Leases awarded for Hawaiian homestead on Maui
Homeownership is on the near horizon for an initial group of Native Hawaiian households to benefit from a historic 2022 appropriation by the state Legislature.
The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands on Saturday selected 52 beneficiaries to receive homestead leases at a Maui project where a developer is going to build homes for the lot lessees at the agency’s planned Pu‘uhona Homestead subdivision in Waikapu near Wailuku.
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Initial homes featuring three to five bedrooms on lots averaging 7,500 square feet are expected to be completed by mid-March and are to be sold to beneficiaries for $509,800 to $699,000.
Pu‘uhona represents the first DHHL homestead project delivered using part of $600 million appropriated by state lawmakers two years ago to reduce the agency’s waitlist for homesteads.
“The awarding of these homes to these families today is a fantastic step forward for our state,” Gov. Josh Green said in a statement announcing Saturday’s lease awards. “Housing is such a critical need for our residents in general, and Native Hawaiian beneficiaries on the waiting list have been acutely aware of that need for a very long time.”
About 28,700 applicants are on DHHL’s homestead waitlist, and the $600 million appropriated via Act 279 in 2022 was aimed at significantly reducing the backlog that the agency has struggled with in large part due to meager funding from the state over many decades and a high cost to install infrastructure on land DHHL owns.
DHHL has projected that the $600 million will allow it to develop about 2,200 lots in addition to acquiring land for subdivisions that can be produced faster and for less expense compared with developing some of the agency’s land holdings. Some money also is intended to assist beneficiaries in other ways.
Some of the projects being funded by Act 279 have come about after the appropriation was made, while others were in DHHL’s development pipeline previously.
Two more phases of work are to follow to complete Pu‘uhona, which is to include 24 lots for homes that will be built either by beneficiaries themselves or by Habitat for Humanity Maui.
Under DHHL’s homestead program, beneficiaries, who must be at least half Hawaiian, receive 99-year land leases that cost $1 a year.
