WHAT WE ARE DOING RECENTLY

 The AOAO Board has "negotiated" with the Kong Lessors for an agreement which violates standard appraisal practices, our Master Lease and Sandwich lease amendment agreements, and Hawaii statutes. The AOAO and each of us are victims of institutional bias. The Hawaii establishment stacks the deck against lessees for lease rent renegotiation in favor of the Kong Master Lessor partial leased fee interest landowner.  This bias working for the landowners, which sucked in our own Board against us, is explained in a law review article and the U.S. Supreme Court decision analyzing Hawaii big family landowner bias in the case of Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229, 104 S. Ct. 2321, 81 L. Ed. 2d 186 (1984). 

 The AOAO denied us our “day in court” with several statutory and contract violations. The “experts” advising the AOAO are all part of the status quo establishment described at the Midkiff Supreme Court page. The AOAO was advised to take actions resulting in Four Major Statutory Violations:

HRS 514B-151 Independent Counsel;

HRS 514B-149 Improper Use of AOAO Funds;

HRS§ 514B-153(e) Failure to Provide Contact List; and

HRS§ 514B-154.5(5), (6), (12), (14) Access to Condo Records;

and Four Major Lease Violations in Collusion with Kong Lessors: 

Failure to Arbitrate;

Failure to Correctly Establish Lease Renegotiation Value;

Waiver of Lessee Rights Without Authority with Complete Disregard for AOAO Conflict of Interest; and

Agreement to Obligate Lessees for Retroactive Rent with No Statutory or Contract Authority.  

You can join our arbitration request or file your own.

 The AOAO refused to provide information and documents, which I began requesting from Mr. Steinberg last January when I first volunteered to work on the lease renegotiating committee. I have made additional repeated requests before the lease renegotiation agreement was signed. I began receiving  records the AOAO is required to provide. What is the AOAO being advised to hide – bad advice perhaps?  I filed a Regulated Industries Complaints Office (RICO) complaint with the Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA). I am seeking potential penalties for AOAO continuing failure to comply with statutes and orders to provide information.

I now have appraisals and the ridiculous Lease Renegotiation Agreement. As I review the documents, it becomes clear why they resisted letting me see them.

  I have filed an Unfair Deceptive Acts and Practices (UDAP) complaint with the State of Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA), Office of Consumer Protection (OCP). The AOAO has been operating with a complete lack of transparency in blatant disregard of our statutory and contractual rights. Joint participation with the Kong Lessors in agreeing to rush to an agreement to move forward with building plumbing at Lessee expense is the definition of Unfair Deceptive Acts and Practices.  

You can join our complaint or file your own.

The AOAO sent us a message on December 8, 2025, with multiple errors and omissions. The scariest part of the December 8, 2025, message is the errors and miscalculations begin in the very first sentence and continue throughout the first paragraph and the entire document. The first paragraph demonstrates our AOAO does not know how many units are in the building, and simple math is beyond them. 

The AOAO did not negotiate with the Kong Lessors. The AOAO colluded with the Kong Lessors to unfairly deprive us of the rights and protections to which we are entitled. The AOAO agreed to have a JOINT appraisal where the cost was split. There was no independent value. The value provided was completely wrong. The agreed appraised value was $23,250,000, which they ROUNDED UP to $24 million. This resulted in a $27 per month increase without any justification whatsoever. $3260 for me over the next 10 years.

The AOAO declared objective was to get the negotiation completed as quickly as possible, without any outside unbiased third party review to delay building repairs. The AOAO published misrepresentations, miscalculations, relied on biased valuations, attacked me personally, and threatened huge special assessments. The AOAO did not take me up on my offers to help, and did not plan on anyone coming forward to oppose the unfair and deceptive acts which will cost us all so much. Much effort is devoted to insisting I am completely wrong for all eight of the violations of our statutory and contract rights. Terrible things are described which might happen. There is no discussion of what happens if I turn out to be right. 

Name calling, relying on biased experts, and saying all my claims are frivolous is the only analysis of my claims that appears. The AOAO just wants to fight and waste your money as happened in the commercial garage litigation bill for ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Still appealing, still losing, still wasting money on the advice of "experts" in a course of action I warned about almost three years ago. What about the opportunity for lease rent reduction and lease buyout if I win on only ONE out of EIGHT claims?

