Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 11, Number 2, 1 ʻAukake 1994 — OHA Update [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

OHA Update

Housing OHA housing officer Stephen Morse recently returned from the Pacific Northwest, where he met with Native Americans to see whether OHA could work out arrangements to buy lumber for future Hawaiian housing projects. He met with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (in central Oregon) and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz (on Oregon's Pacific coast). Both own and operate lumber mills. Morse found the quality of their lumber to be "excellent" and, in order to determine cost, furnished the tribes with lists of materials that would be needed for future projects. He also went to Port Angeles, Wash. and met with a sales representative of an Indian-owned company that makes plywood siding material superior to that is commonly used in Hawai'i. Perhaps best of all. the tribal organizations appear willing to forego the middle man and deal directly with OHA - "whieh I think is major savings right

there," Morse says. "All we need to do at some point in time is have a project ready to go and find a plaee to store the material onee they're ready to ship."