Osorio letter; Hokuli'a case; Hawaiian Community Assets grant


The Advertiser printed an excellent letter today by Jon Osorio, a professor at UH, in response to the Arakaki and Burgess letters earlier. This is a must read (scroll to bottom of page).

The Hokuli'a developers will appeal to the Hawai'i Supreme Court, but the court order halting construction will remain in effect for now. The development was challenged by the Protect Keopuka 'Ohana, a group of Hawaiian cultural practitioners and descendants of Hawaiians buried at the site, along with a farmer, some small-business owners and environmentalists.

The Ford Foundation has awarded $100,000 for Hawaiian Community Assets Inc., a nonprofit organization seeking to help get Hawaiians back on the land through homeownership counseling, credit counseling and financial assessments. HCA was set up as part of the fulfillment of Bank of America's federally mandated commitment to provide $150 million in lending to Native Hawaiians — based on their previous lending discrimination and redlining — which they have largely reneged on. HCA was originally supposed to set up a CDFI bank to serve Hawaiians, but never got that off the ground. Then they decided to focus on a mortgage lending operation, but as far as I could tell it wasn't any different from any of the others in Hawaii, in terms of providing loans to Hawaiians who might not be able to qualify from other lenders, and it apparently is no longer operating now anyway. I understand that HCA has gone through almost a million dollars already, and has very little to show for it. So frankly I'm rather cynical about this, and not sure if this Ford Foundation money will be well spent, but I hope Kehau and Blossom can manage to do something useful with the funds to help get Hawaiians on the land.


Posted: Wed - October 8, 2003 at 07:39 AM    
   
 
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Published On: Dec 27, 2005 10:14 PM
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