Honolulu, HI — The Sovereign Council of Hawaiian Homestead Associations (SCHHA) has scheduled a Roundtable with Lieutenant Governor Josh Green on avoiding homelessness on Hawaiian Home Lands, through basic and common sense foreclosure prevention processes.

“There is an invisible crisis brewing on our trust lands that threatens too many families with eviction, adding to the overall Hawaii crisis of homelessness,” said Robin Puanani Danner, SCHHA Chairman. “This roundtable will engage our Lieutenant Governor in meaningful dialogue to share simple solutions that are common for all other Hawaii citizens, yet denied to native Hawaiians by state government in mitigating foreclosures.”

The SCHHA Governing Council with elected representatives from Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Molokai and Hawaii Island are charged with moving policy priorities adopted by SCHHA members, one of which is to bring forward solutions that maintain satisfactory risk levels for Lenders of Last Resort like the DHHL loan portfolio while helping struggling families to restructure loan repayments and stay in their homes.

“We have an expert team of homesteaders and partners that specialize in the lending and housing market, and we didn’t have to dig very far to identify very easy, very low risk actions to keep families in their homes,” Danner remarked. “Every-time a native Hawaiian family is evicted, you add to the waitlist, you add to homelessness and you add to the instability of children in these families – totally avoidable. Loan delinquencies are not a sign of poor character, as a former banker, I can tell you, the vast majority of them are a sign of either a major life impacting event, a tough economy, or a loan servicer that is unaware of amazing and proven techniques called mitigations.”

The Roundtable with Lieutenant Governor Green and SCHHA Executive Leaders is scheduled for October 15 at the State Capitol. SCHHA recommendations on preventing homelessness for native Hawaiians is part of a larger technical amendments bill SCHHA is calling for entitled the “Hawaiian Lands in Hawaiian Hands Act of 2020” in the next legislative session, marking 100 years since the enactment of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920.

“We are engaged, very focused at SCHHA to bring reasonable government reforms to bear on the lives of our people,” said Sybil Lopez, SCHHA Vice Chairman. “We must do our part in working with our elected state legislators to advance homestead and waitlist well-being, it’s time to prosper.”

SCHHA was founded in 1987 and is the oldest and largest self-governing federation of homestead associations comparable to self-governing tribes on the continent and Alaska. The HHCA established a land trust with 203,000 acres to be distributed for homes, ranches, farms and mercantile businesses to native Hawaiians defined in the HHCA.

For more information on the SCHHA Roundtable, contact info@hawaiianhomesteads.org.