Hawaiʻi taxpayers spent $716,000 to build 20 tiny homes on the grounds of Kalihi's Cedar Church, only to sell the entire project back to the church last September for a single dollar. The deal came after state officials found the work was done without a written contract spelling out who was responsible for the units, their costs, or their upkeep.
The housing units were installed at the Kalihi church in August 2024, according to Honolulu Civil Beat, as part of Governor Josh Green's Kauhale Initiative, a push to build small-home villages for homeless residents statewide. Civil Beat reports that the state sold the 20 tiny homes to the church, a Korean congregation, for $1 last September. Prometheus Construction, the contractor on the project, donated more than $600,000 in labor and materials, per the same outlet.
No Contract, No Clear Accountability
The project moved forward without a contract defining the church's responsibilities, operating requirements, costs, ownership rights or liability, Civil Beat reported. Hawaiʻi Public Radio similarly reported that the state spent $716,000 on the project as a whole, but the work was done without a contract in place. After state officials found deficiencies at the site, they initially demanded the church either return the 20 units or pay $20,000 apiece to buy them — a total of $400,000 — before ultimately settling on the $1 transfer, per the Civil Beat account.
Hawaiʻi Public Radio also reported that the state audit flagged improperly connected units that led to a risk of electrocution. That finding is part of a broader state audit that identified nearly $13.7 million in questionable and possibly unauthorized payments tied to the Kauhale Initiative, the station reported. KITV, however, cautioned that the $13.7 million represents questioned payments, not a determination that all of the money was improperly spent or lost, according to the station's reporting.
Life Inside the Cedar Church Units
Evelyn Ordoñez Aguinaldo has lived in one of the Cedar Church units since it was installed in August 2024. She told Civil Beat she pays $600 a month for her unit, including utilities. Aguinaldo said there are no caregivers on site, and that many of the residents struggle with mobility and mental health issues, the outlet reported.
Those accounts, drawn from one resident's experience, were not generalized to every person living at the site in the available reporting. The arrangement stands in contrast to the roughly $500-a-month rent goal that a 2025 report described for Kauhale projects statewide, according to U.S. News & World Report.
How Cedar Church's Costs Compare
Civil Beat's reporting put Cedar Church's per-unit cost at around $30,000, far below other HomeAid Hawaiʻi-built projects it examined — $1.2 million for 20 units at Hoʻokaho Leo and $2 million for 20 units at Weinberg Village, an average of $80,000 per unit. HomeAid Hawaiʻi, which has said it produced 1,079 Kauhale units in 2024 including 273 for Oʻahu and Maui, disputes the comparison; the organization states on its own site that its Kauhale projects averaged $120,900 per unit.
Other figures illustrate just how widely Kauhale costs have swung across the state. U.S. News & World Report found the operating cost at the off-grid Middle Street Kauhale ran $8,629 per bed, and the evaluation's lead author estimated that connecting that village to sewer, water and electric systems would cut annual operating costs by $250,000 to $300,000. A separate Honolulu Star-Advertiser figure, cited by Civil Beat, put the production cost of HomeAid Hawaiʻi's 100-square-foot homes at $16,000 apiece.
State Program's Broader Numbers
The Statewide Office on Homelessness and Housing Solutions states that 25 Kauhale projects built under the Green Administration now total 896 active beds that have served more than 2,100 formerly homeless individuals, and that the program saves taxpayers more than $26 million annually in system costs. Those figures, published by the Statewide Office on Homelessness and Housing Solutions, speak to the initiative's statewide scale even as the Cedar Church project drew scrutiny over its contracting and safety record.
