Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 6, 1 June 2005 — Akaka Bill needed to keep Hawaiians at home as housing prices soar [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]
Akaka Bill needed to keep Hawaiians at home as housing prices soar
Aloha nō kākou. It is with a sense of frustration that I write this article in my continuing effort to inform those who might read this eolumn of the reasons and need for the Akaka Bill. My frustration today is not so mueh the bill itself but what is happening in the housing market. So how do the two relate? First, Hawaiians have already lost their eountry, their independence and their selfdetermination. If that's not bad enough, we are now losing our homes, or at least the ability to afford our own homes. When homes on Maui have a $700,000 median selling and $1,000,000 median asking price, and when only 17 homes on Maui are asking less than $500,000 and twice as many are asking more than $5 million, how in the world ean Hawaiians ever have a home to eall their own in their own land? My frustration is centered in the fact that main-
landers continue to purchase here and loeal folks continue to have to paek up and move to the mainland while some Hawaiians continue to oppose the only reasonable hope they have to answer this dilemma: self-determination and federal recognition. In a capitalist system, a free market, a constitution-based legal system, we are bound to acknowledge the right of others to eome here to buy up private lands. But why do our state and county governments make it so hard to provide affordable housing for our loeal residents? Environmentalists, Hawaiian activists, neighbors, various commissions and rising costs make it hard enough. We need to get our state Legislature to get with it and allow housing to be started without having to wait for the Land Use Commission, understaffed county departments and volunteer eommissions to get around to approving
affordable housing for our people. If we have land, let us live on it. And though our ceded lands still need to be secured in the future, we ean work with private landowners now to receive lands in partnerships that ean give us immediate access to homes on all islands for Native Hawaiians. Our future is dependent on our efforts today. Should the Akaka Bill pass this year, it will begin a process whieh will eulminate in a Hawaiian governing entity. This new government will be able to negotiate for ceded lands and thus preserve for Hawaiians some assurance of homes in the future. But if the bill does not pass and we therefore lose Arakaki v. Lingle, there will be no ceded lands, no OHA funding, no Hawaiian Homes and thus no hope for further Hawaiian housing. More will move here with means to buy homes, and more will leave who can't afford to buy. Our posterity will be bought out and sold
out, our 'āina will disappear, and we will sorely regret not working harder to save our culture and people from legal extinction by accepting a federal system that would recognize Native Hawaiians as it does Native Americans and Alaska Natives. Complainers against the Akaka Bill get lost in all its imperfections and thus fail to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Indeed, their heads are in a hole in the ground with Arakaki looming in the background ready to strike. Our attorneys warn us that without Akaka, we are placing ourselves in harm's way and stand to lose all. Let's at least realize that we need Akaka now, and if problems persist, fix them later. So long as the United Nations is around they ean be approached later by those interested in doing so. For now, let's take care of the needs of our people and those needs are now, not 50 years from now.
Boyd P. Mossman
Trustee, Maui