Caregiver Ervin Contrades is a resident at the 82-unit Courtyards at Waipouli in Kapaʻa on Kauaʻi.
When he first planned to move in with his father and disabled hānai brother, rent for a three-bedroom apartment was $1,800. Slowly, rent increased to where it's at today: about $2,900, not including utilities.
In 2021, Contrades lost his father, and by result, his income.
"Therefore, the end result was we started to fall back on the rent," Contrades said last week, sharing that eviction may be on the horizon.
The property was previously under a 10-year affordability period set by Kaua‘i County Council, but that expired in 2019. Unable to purchase the property, the council urged the state to buy it instead. The Hawaiʻi Housing Finance and Development Corporation explored the idea but didn’t move on it back then.
"It did not proceed any further beyond the preliminary stage," a HHFDC spokesperson said in an email. "The current staff is unaware of why former leadership declined to pursue a purchase of the property four years ago."
Now, the property owners are requesting funding through the HHFDC’s low-income housing tax credit application.
The state agency has financed more than 200 units across four projects on Kauaʻi since last year, including 66 units on Rice Street, the 96-unit Uahi Ridge project, and two ʻEleʻele developments, including the 48-unit Kai Olino project and the Lima Ola project.
The LIHTC application is competitive, HHFDC Interim Executive Director Dean Minakami said last week.
"In recent years, we have been very much oversubscribed, what I mean is we have more applications than we can give awards to," Minakami said.
Of the 27 applications that came in this year, only about a third of those will get funding.
Commonly, in awarding credits, HHFDC considers a project's readiness, financing resources and developer experience.
"We have to follow a process to ensure that our awards are made fairly, and we're very cognizant that these are public funds that we're awarding," Minakami said. "So we have to award them in a fair process and one that provides the most public benefit."
Evaluations are ongoing, and awards should be coming out this summer.
