05-24-2017, 09:06 AM
MarkD,
What you see here on Puna Web is just a microcosm of Hawaii at large, in the sense that, whatever is posted, is done with a given world-view and an objective in mind. Prof. Chang's paper is in the same vein. The drive to open up leasehold lands came largely from individual home-owners who were facing huge jumps in their lease rates that they were completely powerless to prevent.
The standing fiction at the time was that the lease rates were "renegotiated" - where the "negotiation" was "here's your new rate, pay-up or sell out to someone who will..." (kind of reminds me of Bruce Willis' attitude toward negotiation in The Fifth Element). The fiction was also that leasehold land allowed individuals to purchase a home at a lower cost: that might work for the first buyer, but subsequent sales seldom, if ever, took into account the potential rise in annual rents as the term of the lease approached its end date (and, in fact, some condo lease contracts turned ownership of the units back to the landowner at the end of the lease with no compensation to the unit "owners").
The bottom line was that the owner had absolutely no power in the negotiation (other than political power to change the system). And a sufficient number of home owners were able to get the attention of the legislature, only when the lease terms ended on a massive number of units in Hawaii Kai and elsewhere in the Honolulu area. (I'm not an advocate for either side here - I smelled a rat with leasehold when I first heard about it and wouldn't touch a leasehold property on a bet - and paid a higher price for a lesser house. The leasehold buyers were foolish and irresponsible for signing/purchasing such unfavorable contracts - the landowners were pushing for all they could get and made the mistake of "renegotiating" a lot of leases at one time and thus generated the backlash that deprived them of their lands - at market prices.) But Prof. Chang is, as far as I am concerned, blowing smoke, trying to find a nefarious villain in the C-F that is Hawaiian politics - where I think there was plenty of blame to be shared by all concerned.
What you see here on Puna Web is just a microcosm of Hawaii at large, in the sense that, whatever is posted, is done with a given world-view and an objective in mind. Prof. Chang's paper is in the same vein. The drive to open up leasehold lands came largely from individual home-owners who were facing huge jumps in their lease rates that they were completely powerless to prevent.
The standing fiction at the time was that the lease rates were "renegotiated" - where the "negotiation" was "here's your new rate, pay-up or sell out to someone who will..." (kind of reminds me of Bruce Willis' attitude toward negotiation in The Fifth Element). The fiction was also that leasehold land allowed individuals to purchase a home at a lower cost: that might work for the first buyer, but subsequent sales seldom, if ever, took into account the potential rise in annual rents as the term of the lease approached its end date (and, in fact, some condo lease contracts turned ownership of the units back to the landowner at the end of the lease with no compensation to the unit "owners").
The bottom line was that the owner had absolutely no power in the negotiation (other than political power to change the system). And a sufficient number of home owners were able to get the attention of the legislature, only when the lease terms ended on a massive number of units in Hawaii Kai and elsewhere in the Honolulu area. (I'm not an advocate for either side here - I smelled a rat with leasehold when I first heard about it and wouldn't touch a leasehold property on a bet - and paid a higher price for a lesser house. The leasehold buyers were foolish and irresponsible for signing/purchasing such unfavorable contracts - the landowners were pushing for all they could get and made the mistake of "renegotiating" a lot of leases at one time and thus generated the backlash that deprived them of their lands - at market prices.) But Prof. Chang is, as far as I am concerned, blowing smoke, trying to find a nefarious villain in the C-F that is Hawaiian politics - where I think there was plenty of blame to be shared by all concerned.