Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 6, Number 10, 1 October 1989 — Self-help project homes finished [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Self-help project homes finished

By Christine Valles Grants Specialist On Saturday morning, Sept. 2, seven families celebrated the completion of seven new homes in the Wai'anae Kai Homestead. This was not an ordinary celebration. After all, the Governor was there, OHA Trustee Frenchy DeSoto was there, and three television stations were there. But then, these are not ordinary houses and these are definitely not ordinary families. Lily and Victoria Campbell, Mary and Junior Gomez, Violet and Henry Hee, Gavin and Frances Kaimana, William and Maile Kalama, Anthony and Alina Kea, and Alvin and Mytilene Mokulehua with the help of family members, friends and lots of sweat built these houses themselves. In the first ever self-help housing project on Hawaiian Homestead Land these families spent almost every weekend for 10 months hammering, sawing, measuring, pounding, lifting, painting and sweating. Always sweating. As one new homeowner put it, these houses are worth about $35,000 in materials and about $100,000 in sweat. The self-help housing technique is simple. Everyone works together, as a team, helping eaeh other to build eaeh house. The families named themselves the Laulima Pono Self-Help Team to reflect the spirit of cooperation. When explaining how the families worked on eaeh other's house, not just on their own, Frances Kaimana said, "1 don't think of this as just my house, I think of it as our house." Obtaining the funding and technical expertise for this project was also an example of cooperation. With a grant from the Administration for Native Americans and additional funding of its

own, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs contracted with the Self-Help Housing Corporation of Hawai'i (formerly the O'ahu Self-Helping Housing Corp.) to administer the project. All the administrative costs for the project were paid through OHA so the families did not have to

bear any of these costs. The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the Bank of Hawai'i, the Farmers Home Administration, the Housing Finanee and Development Corp. and Honsador also contributed to the accomplishment of these families.

Homesteaders Gavin and Frances Kaimana stand before the home they built themselves

through the self-help housing project. (Photo by Christine Valles)