Oahu

[Janny3266]

Hey Thanks for the rich history lesson...very, very interesting. Although I have yet to visit (which I hope to do this winter) I have yet to find what you describe as "communities" there (Google Earth)...Yes, progress has wrecked allot of cultures over time and no, I don't expect the government to do much good for any of us any time soon. It's part of the reason I'm throwing in the towel and turning my back on the norm (which is to say I should be planning & investing for retirement) The heck with that, I'm going to Hawaii...if I get a few good years in the sunshine, I'm good!

Oawho...Yes I see Makaha is a bit remote and a bit of drive from most places but I would submit that I curently live in Maine!!! Oahu is roughly 30 mi X 45 mi...I travel at least that in any direction just to retrieve a gallon of milk! I have a convertible I wanted to bring with me but I'm wondering if a scooter might be more practical. Are they common there?

[RebeccaLee86]

Originally Posted by Janny3266

I anticipate a move to Hawaii next year...I'm doing allot research of all the islands, job prospects, friendliness, property prices etc...There are some pretty reasonable condos in the Makaha Valley Plantation area on Oahu...why so cheap as compared to other places??? Can anyone help

I will be moving to Oahu in March at the latest. I'm trying to get an apartment in Makaha Valley Plantation. I've been doing a lot of research too and have even been told by a realtor that since my husband and I are white that we should not move there because it's mostly locals. I think that's the main reason I'd like to live there. I want to be able to make friends with people. I know that I can be pretty naive sometimes but I feel if you show people the respect they deserve, they'll eventually come around. My hubby is in the Army and I've been told that will kind of make life even harder for us, but I'm determined to make the best of it!

I'll keep you posted though! If you move out there before me, feel free to let me know how it goes!

As for one of Hot Cat's responses...I have noticed too that even in the pictures for Makaha Valley Plantation, there were two apartments listed and one was very very nice looking, it had been completely re-done and the other had cabinets hanging from the hinges and it was just...not as nice as the other one.
I'm doing the blind rental thing. Renting through the mail and hoping for the best. I'm pretty much to the point right now though that I don't really mind where we end up as long as I get to be with my hubby!

[RebeccaLee86]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Hmm, two hundred years ago would have been 1808 in Hawaii? The islands would have been consolidated into one kingdom for twenty five years. Kamehameha the First would have been king. He was kinda pro-foreigners since he had gotten cannon from them which helped him consolidate his kingdom. Prior to that he hadn't been winning all that consistently. Cows would have been here for twenty years and horses would have just been introduced, I think. Hawaii would not have had that much interaction with other nations (sailing ship days) but they would have been treated as a sovereign nation. Nobody would have really needed anything from anywhere else (they didn't even know it existed, actually) and they would have everything they needed right here. Not even too many missionaries yet, those folks didn't get too much of a toehold until after Kamehameha's death.

Tourism wasn't always the core of the economy and as it falls, we will all end up doing other things. I'm hoping our economy can diversify and we can make and produce products for ourselves to make our state self-sustainable. We had a big economic drop when sugar went down (that was '95 for my area) and we are just now kinda beginning to get diversified agriculture to start to fill in and almost start to work. The displaced sugar workers were hard workers but they weren't farmers. They were kinda like factory workers working outside. There was a complete lack of farming knowledge, infrastructure, processing, shipping, marketing, etc. We are beginning to see it start to work so hopefully when the tourist jobs go away, the folks will turn to producing food.

Yuppers, I live in Hawaii. Somebody's gotta do it. Mostly I do drafting and draw blueprints for folks to build houses with here. At the moment, I'm drawing up a small dairy barn since the construction industry has pretty much ground to a halt and not that many houses are being built. It does this sort of thing periodically. Last time it got real slow I took up driving a tour bus for awhile. That was fun, but now tourism is down at the same time as construction. The time before when construction slowed way down I did upholstery. This time I'm doing clock repair and I still have a bit of drafting trickling in. Most of the drafting lately has been folks building additions onto their house so their family can move in. That's kinda a comment on the local economy as well.

Actually, I'd like to draft up a couple of small self contained sustainable communities. At the moment our zoning laws don't allow for folks to live and work in small communities, the laws almost enforce bedroom communities. The folks have to drive everywhere and it is harder for folks to actually have "community". It would be nice to have some small communities where everyone can walk to the shops, schools and services, have community areas and have houses with nice friendly front porches within talking distance of the folks walking by on the wide shady sidewalks. Small slow narrow roads (no zooming along on those!) with all garages and carports tucked away out of sight. Lots of benches to sit and overlook statues, viewing spots or just the local park. A community "green" where folks can gather for various events. A "town square" as it were. I'd love to design a couple of small villages like this, mostly so I could live there, too, but, that's just me maybe nobody else sees the lack of this sort of thing.

I would like to respond to this quote in addition to the last one. I know I'm a mainlander (Cali girl born and raised) but, I would just like to say I absolutely love the picture you painted here of your little villages you'd like to establish. I have moved away from Cali (now in AZ until the hubby gets home at which point we'll be moving to Oahu) and I won't go back. I don't like the fast paced life style or how greedy everybody is out there or how dangerous for that matter! We used to have drive by's like once a month at least and drugs and all kinds of problems. I have decided that I don't want to deal with that. I want to move to a small town, where everybody knows everybody else's business. A town where when your kids get in trouble, you know about it before they ever walk through the door. I love the idea of being able to walk to the market or walk to the villiage green or even just sitting about talking with your neighbors. I truely do. I sincerely hope that you are able to build that one day.

