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Hawaii broke ground Thursday on what the Hawaii Public Housing Authority calls the largest public housing redevelopment in state history, launching a 15-year transformation of the 75-year-old Mayor Wright Homes site into a 10-tower, mixed-income community with more than 2,400 homes, Hawaii News Now reported.
State officials joined the Hawaii Public Housing Authority and developer Highridge Costa on October 22 to start the first phase of the 15-acre project in Honolulu's Kalihi-Palama neighborhood, a site bounded by King Street, Liliha Street, and Vineyard Boulevard near downtown.
The project will multiply the site's housing roughly sevenfold, replacing 364 aging public housing units with a community that mixes replacement public housing, affordable rentals, for-sale condominiums, and commercial space.
Plans call for more than 2,400 rental homes ranging from studios to five-bedroom units, spread across 10 towers, alongside condos for sale and commercial space. More than half of the units will be reserved for tenants earning less than 80 percent of area median income, with later phases expanding to households earning up to 100 percent of AMI - about $150,000 a year for a family of four in Honolulu.
The redevelopment includes four acres of public parks and recreational space and sits within walking distance of the planned Iwilei rail station on the city's Skyline transit line, tying the project into Honolulu's transit-oriented development plans.
Phase 1A carries an estimated cost of $333 million, according to the housing authority. A 2017 state estimate put the full redevelopment at roughly $1.3 billion. The first building is scheduled to open in 2029, with complete buildout expected to take about 15 years.
The project pairs the Hawaii Public Housing Authority with Highridge Costa, a California-based affordable housing developer, under a structure state leaders described as a first-of-its-kind initiative for its scale in Hawaii.
"It's not simply about breaking ground. It is about breaking barriers," said HPHA Executive Director Hakim Ouansafi. "We cannot solve tomorrow's housing challenges by continuing to rely on yesterday's solutions."
"Hawaii is a first in how bold they have stepped forward to create an initiative of this size," said Moe Mohanna, president of Highridge Costa Development Company. "What we are building here is a legacy."
Governor Josh Green framed the project as an investment in stability. "Mayor Wright is central to our solution for housing in this state," he said. "Housing provides health. When people are stable in their housing, they can turn their attentions to the other things, the other challenges in life, education, food security, their actual health care."
Families living at Mayor Wright are being relocated during construction and hold priority to return once replacement units are completed - a commitment that is standard in public housing redevelopment and central to resident support for the plan.
"Public housing should never mean second class housing," Ouansafi said. "Our residents deserve safe, beautiful, modern homes. And communities where poverty is deconcentrated and communities they can be proud of, so they can call it home."
Mayor Wright Homes, built around 1950, has been one of the state's most distressed public housing properties for decades, and planning for its redevelopment has run through multiple governors. The state's 2017 framework established the mixed-income, mixed-finance approach now under construction.
For housing authorities and developers beyond Hawaii, the project is a large-scale test of the mixed-income redevelopment model applied to an entire legacy public housing site. The approach - replacing subsidized units one-for-one while layering in affordable and market-adjacent housing, for-sale product, and commercial space - is designed to deconcentrate poverty and generate cross-subsidy that public housing capital funding alone cannot provide.
The financing stack and phasing will be closely watched. Large mixed-finance redevelopments typically combine low-income housing tax credits, private debt, and public housing capital with federal approval at each stage, and the 15-year timeline means the project will span multiple federal and state administrations.
Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi tied the project to the city's transit buildout, calling the combination of new housing near the Skyline station "historic" and "unprecedented" for affordability. With the Iwilei station planned nearby, the development positions affordable housing residents for transit access that lower-income households often lack.
Groundbreakings are beginnings, not completions, and Mayor Wright's scale makes the delivery risk real: 10 towers, a 15-year buildout, and thousands of relocated households tracking their return rights through each phase. The authority has set up a project site, mayorwrighthomes.com, for updates.
For now, Hawaii can claim momentum on a problem - aging, concentrated public housing - that most states have only started to address at this scale. Whether the model delivers its promise will be measured building by building, starting with the first tower in 2029.
Redevelopments on this scale are assembled in layers. Public housing authorities typically contribute the land through a long-term ground lease, while the developer assembles low-income housing tax credit equity, tax-exempt or conventional debt, and soft funding from state and local sources. Public housing operating subsidy follows the replacement units, keeping them affordable to the same extremely low-income households the site has always served, while the tax credit and market-rate layers carry the construction math for the rest.
