For The Maui News
Twenty years ago, Maui residents Blossom Feiteira and Kehaulani Filimoeatu experienced firsthand what it was to be shut out from affordable housing.
After 30 years on the Hawaiian Home Lands waitlist, they had gotten their names
called in the late ’90s for a residential lease award. It took 30 years to wait and less than 30 minutes for a mortgage lender to tell them not enough income, poor credit, no savings. You do not qualify.
Feiteira and Filimoeatu could have easily given in to hopelessness and given up. Instead, they turned this moment of despair into opportunity.
They created Hawaiian Community Assets, a nonprofit housing counseling agency focused on preparing local families for homeownership. They formed partnerships to bring federal resources to the state for investment of public dollars into infrastructure, coordinated with developers to build homes families could afford, and worked with banks to qualify community members for mortgages.
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