Hawai’i Governor Neil Abercrombie
Hawaii State Capitol Building Hand Delivered
Honolulu Hawaii February 22, 2011
Aloha, Governor Abercrombie
I welcome you back to Paradise,
and believe it is my duty, as a citizen, to furnish you with this information for your consideration, as to the propriety of exercising executive oversight on behalf of .the people of Hawai’i.
The Hawaii Public Housing Authority residential site known as Kalakaua Homes, on Kalakaua Avenue walking distance from Waikiki, has the potential to be a model Public Housing Project for America.
I am a seventy four year old retired litigation lawyer from Albuquerque, now living in a HUD seniors residential facility across the street from Kalakaua Homes, known as Kalakaua Vista, operated by Prudential.
I eat lunch Monday thru Friday at the Meals On Wheels Nutrition Center at Kalakaua Homes HPHA site, sponsored by Lanakila Meals on Wheels pursuant to a contract between HPHA and LANAKILA PACIFIC
BACKGROUND
I. There is ongoing controversy, which has just reached a critical point involving LANAKILA PACIFIC, the parent of Lanakila Meals on Wheels, and HPHA’s Kalakaua Homes.
II. This is a relatively small matter, itself, with enormous long range potential for WIDESPREAD good, if resolved with wisdom and aloha.
III. Thus far, wisdom is not on the scene.
For about a year, I have been attending monthly Board Meetings of HPHA on School Street along with a significant group of seniors who eat lunch at the Lanakila Meal Site at Kalakaua Homes. Most are also residents at Kalakaua Homes. All are interested, concerned seniors with the impediments and disabilities that are part of that station in life.
It is not simple or easy for us to make the monthly trek by bus to the Board Meetings. This story is pure Hawai’iana, in my opinion.
(I first discovered Hawaii about 1970 on my way to Micronesia to set up The Micronesian Legal Services Program, funded by the US Office of Economic Opportunity. When I saw Hawaii, I resolved right then to retire in Hawaii. I have lived in Honolulu for the past ten years.)
Our repeated trips to the HPHA Board meetings have been necessitated by the fact that none of the seniors have a legal representative, and my Hawaii Bar License (#1505) was suspended a few years ago when it suddenly became impossible financially for me to pay the Bar Dues.- So we keep going and we talk story.
The HPHA Board has expressed concern and support for what the seniors are asking, but recognizes that there are legal issues. So, at the Board meeting on September 12, 2010 the HPHA board through its chairman asked me if I would investigate this situation that keeps coming back to the Board, because of friction between Lanakila Meals On Wheels management staff and Kalakaua Homes management staff. I agreed to voluntarily furnish my legal analysis, as an experienced, but (now) unlicensed, legal expert in the field of contracts.
I presented the First Part of my three-part report at the October meeting.
After this written report was presented – as all information offered to the Board has had to be presented- in the course of a 3 minute statement at the beginning of the Board meeting, during the segment known as “Public Testimony”, the matter was placed on the agenda for November.
Denise Wise, the new Housing Director for HPHA, from the mainland, was also assigned by the Board to investigate the matter and bring her recommendations in October. Because of the configuration of Board Meetings, it is not realistic for a senior, including me, to arrive at 8:00 a.m. and remain until after 3:00p.m., on the off chance that someone might ask them to speak, so all the seniors returned to the Meals On Wheels meal site for lunch in October before Ms. Wise spoke, if she did speak, as instructed in September by the Board.
To my surprise, no one ever contacted me to share information or discuss ideas or otherwise. I was not asked to attend the November Board meeting, and none of the seniors, or myself, received any information or contact about that meeting or the “follow up” that we were led to believe, at the October meeting, would be taking place.
We did learn indirectly that the Board had scheduled testimony from the property manager at Kalakaua Homes, Jan Misuzawa, and also her assistant, as part of the agenda for February 2011. So the usual group of seniors from Kalakaua Homes, and those from the Meals on Wheels meal site, attended the February meeting by bus. The two witnesses who were to be questioned were present throughout the meeting, -for the first time ever. No questions were asked of them, and no testimony was taken. No explanation was offered as to their presence or the failure to question. Because of the announced “testimony” I remained for the entire meeting.
This has been a lengthy exercise in frustration, with an appearance of disrespect for this sincere intelligent group of seniors, in their efforts, at significant personal cost, to improve an unsatisfactory situation at their residential site - and at the nutrition center maintained there by Lanakila Pacific MEALS ON WHEELS.
Much of the course of this laborious, and thus far fruitless, effort should be reported in the HPHA Board Meeting Minutes for the past 12 months.
My request to you:
If you think this situation merits your attention, please review the following summary of my findings and observations concerning this:
A. About ten years ago HPHA and LANAKILA PACIFIC entered into a self-renewing annual lease covering a space at Kalakaua Homes Residential Housing Facility, located in and on property originally built out by the Federal Government as housing for returning GI’s after WWII.
The subject space is just makai of the elevators in the Paoakalani Building, on the ground floor. It includes a large space suitable for dining, recreation, lectures, demonstrations, exercise and dance classes etc. (all of which are part of the nutrition center program).
The space includes a kitchen, storage space and a small-enclosed garden patio outside its main entrance.
B. This space has a potential million-dollar value for Lanakila and also for HPHA, as a major focal point for what they are each accomplishing.
Both organizations operate for the benefit of the public, and are run by “the people.” This, now long-standing ugly, petty dispute is causing historic harm by preventing what could be a brilliant example of public housing and charitable giving at their best.
