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Maui residents have long struggled to afford homes of their own due to the lack of supply and the skyrocketing rates; recently the median sales price for a single-family home surpassed a record-high $1 million.
But there's another hurdle stopping local families from living in a place of their own -- the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands waiting list and lease system.
"On July 9, 1921, President Warren G. Harding signed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920 as amended, an effort spearheaded by Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana'ole and a group of advocates," according to DHHL. "Through its passage, the United States set aside approximately 200,000 acres of land to establish a permanent homeland for native Hawaiians, who were identified as a landless and 'dying' people as the result of disease, intermarriage and loss of lands."
To receive land and benefits, Native Hawaiians are defined by DHHL as individuals having at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood.
One only has to go to the DHHL website to see the waiting lists and get an understanding of how gross the problem is. Some people have been waiting for decades -- many have died before getting their lease. The land is there, yet they have to wait. In the end they don't get their land -- they get a lease. Leases expire and contain stipulations.
What happens when your family's blood goes below 50 percent Hawaiian? Then, you don't qualify to be on the list. Even if they change the blood percentage, it is still not their land.
We personally know a couple that lives on Hawaiian Home Lands -- the husband has rights to the land, but the wife does not. The wife had to sign onto the mortgage so that they qualified to build their home. If her husband dies before she does, she would be responsible for the mortgage but would not qualify to live on the property. She would have to sell the property and receive any proceeds.
This is how you control people. This is how you keep a people down. It is wrong on so many levels. End it now -- give Hawaiians a true chance at a better life. Give them back their land -- for life -- and not a lease, but a deed. If someone currently has a lease, turn it into a deed. Let them do what they want to do with the land, regardless of the blood percentage; let it truly be theirs. Then we can live up to our motto -- Ua mau ke ea o ka 'aina i ka pono: The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.