Feds and state agree
to ally on home lands
The state and federal governments announced yesterday an agreement aimed at fostering economic growth on Hawaiian homestead lands and helping more native Hawaiians become homeowners.
Under the agreement, a team from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Office will work with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to identify federal programs that would benefit Hawaii and assist the agency in the application process.
Home Lands Director Micah Kane said his department already has identified 86 projects that qualify for 58 different USDA grant and loan programs. Kane declined to specify any of the projects.
He said the agreement is in concert with the agency's master plan to trim its 20,000-name waiting list for homesteads by more than half over the next five years.
"What we're trying to do is get a framework together that will allow us to accelerate that effort," Kane said at a Capitol news conference with Gov. Linda Lingle and Jim Moseley, deputy secretary of the USDA.
Kane and Lingle praised Moseley's effort to help bring about what they called a first-of-its-kind relationship between the state and the federal agency.
"We are not at the point of definition where we can say there's an X amount of dollars that's going to flow, but this is a commitment to work with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands," Moseley said. "This is making sure that the needs are matched up with what the Department of Agriculture can then take and make sure that we can make loans for these housing projects."
Kane said the agreement also marks a shift in his department's ideology.
Whereas in the past, Hawaiian Home Lands would apply for programs on a project-by-project basis, the new strategy is to combine projects under a "master planned community concept."
"What we're trying to do is couple projects so that we can move multiple projects into one master planned community," Kane said.
The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act approved by Congress in 1920 set aside 203,500 acres for a Hawaiian Home Lands Program to provide homesteads for native Hawaiians, meaning those of 50 percent blood or more.