From Paradise to the Desert - When Native Hawaiians Move to Las Vegas

so I came across this article the other day entitled native Hawaiian spot to Las Vegas for affordable living and while Las Vegas is considered by many in Hawaii to be the ninth Island this article had little to do with casinos and more to do about the realities of why local families particularly native Hawaiian families are leaving for the mainland when I was in college on the mainland often heard people ask me if you're from Hawaii why would you want to move away well this article illustrates why many Jews or are forced to leave Hawaii so I want to go over the article and share some of my thoughts as a local in Hawaii someone who was born and raised here and currently lives here with my wife and young Sons I have a link to the article in the video description and let me know what you think about it in the comments below life Kona pretty never wanted to live anywhere but Hawaii as a native Hawaiian he wanted his children to grow up as he did rooted in their culture and nourished by the mountains and ocean but raising the family in Hawaii meant squeezing nine people into a four-bedroom house rented with extended family in Waipahu it felt cramped but the parties accepted that this was the price to survive in their Homeland we stuffed ourselves in one room pretty set of his four member family's living arrangements man nine people in a four bedroom house and in Waipahu I mean that's kind of odd and with four of them in one bedroom I completely understand that's pretty close to our situation here because we have a one bedroom and we have two young kids we all end up sleeping in the same bedroom but what's kind of sad here is the pretties accepted that this was the price to survive in their Homeland and I think a lot of people don't understand that when you live in that type of situation which is very common it often is about surviving and not necessarily enjoying or thriving in Hawaii because when you think about surviving it's not like you have margins for error margins financially or in other areas it's just so tight so stressed and I really think it impacts someone's quality of life they're sure of the monthly rent was two thousand three hundred dollars when rent was increased the produce realized that they could no longer afford to live in Hawaii I was so busy working trying to make ends meet he said we never took our kids out to the beach we didn't go hiking now I don't know what the rents go for in Waipahu these days but man if that was their shirt twenty three hundred dollars and the house must be pretty expensive because I'm thinking right there's four of them out of nine people so roughly they'd be paying maybe half the rent so you know this house is going for at least five thousand a month and it said that once the rent went up they were basically priced out of living there and I totally understand how they feel being so busy trying to work and trying to make ends meet that you really don't get to enjoy the beach as much as you like or even go out hiking I think there's a misconception that when you live in Hawaii like really really live here that you just get to go to the beach every single day and everything's either a beach a luau or a mountain hike and for some people it is like that they have the luxury of going to the beach all the time but I also think that there's a lot of locals here who just don't go to the beach and that was how I grew up I barely went to the beach Maybe once a year and as I got older I probably didn't go to the beach for several years I never felt like I was missing out on anything instead I'd go hiking and I used to go hiking a lot more but now with two kids kind of hard to go hiking but I didn't used to go at least once a month which was great but it is sad that that's the reality for a lot of local families here too busy to be able to make that time to go and enjoy some of the things especially if you're working multiple jobs and for those of us who don't work multiple jobs it's still pretty tough It's increasingly common for Hawaii residents to be priced out of the Aloha state where the median price for a single family home topped 900 000 during the pandemic on Oahu the median price is more than one million dollars that's one thing that really baffled me and I mean I guess it's just economics but it was really hard seeing that we were going through one of the hardest Economic Times here in Hawaii particularly because the tourism industry were isolated and with the restrictions there wasn't a lot happening I don't know about where you're from but in Hawaii during the pandemic we took it pretty hard I mean tourism is our main economic driver and it was basically shut down I mean we shut down the state from everyone and we suffered for it economically it was tough we had Federal help which was good and there was some State help which was nice but for the most part A lot of people lost their jobs and yet during this exact same time housing prices went up so much and you'd think it'd be the opposite and I understand yeah there's low interest rates and just trying to get the whole economy going but it was so difficult seeing the housing prices just continue to go up and up and up as more and more people came in and bought places and all locals too but a lot of homes just were flying off the market so quickly because the interest rates were so good and now that interest