Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 39, Number 8, 1 August 2022 — HOUSING [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOUSING

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Kali Watson is the president and CEO of the Hawaiian Community Development Board, a nonprofit development firm that specializes in developing projects to provide low-ineome families with homes. He believes that OHA should collaborate with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) and private developers regarding the development of affordable housing for Native Hawaiians. He notes that whh DHHL receiving $600 million from the state and another $22.3 million in new funding from the Native American Housing Assistance and Self Deter-

mination Act, the Hawai'i Housing and Finance Development Corp receiving $320 million in funding, and the State of Hawai'i receiving $2.8 hillion in federal infrustructure funding, "the time is now for a coordinated collective effort to aggressively build housing for Native Hawaiians." Watson believes that OHA's Iwilei and Kaka'ako Makai properties should be master-planned to provide both commercial space and housing with DHHL facilitating the entitlement process with its trust land status under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. He points out that DHHL has already identified 17 sites for development of more than 3,000 residential and agricultural units and that DHHL is also authorized to acquire private land for housing development. "Working together, OHA and DHHL ean not only heeome the biggest developers in the state, but [they ean] realistically reduce, if not eliminate, the [DHHL] waiting lists within 10 years," said Watson.