Hale Moiliili, a Department of Hawaiian Home Lands project designed as affordable rental apartments, is expected to begin construction in just weeks. Notable because it will include increasingly rare three-bedroom units as well as studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments at affordable rents, the 23-story tower and two-story townhouse development will rise on the former site of the Stadium Bowl-O-Drome. That’s celebration-worthy — if admirers can push aside thoughts about the state’s damaging reluctance to provide DHHL with adequate properties or funding in the past.

DHHL has owned the Moiliili property, previously controlled by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, since 1995. Bowling operations ended in 2004. For the past 20 years, the property deteriorated, used only as a tow truck company’s base yard, because DHHL had no adequate funding or strategy to develop it.

In 2018, then-DHHL director William Aila Jr. and the Hawaiian Homes Commission agreed on new rules allowing DHHL to operate rental properties, with Gov. David Ige’s approval. At that time, the agency reported that only about 7,500 of the 28,000 Native Hawaiians on the waiting list for homestead leases could make even a 10% down payment on a $150,000 home build, much less purchase a single-family home at market rates. And 5% stated they would prefer an affordable rental to being shut out of homestead housing.

A team led by developer Stanford Carr was chosen from a competitive field to build rental housing in 2020. As the first rental project of its kind by DHHL, the development was delayed for about a year as details of the federal funding solicited were ironed out. Now, finally, work can begin.

The Bowl-O-Drome property should be just the first in a series of rental homes developed by DHHL, if public opinion and the governor’s support can be retained as tailwinds. Limited-income beneficiaries who face the prospect of being passed over on the waitlist because they can’t afford to build a single-family house must take notice.

The agency’s tenacity in pursuing a rent-to-own project in Kauai, at the Courtyards at Waipouli — an apartment building constructed under an affordable housing agreement that expired in 2019, and that had been put up for sale — must also be lauded. DHHL’s plan is to purchase the property and then offer qualified waitlisters the option of renting at an affordable rate, so that money to purchase a unit can be saved. The Kauai planning commission and Kauai County Council have OK’d the project.

After failing to make the cut for state tax credits to finance a purchase, DHHL identified alternative federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and via the Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act. That would make the Waipouli project eligible for state Rental Housing Revolving Funds. And on Sept. 16, the Hawaiian Homes Commission voted to pursue those funding sources.

The Kauai units will target beneficiaries earning up to 100% of area median income, or less. They will remain available to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries in perpetuity. And they will allow waitlisters who might never receive a homestead otherwise to hold a lease, which can be passed down to homesteaders’ Native Hawaiian children.

The benefits conferred by a homestead lease should be available to every Hawaiian on DHHL’s waitlist. But today, leases are excessively rare, and that scarcity and need for affordable housing can spur fierce infighting. What must be recognized is that under DHHL’s current strategy, homesteads are being created at a faster clip and waitlisters can be served along parallel paths.

With continued support from local, state and federal sources, including increased funding required to address DHHL’s intolerable backlog of homestead applicants, this strategy has the potential of granting homestead opportunities to more, and more diverse, applicants than ever before.