Frequently Asked Questions

Affordability of housing refers to whether your shelter costs are reasonable and sustainable in comparison to your income and expenses. A person or family should be able to afford housing while still having enough money for other basic needs, such as childcare, food, transportation, and health care.  Affordable housing can be anything from a homeless shelter to a rental to a home that you own.

Hawai'i's standard of affordability is that shelter should cost no more than 30% of a household’s income.

Let's break it down:
Shelter cost includes but not limited to
·      Rent or mortgage
·      Utilities
·      Home insurance (if applicable)
·      Property taxes (if applicable)

For example:
A two-person household earning Hawaiʻi’s average income is $88,181 gross (before taxes) per year. If we use Hawaiʻi’s 30% standard of affordability this household should only be spending:

$88,181 x 30% = $26,454.30

$26,454.30 / 12 mos. = $2204.52

Let's summarize....Based on the information above, approximately $2,200 per month would be considered an affordable shelter cost for the average two-person household in Hawaiʻi.

Being a nonprofit affordable housing developer means that PAL’s goal is not to create profit for shareholders. Instead, our goal is to provide a charitable benefit to the community. Any profit that we make is reinvested into our organization to further our mission. Rather than receiving funds from investors, we receive donations from individuals, foundations and corporations who expect a social return rather than monetary gain. There are no owners of the company. Our organization is led by a board of directors who volunteer their time to guide our company in meeting our mission and finding ways to improve community outreach. Being a nonprofit, our organization is also tax exempt.

We place all of our projects into our Ho’omaluhia Community Land Trust so that they are permanently affordable. Most affordable housing projects return to market rate after 10-20 years, losing all the donations invested in the project. Our projects stay affordable for eight generations and beyond. We honor traditional Hawaiian values of land as sacred: to be stewarded and shared with the community, rather than a commodity for personal financial gain.

When developing our projects, we don’t just plan for affordable housing, we plan for affordable living. True affordability includes all basic needs — food, utilities, transportation, healthcare, and employment. Our projects are designed to make these essential components accessible through location, sustainable architectural design, amenities, education, and service enrichment. We use development concepts that lower construction costs, enable long-term affordability, and enhance community sustainability.

Our goal is to make sure local generational families stay in Hawai’i. Unlike other affordable housing developers we have added priority and preference to our application process so that people from Hawai’i end up in our homes.

We also offer programming to support our tenants on their journey to permanently affordable living. Our Beyond Housing Program, implemented at our rental housing projects, is designed to guide tenants from houselessness to homeownership through supportive services. Providing onsite case management, we refer tenants to social services and develop their life skills in areas like financial literacy and planning, entrepreneurship, and small business management.

Although we use Habitat’s house plans as a model to ensure we can build affordably, we differ from them in that Habitat uses a self-help model. This means that the homebuyers are required to be a part of the home building process and put in a certain amount of hours of sweat-equity through physical labor instead of paying a down payment. At PAL we do all the construction ourselves and your down payment will be determined by your loan terms. Also Habitat only serves households below 80% AMI while PAL serves households below 120% AMI, which includes our middle-income workforce (i.e. teachers, firemen, police officers, union workers).

Download the AMI worksheet here. To determine your household’s area median income:

1. Identify who will make up your household. Who do you plan to have live with you in your home?

2. Add all household wage-earners gross income. That is income before any taxes or other deductions.

3. Total how many individuals (both adults and children) will reside in the household.

4. Once you have those two numbers, locate your household size on the chart above and then locate the closest income limit category to your own household income.

Example: A three generation household - grandmother, son, daughter and granddaughter - want to own a home together. Their household size totals 4 (3 adults + 1 child). The son receives $10,000 of disability, the daughter earns $28,000, while the grandmother earns $32,500 for a total gross annual household income of $70,500. Looking at the AMI chart above, the family falls in the low-income limit category, just below the 80% area median income benchmark.

Kauaʻi County sets yearly “For Sale Limits By Bedroom Count” guidlines and as a non-profit affordable housing developer PAL is restricted to selling homes at no more than 120% AMI.

For example according to the “2022 For Sale Limits by Bedroom Count” a two bedroom home at 120% AMI has a sale price limit of $443,500. So as the developer we could not exceed that sales price to the homeowner.

Leasehold homeownership means that you own the home and enter into a 99-year renewable lease for the land, which is owned by the Hoʻomaluhia Community Land Trust (HCLT). The home can be resold in accordance with the resale guidelines. Learn more about the HCLT here.

We currently do not offer a rent to own program.

Your perpetual homebuyer number does not reflect how many people are ahead of you in line. A number has been given to everyone who has ever applied for affordable housing historically. So, although the number is in the thousands, there are only hundreds of people still actively looking for homes.

We have created a priority and preferences system to ensure that we serve local families. We consider things like years of residency on the island, whether one currently lives or works in the town where the community is located, etc.

In 2019, PAL Hawai'i began the Kauaʻi Affordable Housing Alliance (KAHA) to foster collaboration between all the affordable housing developers on the island. KAHA allows affordable housing developers on Kauaʻi to coordinate resources and explore collaborations with more extensive scope and impact. PAL is also spearheading the initiative to start a revolving fund that will solve the affordable housing crisis on Kauaʻi. This fund will provide easily accessible, risk tolerant loans with low interest rates that will allow developers to build quickly. Learn more about KAHA here.

Once constructed and ready to sell, occupying a PAL Home can be a 6 month - 1 year long process. If you are in immediate need of housing, see Emergency Info.