not everyone is sold

development has been slowed by the glacial pace of the county approval process.

In addition to expedited approval, Savio said that increasing density reduces land cost. He applauds the county’s decision to allow more ‘ohana units, or accessory dwelling units (ADUs). But he thinks the county should add some conditions to those ADU permits.

Permitting ADUs increases the value of the parcel, pushing up the cost of land, he said. He suggests the county sell the right to build an ADU and put the proceeds into the affordable housing fund. By adding that cost, the land value wouldn’t be forced upwards. Or they could predicate the ADU permits on an agreement that they would be rented or sold to locas at below market rate,

Savio’s goal is to sell homes at about half the current market rate. Buyers are selected by lottery. He ties the sale price of each home to a percentage of median income, sometimes as low as 20 percent, but typically closer to 100 percent, and he wants his buyers to do the same when they sell their home—although that isn’t always a legal requirement of the sale.

To achieve that low price point, there’s a lot Savio doesn’t want to pay for.

“I’m 100 percent affordable, so I go to the county and I say, ‘Hey, all of your requests for off-site improvements, take them away,’” he told the group of potential buyers in Kihei. “I refuse to spend my people’s money to repair a bridge that the county should have repaired, or to are the proper width, having curbs and gutters.” unless they are owner occupied.

“My goal is to get local people who live here and work here into ownership. I don’t give a damn about the mainland buyer,” Savio told a group of about 50 at an October event promoting Koa Waena, one of his proposed projects in Kihei. To that end, he cuts costs at every step.

“Lumber and building materials are always going to be expensive here,” said Savio. “But you can do single-wall construction and formica counters instead of marble or granite.” pave a road that the county should have paved.”

One variable Savio and his company have control over is profit margin. He pledges to take a maximum profit of five percent and swears he’s fine if that margin shrinks because of cost overruns.

This “play my way or I’ll walk away” attitude hasn’t won him many friends in government. “I do not do well with the government or the county,” he said. “I get into a meeting and they say they want to assess something and I just blow up.”

Whether Savio’s plan is a good deal or not depends upon who you talk to. Some planning officials, community activists, environmentalists, and neighbors aren’t sold. They say he demands too many concessions and that his proposed projects, most of which are located in Kihei, will make traffic and flooding issues worse.

“We regularly object to those exemptions being granted because these communities still deserve these amenities,” said Maui County Planning Director Michele McLean. “They need to be livable. It’s what makes a community a community—having sidewalks, having landscaping, having streets that

Rather than eliminate those amenities, she would like to see the county subsidize them. “If [builders] have to ask for those exemptions for it to pencil out,” she said, “then it’s a matter of talking to the developer and finding out how the government can contribute in another way so that this can still be a complete community.”

“What they’re doing is they’re using affordable housing to kind of get through the red tape and get it done,” said David Dorn, whose Save Kihei website opposes Savio’s projects, largely because he believes they will make stormwater flooding in the area worse.

“He’s pretty arrogant,” Dorn said of Savio. “He says ‘Everywhere is a flood zone. You just get flood insurance and problem solved.’ But it’s not just a problem for his guys, it’s all the neighbors.”

“They buy low cost land, because it’s wetlands, and then they get all these concessions,” said Dorn. “And then they don’t want to contribute to local infrastructure like parks, roads, sidewalks—any of the things that normal people are required to do.”

Savio is surprised by the community resistance, and insists his motivation is to help working families stay on Maui. “Everything I do, every concession I get from the county,” he said, “is about reducing price.”

Betsey Stockton was born into slavery in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1798. She was given as a gift to the Reverend Ashbal Green, president of Princeton College. Green allowed her access to books and brought her to night classes. In 1817, when she was 19 years old, he emancipated her.

She immersed herself in theological studies. In 1822, Stockton set sail on a boat bound for Hawai‘i. She was the first Black female missionary sent overseas and, upon arrival, likely the first Black woman in Hawai‘i.

After being sent to Lahaina, Stockton opened a school for maka‘āinana (working people) on the site that is now Lahainaluna School. She gained acclaim as an educator and remained on Maui until 1825, when she was reassigned to teach Native American students in Canada.

Stockton’s story is unique and her life was groundbreaking, but she’s part of a rich tapestry of Black people who came to the islands beginning more than two centuries ago.

The first documented Black person in Hawai‘i was a man known as Mr. Keaka‘ele‘ele, or Black Jack. According to historical records, he was living on O‘ahu before Kamehameha I conquered the island in 1796, and eventually served as a sailmaster, advisor, and interpreter for Kamehameha II.

Others—including many emancipated slaves—would follow, often on whaling ships. Once in Hawai‘i, they found their dark skin was no longer a hindrance. They met a refreshingly welcoming environment where they could be more than laborers or ser vants. They could be business owners, artists, educators, lawyers, politicians, and diplomats.

By Jacob Shafer

There was pushback. At the turn of the 20th century, the notion of bringing Black workers to the plantations was met with skepticism and hostility by some, including the editorial board of The Maui News, which wrote, “They should only be brought in limited numbers at first, and every plantation which uses them should also secure the services of a white man from the south who knows and understands Negroes, and leave their management largely in his hands.”

Still, relative to other places, Black people came to be treated as something close to equals. They met with less bigotry and more aloha.

That’s still true today. As Dr. Nitasha Sharma, professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University told KHON, “There’s something that Hawai‘i offers that is very unique. What people might be running from or wanting an alternative from is the ongoing legacy in everyday structures of racism that Black people have faced for hundreds of years in the United States. People aren’t denigrated for their Africanness or Blackness in Hawai‘i. People are granted more economic opportunities. African Americans in Hawai‘i have the highest per capita income of Black people in any state.”

Today, according to the most recent Census data, only 1.9 percent of Hawai‘i’s population is Black. And, certainly, racism persists. Because they represent such a small minority, many Black people in Hawai‘i say it can be hard to express and maintain their cultural identity.

But there’s a reason Black people have been drawn here for hundreds of years. Including a man from Kenya who—though he didn’t know it at the time—would change the arc of history.

A Groundbreaking Legacy

In 1959, a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama arrived in Honolulu and became the first African foreign student to study at the University of Hawaii. He earned a BA in economics at UH.

More significantly, he met a young woman named Ann Dunham, and they had a child: Barack Hussein Obama Jr.

The elder Obama didn’t stick around to raise his son and eventually died of injuries sustained in a car accident at the age of 46.

His son remained on O‘ahu through high school before leaving to attend Columbia and Harvard universities, working as a community organizer in Chicago, serving in the Illinois state legislature and U.S. Senate, and, finally, becoming the first Black President of the United States.

That’s the part history will remember. Obama broke the presidential color barrier. But equally important to us is that he’s a local boy, a product of the islands.

Obama has acknowledged his deep ties to Hawai‘i on many occasions. This may be his most poignant quote.

“No place else could have provided me with the environment, the climate, in which I could not only grow but also get a sense of being loved,” he said in a 2004 speech on O‘ahu. “There is no doubt that the residue of Hawai‘i will always stay with me, and that it is a part of my core, and that what’s best in me, and what’s best in my message, is consistent with the tradition of Hawai‘i.”

Further reading…

“And They Came: A Brief History and Annotated Bibliography of Blacks in Hawai‘i”

by Miles M. Jackson

“African African Americans in Hawaii: A Search for Identity”

by Ayin Adams

Oral Histories of African Americans Transcribed by Kathryn Takara; available upon request from the University of Hawai‘i at Monoa

“African Americans in Hawaii” by Molentia

D. Guttman and Ernest Gold