our property. We have an easement to it. It's a giant swimming pool with a cover. I mean, not, not really that, but that's what I think is concrete in the ground with a wood cover. And so we just now, two weeks ago, got two 25, 250,000 gallon, I think, tanks on our property. So the storage now is on our property. And we're getting new distribution lines to the other 53 units and the commercial area. And the state, God is paying for that through a grant and aids and through a program that the EPA pays or gives the state money for it to fix up for drinking water systems. And then we're going after a wastewater treatment plan, because we have our own plan here too, to upgrade that. And we're doing that through USDA rural development funds that'll probably take us three to five years. Those are the two. Must be busier than a mad hatter. I have a lot to help. So, you know, looking, looking at it, you know, sort of in a community way, the idea here, certainly by Campbell and by you, was to incentivize and help and make a better life, if you will, for those involved in the agricultural community. So query is it doing that now and in the future, will it do that? And what long term effect will it have on the agricultural community? Because we do need agriculture in this state as a matter of sustainability, resilience and so forth. So it supports people that work an ag to live a life like the rest of the people. They don't have to live with their parents and, you know, and raise their families. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it tends to be putting people really close together, and which is the problem we're having with COVID, right? But it gives them their independence and have a nice habitat with their nice yard. And I mean, it's beautiful up here. It's quiet. Just, I mean, I'm actually staying at somebody's house. So I'm babysitting the dogs. And it's so quiet, peaceful, you know, and just be able to experience, you know, your own place. Yeah. There's one person I know here that actually he said is the first time he's ever had his own place. Well, he's very, very appealing to people. And they'll be lining up for miles around. And the question is, when you reach capacity, is there a possibility of expanding it beyond, you know, the original acreage? Well, that's right. So not the original acres, but on this acres, we can go up to 200 homes. And we only have 135 now. So you have room? We have room. That's great. So, so, Stevie, what would you what would you leave with our viewers? You know, what would you like them to take away from this discussion? What should they be remembering about this really interesting, maybe unprecedented agricultural rental housing program? So for me personally, you know, it's been a very interesting and exciting and rewarding and something I never thought I'd ever do. And I'm working with a lot of giving and loving and sharing people. So that that I would never have met before. And I'm continuing to meet new ones. Like I said, we just had a whole bunch of free electrical work done here put in all LED lights. They're going to help us with the street lights. And, you know, they've worked on the state programs to help us do this for our community. So it's just so rewarding to be able to work with all these people. I mean, it's not me. It's people coming to help this community. And that's what's great. It is great. And it's great for you, though. It's great to see you so involved, so active, so committed in a great, great new project that benefits everybody that touches. Thank you so much, Stevie Whalen. Really appreciate you coming out.