Abstract
In April 2007, Genshiro Kawamoto, a real estate mogul known as the ‘Donald Trump’ of Japan, made the unprecedented and media attention-getting move of turning over keys to three of his many mansions in the Kahala neighbourhood of Honolulu to Native Hawaiian families. Promising these previously homeless families a rent-free place to live for at least the next ten years, Kawamoto further announced his intentions to convert another five of his twenty-two Kahala residences for the same purpose; he explained that because his business is primarily conducted out of Tokyo, any income from rentals on these multi-million dollar Hawai‘i properties ‘is pocket money to me’ (CBS 2007). Kawamoto purportedly financed the acquisition of these Kahala residences by selling off 150 or so other O‘ahu properties. Ironically, as his critics highlight, tenants of those properties were often given only one month’s notice to vacate their premises.
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© 2011 Laura E. Lyons
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Lyons, L.E. (2011). From the Indigenous to the Indigent: Homelessness and Settler Colonialism in Hawai‘i. In: Bateman, F., Pilkington, L. (eds) Studies in Settler Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306288_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306288_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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