State leaders talk about affordable housing, but each time there’s a chance to achieve it, their gaze turns to shiny distractions.

Envisioned workforce housing in Kakaako ended up mostly luxury projects that enriched developers and speculators but did little for locals moving away for housing within their reach.

Now we’re taking a similar wrong turn at the Aloha Stadium site in Halawa.

These 98 acres are ideal for affordable housing, and viable proposals in the Legislature would provide 20,000 to 100,000 units in the area.

But key legislators keep pushing a grandiose New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District that would entail a stadium, profitable high-end housing, hotels and retail but little truly affordable housing.

Like the Honolulu rail disaster, there’s an NASED propaganda campaign — including a grossly misleading drawing showing 20,000 affordable housing units surrounding a stadium in the ugliest possible light, ignoring more attractive ways to do it.

NASED has been divided into separate bids for convoluted public-private partnerships few understand to build a stadium and develop the condos and hotels around it.

The two final bidding groups for the commercial piece include a who’s who of prominent local developers and contractors who also often appear in lists of major campaign donors to local lawmakers.

Legislators junket around the mainland like wheeler- dealers courting pro soccer and rugby teams for a stadium that doesn’t exist.

It’s a scheme beyond our needs, our means and our state government’s capability to competently carry out.

NASED proponents have proved by their actions they don’t know what they’re doing.

Legislators promised an on-time and on-budget stadium finished by the 2023 University of Hawaii football season. Now they’ll be lucky to break ground by then.

Lawmakers initially appropriated $350 million, then cut it in half; now there’s talk of restoring the original amount. The project was delayed a year by a suspicious drafting error in the enabling legislation.

NASED was first assigned to the Hawaii Community Development Corp., then switched to the Stadium Authority. Now it’s effectively run by the Department of Accounting and General Services, a bureaucratic morass with no experience on a project of this nature or magnitude. DAGS shares blame for negligent maintenance that let the old stadium fall into such disrepair.

This public-private partnership model is more a model of a double-talking shell game in which John pays Paul, Paul pays George, George pays Ringo, Ringo pays John, and they all pay friendly lawmakers with generous campaign donations.

It’s unnecessary complexity given that the $350 million originally appropriated was plenty enough to pay for a decent 35,000-seat stadium and the infrastructure for affordable housing around it.

We don’t need more high-end housing or hotels, and the NASED scheme ends badly for taxpayers.

This might be our last chance to prevail upon legislators to stop the ostentatious showboating and put the Halawa site to its best use: a reasonable stadium matched to our needs and lots of affordable housing we’re desperate for.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.