Each of the 54 direct Kong Master Lease residential lessees and the Commercial lessees have individual master lease modifications in the Sandwich lease purchase agreements, a legal concept called "privity." We do not have one master lease, each of the 54 of us have modified INDIVIDUAL master leases to which each one of us, the AOAO, and the Kong Lessors agreed. Our own AOAO agreed to act as a collection agent for the Kongs and AGAINST us, and charge us fees and take our property if we do not pay Kong lease rent. The modifications change the computation method from the original master lease as part of the Sandwich lease buyout.

There are four ownership subgroups in Canterbury place: In addition to my group of 54 master lessees, there are also 84 fee owners, 8 sandwich lessees without modifications who pay sandwich rent to the AOAO which then pays the Kong Master Lessors, and the Commercial with modifications for which the AOAO collects rent for the Kongs. These different land interests are all treated the same, when they are all very different from each other. This is one of many errors which have resulted in radically increased Master Lease rent. I am working on a detailed technical analysis with citations why our monthly Master Lease rent should be much less than the inflated amounts to which the AOAO has agreed.

The AOAO claims a fair evaluation will cost too much. My forty plus years of real estate and legal experience in multiple states, including Hawaii, tells me in the technical analysis we should be paying less than half of the AOAO agreement. The AOAO has made errors based on the advice and opinions of experts. I am calling out these experts by describing how and why I believe these expert opinions and advice are intentionally biased toward the lessors and completely wrong. This area of real estate law is as complicated as it gets. My explanations will be complex and confusing. The AOAO and other experts are counting on this. Go to the Real Estate Valuation page for further explanations and videos. You do not have to understand every nuance. I just want to assure you that I know what I am talking about. They claim their experts are 100% correct and I am completely wrong. Easy to say, when you control the cards and won’t let anyone see your hand. I am betting my house I am at least partly right. I will continue trying to get all of us a fair deal, independent representation, fair valuation, and unbiased arbitration. None of their experts will guarantee in writing I am 100% wrong. You can sit and watch the game, or you may ask to be dealt in. Every voice makes us stronger.

Review the filed complaints, and join us or file your own. 

The establishment wants to convince you to ignore the details and not listen to me, claiming I want something other than to reduce the monthly rent and buyout the leasehold. I am fighting because someone should, instead of surrendering. If the cost to my unit to fight was $10,000, and I succeed in cutting the monthly rent in half, I would save about $5000 per year over the first 10 years alone. The AOAO calls what I am doing frivolous, when I have estimated success chances from 40% to 85%, depending on which ONE OR MORE of the 8 violations alleged so far are at issue. In the aggregate, I believe there is a strong case. If the odds of spending $10,000 to save $60,000 were 50/50, that sounds like a pretty solid investment to me. If I win back only half of the $60,000, that is still $30,000 return for $10,000. If only $100 per month reduction, I will recover $10,000 plus a couple thousand. 

If the leased fee value for rent is cut from $11 million to $6 million, do you think the Kongs might just take the $11 Million lump sum to go away? What if they are held liable by private UDAP action for triple damages plus attorney fees? My piece of an $11 Million purchase price for my unit would be about $81,000. I wasted $102,000 to pay for my Sandwich Lease. I would absolutely pay $100,000 in purchase price and costs to double the value of my property. Unfortunately, we never had a chance to find out, because the AOAO gave up before negotiations began and colluded with the Kong Lessors to waive our statutory and contract rights without any authority. The AOAO ignored my repeated offers to help, because the lessees were less of a priority than rushing an agreement so they could move on to the plumbing. That flushing noise is the sound of your money being wasted.   

I will continue to fight on our behalf. I am fighting the resources of our own AOAO, a large law firm and a team of misguided experts who want to keep Hawaii real estate in the 19th century. The only support I ask is perhaps a kind word or express your displeasure to our AOAO with how the experts have closed us out of reducing our rent and possibly buying out the lease.  Use the links here to file your own complaints. I will be reaching out to those of you who have said you might like to add your names to my complaint AT NO COST to help increase the weight. If you have comments or questions, I will do my best to respond as quickly as possible.  Check back for additional info and developments.