Casino plan underscores worsening problems with homesteading program
This fall, as the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands faced mounting criticism over its handling of a century-old program to return Native Hawaiians to their ancestral lands, top officials asked their staff to come up with bold solutions.
The Star-Advertiser and ProPublica had reported in October that DHHL was failing to meet a crushing demand for housing. Under state law, anyone who is at least half Hawaiian and 18 or older is considered a beneficiary of a state-controlled land trust and entitled to get a homestead in a “prompt and efficient manner.” The department had developed just 3,300 residential lots statewide since 1995, though, while its residential waitlist ballooned to 23,000. If DHHL continued at the same pace, it would take 182 years to accommodate the so-called waitlisters, some of whom have waited for decades, the news organizations reported.
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/12/24/hawaii-news/casino-plan-underscores-worsening-problems-with-homesteading-program/