[hotzcatz]

At the moment, the "community village" is illegal according to our most of our zoning codes. I'm still at the stage of trying to get folks to think it is a good idea let alone starting building it! I also don't have any budget but hopefully if the idea becomes common, then when folks develop a piece of land they won't automatically sprawl identical houses all over it without any reason for the houses to be there - i.e. no nearby jobs or services. Also at the moment, houses are generally placed on property without much concern with how they will interact with each other and the general community. We used to have these little villages when folks worked at the sugar plantations but all the jobs and services were with the sugar company and folded when sugar left. The economy these new little villages would support would be small and mostly self contained. Folks wouldn't get rich living in the little communities and working within the community but they would hopefully have a good quality of life in things other than money. Those sorts of things our island can generate, the money part is much harder. Building a small community and having it affordable to the folks living in it without having folks coming in with mainland incomes and buying out the local folks is a problem which I don't know the answer to, either, or if it needs to be answered at all. When it isn't answered, though, the affordable houses are bought by folks who don't end up living here which doesn't help the folks here and basically provides second houses or vacation houses to folks who don't need them. Although second houses/vacation houses still need maintenance so there are a few very low end jobs generated taking care of the vacant houses.

When looking at distances on the islands versus distances on the mainland, remember that we don't have the same sort of roads as they do on the mainland. As far as I know, the highest posted speed limit in the state is 55 although I've heard rumors of it being posted at 60 on a portion of one road somewhere. Not that you will frequently be able to go the posted speed limit anyway because of traffic. Especially on Oahu. Most likely if you are living in Makaha you will have to commute to Honolulu for employment. Just driving from Makaha to Honolulu with no traffic is forty five minutes but that almost never happens especially when everyone else is trying to go to Honolulu for work. Figure an hour and a half daily commute each way. Also, our roads aren't in straight lines. To get from Makaha to Honolulu you have to go around Pearl Harbor since there isn't a bridge across it.

The Bus on Oahu is pretty good and a lot of folks have scooters for in town use but not to get from Makaha to Honolulu since I think there are portions where the only road is the highway and scooters (if they are less than 50cc) are not allowed on the highway.

Another possible difference between island life and mainland life is in conversations folks don't generally want to say bad things about anything if they can help it. Since we are an island, and a remote island at that, we have to get along and folks don't want to bad mouth anyone, anything or anyplace if they can help it since word WILL get around. So, if you don't get a glowing report about someone, someplace or something, be very wary and wonder why. I suspect the warnings may not be blunt enough to be perceived as valid warnings to mainland folks, though.

The Realtor seemed pretty blunt, though, about warning the mainland folks to not rent in Makaha yet the warning wasn't taken. It is a lot like telling folks about sharks in the water. Frequently, you can swim at places sharks hang out and nothing will happen but that doesn't mean the sharks aren't there. You tell folks about the sharks, they swim, they get bit, you have to mobilize to help them and then there are lots of unhappy folks and probably unhappy sharks as well. Then another newbie comes along and the whole scenario repeats. It is very discouraging. However, if you tell folks explicitly about the sharks in the water then you upset the folks who live on the beach or have the shark as their amakua, so what can you do?

[Jai Prakash Srivastava]

where are indian hair cutting saloon ? Where we cam buy indian grocerry ?

[hotzcatz]

Not a lot of India presence in Hawaii yet. There is some curry places here and there, but they aren't specifically Indian. I don't know of any of those types of places on the Big Island, perhaps Oahu has one or two?

[RebeccaLee86]

The Realtor seemed pretty blunt, though, about warning the mainland folks to not rent in Makaha yet the warning wasn't taken. It is a lot like telling folks about sharks in the water. Frequently, you can swim at places sharks hang out and nothing will happen but that doesn't mean the sharks aren't there. You tell folks about the sharks, they swim, they get bit, you have to mobilize to help them and then there are lots of unhappy folks and probably unhappy sharks as well. Then another newbie comes along and the whole scenario repeats. It is very discouraging. However, if you tell folks explicitly about the sharks in the water then you upset the folks who live on the beach or have the shark as their amakua, so what can you do


So that means that we shouldn't move to Makaha Valley Plantation?

Your village sounds spectacular. I am not one of those people who want to be rich and have like 15 cars and 8 houses. I don't think there is really a point to it. I mean I don't want to be wondering if I have money to pay the electric bill or wondering how I'm going to be feeding my family. I just want to be able to live comfortably.
For your village, would you have to get investors? How would you distribute water and electricity? Would you have your tenants use the same companies they use now or would you create new distributers?

[hotzcatz]

You should not move to Makaha Valley Plantation without looking at it first. Get a hotel room for a couple of days or weeks and then drive out to Makaha Valley Plantation. Go to the nearest grocery store, check out the nearest library, see where the closest shops and services you want are. Drive from Makaha Valley Plantation to Honolulu town during rush hour and then consider if Makaha Valley Plantation is the place you should be.

The whole village idea is to change the land use zoning so there would be a variety of shops, homes and services all within walking distance of each other. Water would be County water but would be installed by the houses/businesses and the water loan would be paid off as the lots sold or the owners would make a small monthly payment. Similar to how it was done after the sugar companies left and the company housing went "civilian". For electric, I'd prefer everyone have photovoltaic with wind so the folks wouldn't have to make as much money to pay for utilities. The idea is to keep their living expenses low so they can afford to live in a small village and have leisure time to interact with the neighborhood.

The roads would be the most expensive as well as the community areas but hopefully those would be built to County standards and then dedicated to the County. The park area may be kept up by a Community Association which all the houses would have to belong to, I suppose. Unless a better model came up.

This could be done in many areas, folks just need to get into the idea of small walkable villages instead of big sub-divisions where everyone drives away for work.