The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands has begun to exert a long-held regulatory power to speed up homestead and housing development for beneficiaries.

On Sept. 30, DHHL issued itself a building permit to renovate a vacant building in Kalaeloa with 18 studio apartments that were once used to house visiting Navy officers at the former Barbers Point Naval Air Station.

The agency plans to make refurbished units available to homeless people on its homestead waitlist as transitional housing.

To expedite construction, DHHL Director Kali Watson signed the building permit for the $6.3 million project funded by the federal government, representing the first “in-house” building permit approved by the agency for itself. More “in-house” building permits are planned.

Typically, building permits are the province of county agencies that receive, review and approve applications. But DHHL, under federal law that created the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act over a century ago, is not subject to state and county regulations over land use and development.

Historically, DHHL obtained county zoning changes in some instances but not others, but adhered to a practice of obtaining county building permits.

DHHL said its new approach with building permits will advance development of more than 20 homestead projects statewide by sidestepping county permitting departments, including some that have been habitually backlogged with applications that face extremely long processing times.

“Monday’s permit signing not only accelerates our ability to construct houses but significantly changes the pace at which we can get our beneficiaries off our waitlists and into homes,” Watson said in a statement. “This is an exciting time for the program, and we remain committed to finding innovative solutions to move the department forward.”

Timothy Hiu, a DHHL program specialist and former deputy director of the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting, said DHHL will go through the same process as county permitting agencies.

“By granting the department with the ability to process these permits independently, we relieve the counties of this burden, fast-tracking DHHL’s ability to expedite services to its beneficiaries,” he said.

According to a DHHL fact sheet predating the new approach, projects on DHHL land were “subject to typical health and safety requirements such as County building, plumbing, electrical, and grading permits and standards.”

DHHL acquired the long-vacant, two-story apartment building, which is on a 20-acre industrial parcel adjacent to Kalaeloa Airport, in 2001. In 2021 the agency was approached by another entity to turn the building into a homeless transitional shelter, and since then DHHL has been exploring doing the same thing for its beneficiaries.

“This is a way in which we can help our beneficiaries, mainstream them, and get them into better living situations through the utilization of funds from the federal government,” Cynthia Rezentes, DHHL assistant government relations program manager for the Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act, said in a statement.

The agency expects renovation work, which includes replacing water and electrical systems, repairing the parking lot and adding a photovoltaic system, to take about a year. Tenants are expected to move in in late 2025.