Aloha mai kākou,

I’m writing to you not just as the founder of Kalanianaʻole Development, but as a fellow Native Hawaiian beneficiary — someone who has been on the DHHL waitlist, someone who knows the weight of waiting, and someone who has spent more than thirty years working to build affordable homes for our people.

Throughout my career, my kuleana has remained the same: to make sure Native Hawaiians have places to live, raise families, and thrive on our own ʻāina. That commitment has guided the more than 1,000 units I’ve helped develop across Hawaiʻi, and it guides this project as well.

Some have raised questions about my past professional work with Director Kali Watson. We both spent years working in affordable housing long before his appointment to DHHL — serving the same families, facing the same challenges, and working toward the same mission of returning Hawaiians to the land. That shared history is not influence; it is simply the reality of a small field where Native Hawaiians have long worked to serve our lāhui.

And it is important to be clear: all decisions about the Prince Kūhiō Gateway are made solely by the DHHL Commission, in open, public meetings. No individual — including the Director — has the authority to approve or advance a project on their own.

The Gateway represents a new kind of model — a Native Hawaiian–led, income-generating project donation designed to strengthen the Hawaiian Homes Trust.

Twenty-two point seven acres in ʻEwa will undergo environmental review, planning, and site readiness work. The property will be held under a lease, and at the end of that lease term, the entire site will be gifted to DHHL at no cost.

During the lease, Kalanianaʻole Development will pay ground lease to DHHL and share project profits, ensuring that long-term revenue flows directly to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries and homestead communities.

This model creates income now and expands the Trust later — increasing DHHL’s land holdings without requiring DHHL to purchase, prepare, or finance the property.

It does not take from our people.
It gives to our people — in revenue today and land tomorrow.
And it keeps giving long into the future.

For more than a century, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act has existed for one purpose: to rebuild our lāhui by restoring Native Hawaiians to the land and empowering us to determine our own future. But that promise has been limited by decades of underfunding and political neglect.

We cannot wait for the State to solve this for us.
To fulfill Prince Kūhiō’s vision, we must build models of economic self-sufficiency that support housing, infrastructure, and opportunity for generations.

The Gateway is one step toward that vision — a step where beneficiaries lead, where ʻāina eventually becomes DHHL land, and where the benefits flow back to Native Hawaiian families across Hawaiʻi. It is a way of activating the very law Prince Kūhiō left us: rebuilding our lāhui through self-determination and self-sustaining resources.

Me ke aloha ʻāina,
Patti Ann Tancayo
Founder, Kalanianaʻole Development