JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM Damage at Mayor Wright Housing in Kalihi continues to worsen, with residents wondering when the state will repair and rebuild the units.

Public housing
awaits repairs

State lawmakers and a U.S. agency
decry a backlog that keeps many
units vacant

As president of the resident association at Kuhio Park Terrace, the state's largest public housing project and one of its oldest, Deborah Taamu spends a lot of her time dealing with maintenance problems.

She's been trying for months, for example, to have the building's two finicky elevators repaired. One of them is almost always out of commission. And when both are out, which happens more and more often, residents in the project's 17-story building are forced to take the stairs.

Apartments remain empty despite long waiting list In February there were 871 vacant units at Hawaii's federal and state public housing projects, both of which are managed by the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii. Below is a list of the housing projects that have more than 10 unoccupied units: Federal public housing projects » Kalihi Valley Homes (Oahu): 181 units vacant » Lanakila Homes I (Big Island): 107 » Kuhio Park Terrace (Oahu): 64 » Wamaha-Sunflower (Oahu): 60 » Makamae (Oahu): 35 » Lanakila Homes III (Big Island): 24 » Kau'iokalani (Oahu): 21 » Mayor Wright Homes (Oahu): 20 » Kauhale O'hanakahi (Big Island): 19 » Puuwai Momi (Oahu): 16 » Kealakehe (Big Island): 15 » Hookipa Kahaluu (Oahu): 13 » Paoakalani (Oahu): 12 » Pumehana (Oahu): 12 » Lanakila Homes II (Oahu): 11 State Public Housing Projects » Puahala Homes (Oahu): 27 » Kamalu-Ho'olulu (Oahu): 14 » Lokahi (Big Island): 14 » Kahale Mua (Molokai): 12 » La'iola (Oahu): 11 SOURCE: HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP. OF HAWAII

Taamu says she also helps tenants deal with problems in units, where some report waiting months -- one woman waited two years -- for their leaky roof or their broken door to be fixed.

"It takes time for everything," Taamu said recently on a rare vacation. "There's an overload of work orders."

What Taamu doesn't worry about as much -- and what isn't apparent just by looking at her Kalihi housing project -- is the 64 unoccupied apartments sprinkled around Kuhio Park Terrace, where some of the worst structural and maintenance problems at the housing area can be found.

A number of Kuhio Park Terrace's vacant units, said state housing agency Executive Director Stephanie Aveiro, have serious toilet problems. "They're just constantly backing up," she said. "It's easier for us to not put a person in there."

Similar situations exist at dozens of projects around the islands: Units are left vacant -- some for as long as 1,000 days -- because of backlogged maintenance, which also plagues occupied apartments.

The vacancy rate at public housing projects, which fluctuated between 10 and 15 percent statewide in 2004, has drawn criticism this legislative session from several lawmakers, many of whom say the problem is getting worse.

Statistics on vacancy rates in past years were not immediately available.

But some say the problem is especially worrisome today because Hawaii's tight housing market has significantly diminished the available pool of affordable housing.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is also scrutinizing the number of vacant units as well as other problems with the state's housing agency, which they labeled "troubled" after a 2004 review.

By September the state must cut in half -- to 105 days from 210 -- the average turnaround time it takes to ready a vacated public housing unit for new tenants.

The directive is one of 120 that HUD has laid out for the agency.

According to state statistics, there were 871 units vacant in February at the 76 federal and state public housing projects managed by the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii, which is under the state Department of Human Services.

Four projects had more than 60 vacant units.

On the Big Island, Lanakila Homes I had 107 unoccupied units. Meanwhile, Kalihi Valley Homes had 181 -- nearly half of its 400 apartments.

The vacant units at federal housing projects in the islands could shelter an estimated 2,153 people, if the projects' average household of 2.8 people were to remain constant.

At state projects, about 173 people could live in 102 vacant units, given that the average household is 1.7 people.

Aveiro of HCDCH said about 325 of the vacant units at projects statewide have very serious maintenance problems.

Meanwhile, 242 units have either some or few problems -- nothing that requires a large project, she said. The agency's goal is to get all of those units occupied by May.

Aveiro did not know the condition of the remaining 300 vacant units.

"Our stock is aging, and a lot of our projects are now more than 30 years old," she said, adding that the agency is working hard to reduce the number of vacant units.

"We have some serious problems that are happening in our units. ... These are just things that come with age."

Aveiro said there are 13,000 people on the waiting list in Hawaii to get into public housing.

The average wait is "years," she added.

Sen. Ron Menor, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Consumer Protection and Housing Committee, said the agency's management has failed to pay attention to public housing vacancies. His committee held hearings earlier in the year on HCDCH, and several nonprofit housing organizations came forward to complain about the number of unoccupied units at projects.

"This is a matter that requires urgent attention," Menor (D, Mililani) said.

"In this time, when finding housing has become an almost insurmountable problem ... it's just taking too long for our state housing agency to repair and refurbish the units so that they can be made available."

But for Taamu, at Kuhio Park Terrace, the biggest priority remains working on the units that are lived in, not those that are empty.

"I haven't had any complaints" about empty units, she said with a laugh.

"One elevator running, one elevator shut down -- that would be our major issue. That's the most complaints."

MENOR IS recommending the split of HCDCH into two separate agencies in hopes of better tackling maintenance issues in both vacant and occupied units. One of the agencies would focus exclusively on the management and operation of public housing.

The other would develop and finance affordable housing opportunities, he said.

Menor also said that though Aveiro inherited many of the agency's problems when she took up her post in 2002, she has had "plenty of time" to address the vacancy issue, among others.

He also suggested Aveiro and her administration resign if the agency fails to meet HUD's September requirements.

If the obligations are not met, HUD could decrease funding to the state agency or temporarily take it over.

"I think it's really a management problem," Menor said, "that needs to be resolved at HCDCH."

Aveiro, meanwhile, said she is doing as much as she can with what she has.

In the past year, she said, HCDCH shifted its priorities from starting new projects to maintaining old ones.

The agency gets between $12 million and $15 million annually for so-called capital improvement projects, and Aveiro said the state funds are being used primarily to "just bring these units up to ... a decent sanitary standard that they require."

A 2003 report commissioned by the agency, she said, estimated it would take about $650 million to "totally modernize" all of the state's projects.

In all, more than 14,000 people live in public housing in the islands, with the bulk of those on Oahu. About 40 percent of tenants are under 18 years old.