C. The Lanakila Nutrition Site Group Leader is at the center of this tempest in a teapot. Laura Santiago, the Group Leader of the nutrition center/meal site is, herself, a senior who will be seventy this year. What she has accomplished at this site is a work of art, in the best sense. She has created the opportunity here to bring public housing, charitable giving, and a concern for the elderly together into a favorable, successful, impressive window for public viewing and enthusiastic support while fully respecting the value and humanity of seniors.
D. Laura has been the Group Leader since the meal site opened ten years ago. She had about a dozen clients at the beginning, and quickly diligently built that to sixty satisfied seniors.
Her position with Lanakila is part time, but she devotes herself full time to thinking and planning ways to improve the lives of the seniors that eat there; and her example of selfless, honest, sincere, even handed leadership has enabled the meal site clients to bond into a kind of wonderful ‘country club for seniors’ utilizing this now perfect space.
The morale and camaraderie are inspiring on a daily basis. As the meal site grew it became a magnet for maintenance workers at the housing site to drop by for coffee and say “Aloha.” It also attracted a few elderly motivated, but emotionally unqualified, suitors for Laura. She has handled it all with grace, charity and efficient management skill. HOWEVER, the nutrition center operation contrasted noticeably with the atmosphere in the site management office for Kalakaua Homes. The meal site exudes aloha. The site management office has no aloha.
SEE HRS 5-7.5 _The Aloha Spirit Law. THE ALOHA SPIRIT LAW http://hawaiianlanguage.com/alohaspiritlaw.html
E. This situation created hostility on the part of site management toward Laura and the meal site, which then generated friction that became a nuisance for Lanakila management, because the housing site manager began making unfavorable unverified reports to Lanakila management about Laura, and her performance, based on uninvestigated (false) complaints from a disgruntled unbalanced unsuccessful suitor, resident at Kalakaua Homes, who was unable to get a date with Laura. EXAMPLE -He reported to the residential manager that Laura was allowing gambling at the meal site. This was, in turn, reported by this HPHA site manager to Laura’s supervisor at Lanakila, resulting in an inquiry, a warning and instructions to stop playing cards as recreation and morale building social activity during the morning hours before lunch at the meal site.
This is just one typical example of several similar unnecessary incidents, all of which upset the happy routine that had been facilitating the spirit of aloha and positive energy at the nutrition center, based on Laura’s initiative, example and generous investment of her private time and financial resources to plan activities, provide outings, and ‘prizes’ for the seniors who were winners, plus doing her normal duties.
For the first several years, Laura conducted annual garage sales at the meal site to raise money for outings, birthday parties, going away parties, and memorial service celebrations, as appropriate – on her own time and initiative. She solicited donations, and then supervised sales where seniors could acquire desired items at bargain prices.
This volunteer effort on her part raised thousands of dollars for activities in the first few years, while there were no complaints (and no compliments) from outside the meal site.
Then, this past year (2010) the housing manager at Kalakaua Homes disallowed the annual garage sale in the wake of the tempest in a teapot brewing between her and Laura. She unilaterally created, with assistance from HPHA staff, and a new hire supervisor from the mainland at Lanakila, an ultra vires illegal agreement terminating, without approval, the ten-year-old exclusive use lease from HPHA to Lanakila on the space.
Then she and the ‘new hire at Lanakila’ at a public meeting on October 8, 2010 (conducted behind locked doors) at Kalakaua Homes management office, bullied and disrespected Laura, in the presence of a number of interested people (including me) in the course of a completely unexpected announcement that the door key to the space being used by the nutrition center would be taken from Laura, and relinquished by Lanakila on December 1, 2010. Thereafter, Laura was told, a representative of Lanakila must come to the Kalakaua Homes Management office daily before 8:00 am, to pick up - and then return the key immediately after 12 noon.
This October 8, meeting was scheduled on the day that Laura had requested to have her annual garage sale; - instead she was told at the meeting, to her surprise, to reschedule the sale within the next few days (which she tried to explain would be impossible) and to begin clearing the entire space for delivery to Kalakaua Homes by December 1.
This meeting was set for October 8, after much “strategic” maneuvering, by staff at both charitable organizations, some of which is laid out in the HPHA Board minutes for September through January of 2011, especially in the 3 part written report from me to the Board.
This unethical, unauthorized illegal corporate action by the 2 charitable organizations all took place within the 3 weeks after the HPHA Board had asked me to evaluate the legal status of the contractual relationship, and to then, at the October Board meeting suggest appropriate modifications to resolve the unnecessarily unworkable situation that had been the subject of respectful, patient requests to the Board from the group of seniors for over a year.
Laws were broken, opportunities were lost, and the public interest was ignored in this private coup de etat during the time that a preliminary evaluation of applicable legal principles was taking place.
As far as I can tell it happened because of a vendetta against Laura Santiago, Leader of the Lanakila meal site, by Jan Misuzawa Manager of Kalakaua Homes.
The interested seniors (including me) were led to believe that these serious issues would be addressed in a serious, responsible manner at the February HPHA Board meeting through public testimony, but despite the presence of Janice Misuzawa and her assistant throughout that meeting – for the first time ever- the entire matter was ignored.
A copy of part III of my three-part report to the HPHA Board of Directors is attached, and should also be contained in the minutes of the HPHA Board meetings at which the three segments were originally presented, in writing.
Sincerely,
Robert C. Hanna
1628 Kalakaua Ave # 404
Phone 626-5851
