Michelle Kauhane
Executive Director

P.O. Box 3006
Wailuku, Maui, HI 96793

STRATEGIES & ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Affordable Homes
Through a comprehensive program that includes outreach, training, counseling, and mortgage lending, Hawaiian Community Assets, Inc. (HCA) aims to increase the success rate of its clients in achieving and sustaining homeownership. The program has a strong focus on the Hawaiian Home Lands, the trust lands set aside for Native Hawaiians in 1920. Typically, eligible beneficiaries wait decades to be awarded a lot. However, when their turn finally does come, most fail to qualify for a mortgage and return to the waiting list.

HCA's lending program, Hawai`i Community Lending, which began providing loans in July 2002, features monies for construction and for mortgages for purchase, rehabilitation, and refinance purposes, both on Hawaiian Home Lands and in the community at large. In its first seven months of lending, HCA has originated 5 construction and 15 permanent loans totaling $3.2 million. Nearly fifty percent were for homes on Hawaiian Home Lands.

HCA's Community Services Program offers homeownership and financial literacy workshops as well as counseling for debt reduction, credit repair, and saving for down payment and closing costs. In the first 15 months, 243 participants completed HCA's 12-hour homeownership class. Three-fourths of the participants were Native Hawaiians preparing to buy or build a home.

HCA is also the lead lender and partner in the development team for Waiehu Kou Phase 3, a 113-home Hawaiian Home Lands development. HCA pre-qualifies applicants and provides on-going counseling and education to ensure they successfully secure their mortgage loans. It is able to produce an unusually high pre-qualification rate because of close work with other local nonprofits that provide down payment assistance and Individual Development Account (IDA) savings programs. Many of the families HCA has pre-qualified had waited for up to 40 years and/or failed to qualify for a mortgage previously.

Community Development
Two critical elements of HCA's community building strategy are addressing gaps in services provided by traditional institutions and partnering with existing organizations.

In order to identify new opportunities and resources for lending and homeownership, HCA is working to increase awareness and understanding among key providers of technical assistance and financial resources who have been active in Indian Country and other rural areas, of the unique cultural, historical, and legal aspects of lending on Hawaiian trust lands.

To strengthen economic development opportunities, HCA is working to create a network of representatives from the venture capital industry, experts in community development venture capital, local individuals and institutions with capital to invest, key government officials, local entrepreneurs in need of capital, part-time resident entrepreneurs interested in involvement in Hawaii, and skilled Hawaii-born young people interested in participating in new ventures.