Council shelves
Ewa Villages bailout plan

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Opposition on the City Council has stalled a $13.5 million bailout plan for the Ewa Villages Revitalization Project.

The Council yesterday refused to vote on the issue and sent it back to the Budget Committee to explore new options.

At issue is $12 million from the federal Community Development Block Grant fund to be distributed to three nonprofit groups putting up projects in Ewa Villages to help low-income families, the elderly and those needing long-term care.

But Council members again heard objections from city housing specialist Pat Tompkins to a part of the bailout plan calling for $7.3 million in block grant funds to Unity House Inc. to help buy 153 homes at $14.7 million.

Only 77 of the units are to be set aside for families making 80 percent or less of median income, and first chances will go members of Local 5 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union and Teamsters Local 996.

Unity House officials yesterday said many of their members would qualify to purchase the affordable units.

Council members Donna Mercado Kim, John DeSoto and others questioned how the Unity House deal is supposed to help old-time plantation home residents of Ewa Villages as was intended in the original project.

"The whole premise was we were going to support these people," Kim said. "I don't think we're doing that."

That project fell through partly as a result of the inability by city-contracted Armstrong Builders to sell 282 homes at market prices to help pay for redevelopment in the area.

The bailout plan is designed to help cover the cost of a $63.5 million short-term note taken in 1993 for the revitalization plan that needs to be paid by next fall.

A recently completed audit says the project could cause the Housing Development Special Fund to lose $9.6 million.

The Council also heard yesterday from Easter Keil, who said she and her husband were the only ones to purchase a home from Armstrong and did so at $349,000.

She said she was promised the other homes were to go for $289,000 to $430,0000 and questions what the Unity House project now slated for her area will mean for her home's value.

Council members made it clear they won't tolerate intimidation by the administration against city employees wishing to testify.

Housing Director Bob Agres Jr. told Council members he did not discourage Tompkins, his subordinate, from speaking to them.