Phasing is what makes the arithmetic survivable. By building in stages - starting with the $333 million Phase 1A - the authority and developer can relocate residents in waves, keep financing sized to what each stage can support, and adjust later phases to market conditions, interest rates, and funding availability. The tradeoff is time: a 15-year buildout means some current residents will wait years for their return.
Mayor Wright Homes opened around 1950 as one of the Hawaii Public Housing Authority's largest family developments, and its 364 walk-up apartments housed generations of working families in Kalihi-Palama. Like much of the nation's mid-century public housing stock, the property aged past the point where capital repairs could keep pace, and HUD's chronically underfunded capital needs left the authority with a site that required replacement rather than renovation.
Planning for its future stretched across roughly a decade of feasibility studies, resident meetings, and deal structuring before the state settled on the mixed-income partnership model. That history is part of why state leaders treated Thursday's ceremony as more than ceremonial: getting a project of this size from planning to dirt is the step where most large public housing redevelopments stall.
Authorities with aging family developments face the same math Hawaii did: capital needs far beyond what annual federal funding provides, sites that are dramatically underused relative to their land value, and residents who need modern housing now. The tools Hawaii is using - mixed-finance partnerships, density that cross-subsidizes affordability, phased construction with return rights - are available to most of them, and the Mayor Wright groundbreaking gives the industry a live case study at the largest end of the scale.
The risks are equally instructive. Long timelines strain financing, relocation takes years of resident trust-building, and market conditions will shift across a 15-year buildout. If Hawaii delivers, Mayor Wright becomes the template other high-cost states point to; if it stalls, it joins the list of ambitious redevelopments that never escaped their first phase.
Kalihi-Palama is one of Honolulu's densest and most working-class districts, long home to immigrant communities and the city's core of service workers. The 15-acre site sits close to downtown employment, and the planned Iwilei rail station will put the development on the region's new transit spine. Advocates for transit-oriented development have argued for years that affordable housing belongs exactly here - near jobs and transit - rather than at the urban fringe where land is cheap but opportunity costs are high.
The project's unit mix reflects the neighborhood it serves. Five-bedroom apartments, rare in new construction, are sized for the multigenerational families common in Kalihi. The commercial space and four acres of parks are meant to make the redeveloped site function as a neighborhood center rather than an isolated housing project.
Large redevelopments move when state, county, and private actors align, and Thursday's ceremony displayed that alignment deliberately. The governor framed the project as central to the state's housing strategy, the mayor tied it to the city's transit buildout, the housing authority committed its residents' future to the plan, and the developer took on a 15-year delivery obligation. Each party's incentives differ, but the structure gives each a reason to see the project through its inevitable difficult phases.
That alignment will be tested as phases advance, costs update, and market conditions change. The 2017 estimate of $1.3 billion for the full buildout predates the construction-cost inflation of recent years, and industry watchers expect the eventual figure to be higher - a reality every long-horizon redevelopment must manage through phased financing rather than a single up-front capital stack.
For residents, the promises that matter are concrete: a modern home, a right to return, and a neighborhood that keeps them close to work, school, and family. The coming years will measure the project against exactly those terms.
Thursday's shovels put Hawaii in a small group of states attempting wholesale replacement of a legacy public housing site rather than piecemeal repair. The national deferred-maintenance backlog for public housing runs into the tens of billions of dollars, and federal policy has increasingly steered authorities toward exactly the public-private structures on display in Kalihi-Palama. Hawaii's version is bigger than most - and for that reason, its progress will draw scrutiny from housing officials and developers far beyond the islands.
Hawaii broke ground October 22 on the redevelopment of Mayor Wright Homes, a 15-acre, 75-year-old public housing site in Honolulu's Kalihi-Palama neighborhood - the largest public housing redevelopment in state history.
The Hawaii Public Housing Authority and developer Highridge Costa plan more than 2,400 homes across 10 towers, from studios to five-bedrooms, plus for-sale condos and commercial space.
More than half the units will serve households earning under 80 percent of area median income, with later phases reaching 100 percent of AMI; current residents are being relocated with priority to return.
Phase 1A is estimated at $333 million, with the full project estimated at $1.3 billion in 2017; the first building opens in 2029 and full buildout is expected to take 15 years.
The project is a large-scale test of mixed-income public housing redevelopment, combining replacement public housing with affordable and market-adjacent units near the planned Iwilei rail station.
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