Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 9, 1 September 1995 — OHA Update [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

OHA Update

Housing In planning for the development of the Waimānalo Kūpuna Project, OHA's housing division was preparing in August to issue two requests for proposals (RFP): one for a development consultant, and one for someone to conduct a feasibility and marketing analysis. Housing officer Stephen Morse said the community planning process will also get further underway; he wants to bring Waimānalo elderly and members of the homestead association on a tour of other projects to let them see what a senior living housing project could look like. Morse said OHA's self-help housing coordinator Larry Brynn is helping to devise a master plan for self-help housing that will significantly increase the number of units constructed eaeh year - the target is 100. Morse also wants to bring down self-help costs; his goal is for a family that builds an l,100-square-foot house to not have to shell out more than $350 in monthly mortgage payments. Brynn is looking at two cost-cutting methods: reducing the eonstruction time and reducing the cost of materials. Time ean be cut by establishing pre-fab yards where trusses and wall pan-

els could be assembled. They would then be transported to the house site for the family and volunteers to install. "We want to keep construction time down to somewhere in the area of four to six months - whieh is movin'," Morse says. OHA is communicating with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands about leasing a pareel of land on whieh to set up the first prefab yard, probably in the Kawaihae area. Cutting the cost of materials would take a more long-range approach. Morse explains that lumber, like any other eommodity, undergoes extreme price increases and decreases, and that the key to saving money is buying in bulk when the price is down. That takes storage space, so Morse is exploring the possibility of operating a warehouse in the Pacific Northwest. Education OHA's education division is preparing, with the help of an outside contractor, a directory of state Departmeht of Education resources for Hawaiians. Parents of Hawaiian students facing problems in Hawai'i's public schools will be able to tum to the directory to find out who to eall and what to do. The directory will contain information on subjects ranging from test-

ing to behavioral problems. It will also include a glossary of acronyms so parents and students ean tell the difference between the DOE, the SATs, GED and SCBM. The division recently held a tutorial eonference, whieh education officer Rona Rodenhurst said was beneficial because it brought together people from across the state who do the same thing every day - tutor Hawaiian smdents. 'Aha Kūpuna, OHA's annual convocation of elders, is set for Sept. 28 - Oct. 1 at the Westin Maui. See story below. Internet update Updates to OHA's Native Hawaiian Data Book are now available on OHA's website. The updates include more recent statistics as well as new information and ean be found on OHA's WWW homepage. (http://planet-hawaii.com/oha/index.html) OHA's e-mail address is oha@aloha.net. Other website highlights include up-to-date postings of monthly Ka Wai Ola issues and regular information releases. Internet users ean also use the site to get applications for various OHA programs including Operation 'Ohana and the Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund. If you

want OHA to send an application for a particular program, don't forget to leave a mailing address in your e-mail request. We weleome your comments and questions. If you have a eoneem related to OHA or the Hawaiian community as a whole we would like to hear it. Cyberspace for OHA's website comes courtesy of Hawai'i Online, the state's largest Intemet service provider. They ean bereachedat 533-6981. Culture OHA culmre officer Pikake Pelekai and Trastee Sam Kealoha were recently invited to visit Aotearoa (New Zealand) at the invitation of Dr. Sydney Moko Mead, president of Te Whare Wananga O Awanuiarangi, a Maoii educational instimtion located in Whakatane. They were part of a delegation from Hawai'i invited to participate in a series of educational and cultural symposia with Maori faculty, students and govemment officials. Other participants from Hawai'i included representatives from Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate, Bishop Museum, Windward Community College, and Pā-Ku'i-a-Lua, as well as kūpuna, students and artists.