With new federal cuts looming, legislature must fulfill 100-year promise to Hawaiians

More than 100 years ago, Congress passed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921 — a promise to set aside 200,000 acres of land for Native Hawaiians at $1-a-year leases. For most of the century since, the territory and now state of Hawaiʻi has treated that promise as a suggestion, despite it being federal law and enshrined in the state constitution.

Today, nearly 30,000 Native Hawaiian families sit on a waitlist for what was promised — what is owed. Most have waited decades. Too many have died waiting.

The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, charged with fulfilling that promise, has been criminally underfunded for years, forced to beg the Legislature for money annually with no guaranteed funding source.

Now the federal lifeline is evaporating. The Trump administration’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget would eliminate the Native American Housing Block Grant, which includes the Native Hawaiian Housing Grant — a critical source of funding for DHHL. In Hawaiʻi, that program has helped build or renovate thousands of homes. Cutting it would devastate an already struggling system and push the waitlist even further out of reach.

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act was restitution: partial and imperfect, but legally binding. When Hawaiʻi became a state in 1959, the Legislature didn’t just inherit that obligation — it embedded it into the constitution.

Courts have since made clear that the Legislature has a fiduciary duty to fund DHHL sufficiently to carry out its mission. With Washington turning its back, that duty is no longer just constitutional. It is existential.

Yet the Legislature has throttled DHHL’s ability to deliver with only unpredictable, piecemeal funding. Some point to a one-time $600 million appropriation in 2022. But that was once — and produced only 2,500 lots, largely because DHHL must fund its own infrastructure.

Plans stall. Cycles repeat. The central problem remains: the agency entrusted with a congressional mandate and constitutional obligation has no permanent revenue stream.

This year’s Legislature can begin to right history’s wrongs. Senate Bill 3028 does something long overdue: it gives DHHL a permanent, dedicated revenue stream of up to $60 million per year, funded by restructuring the state’s conveyance tax — a one-time fee paid when property is sold.