rates have risen up a little bit the market has slowed down here I'm still waiting for the prices to go down but I don't think they're gonna go down anytime soon many residents work in low-wage service jobs and the financial strain is especially significant for Hawaii's indigenous people estate analysis published last year showed that a single person working 40 hours a week would need to earn 18 an hour to pay for housing and other necessities in Hawaii but the state minimum wage is currently 12 dollars an hour I don't go too deeply into the whole minimum wage issue but it is pretty tough I don't know how people make it with minimum wage even if they were to have 18 an hour because according to my math that comes out to thirty seven thousand four hundred and forty dollars a year the 18 of an hour that they say that you would need to survive I don't know too many people that are surviving off of 37 Grand a year but if they are they're definitely getting government help and nothing wrong with getting government help I mean I used to get government help when I was back in Oregon and I was working three part-time minimum wage jobs it was tough but you know let's not kid ourselves here 18 bucks an hour it's not really going to cut it many like the produce have headed to Las Vegas according to 2021 population estimates from the U.S Census Bureau the biggest growth of native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander populations was in Clark County Nevada which includes Las Vegas and Sacramento County California the biggest decline of native Hawaiian residents was in Honolulu so the Las Vegas one doesn't surprise me but the Sacramento County definitely does what like what is in Sacramento I would have thought that some of the biggest places would have been either in Utah or even some where maybe Pacific Northwest like Oregon maybe Washington but Sacramento County interesting Hawaii residents are spending on average 42.06 percent of their income on rent which is the highest of any state according to a Forbes home analysis California ranks second but at a much smaller proportion of income going toward rent 28.47 and I think this is important for people to understand it's the percentage of a household's income that goes towards housing is what's really difficult here they call them Alice families and we definitely qualify as an ALICE family where we're asset limited income constrained but we're employed and it's just it's tough when you're paying that larger percentage of your income just for something as basic as housing but when you see that gap between where Hawaii's at and where California is at I mean that's a huge percentage Gap and now granted I know that California is a big state so you can take a lot of data points versus Hawaii being isolated and small but still that gap between 47 or 42 percent and 28 percent pretty big estimates from the American Community survey showed that in 2011 there were about 296 480 Hawaiians in Hawaii and about 221 600 on the mainland just a decade later those numbers flipped in 2021 there were about three hundred and nine thousand eight hundred native Hawaiians in Hawaii and about 370 000 in other states there's no Hawaii without Hawaiians and Honolulu city council chair Tommy Waters who is native Hawaiian his five siblings have all moved to the mainland that's just incredibly sad to me that Hawaiians can't afford to live in Hawaii oh yeah it is kind of sad that there's more native Hawaiians outside of Hawaii than there are in Hawaii and I think it's a very interesting statistic but the comment about there's no Hawaii without Hawaiians I think that's a very interesting discussion point I think that trying to figure out how to say how to say this right way now obviously Hawaii will still continue if let's say all native Hawaiians left Hawaii Hawaii would still be Hawaii now it wouldn't be as rich and I think that connection to that native Hawaiian culture would obviously be lost I mean we'd have westernized versions of it but it wouldn't be authentic and I think that you lose that authenticity without native Hawaiians here Las Vegas was desirable to the purdies because it's a popular vacation destination for Hawaii residents which meant family would likely visit often also the cost of living is significantly lower so in 2017 they uprooted their family and moved to Henderson a Las Vegas suburb in Clark County where they could afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment for one thousand dollars a month now it's true that a lot of local people like to go to Las Vegas I don't understand why but it's true and the cost of living there in Vegas is significantly lower I've never been to Henderson but it's sounds like a nice place to be but the one thousand dollars a month for a two bedroom now that would be cheap and I wish that we had prices like that here now I know it's totally unrealistic you probably could get maybe a studio or maybe you could split a one bedroom or maybe a older two-bedroom for a thousand with like three roommates if they had prices like that right now and they're available probably pack up and just go live there for a thousand dollars a month because of this family we need the extra space and two bedrooms would be perfect so yes please sign me up I just don't want to have to go to Las Vegas to get those affordable prices so skipping ahead but even though they were nearly 3 000 miles from home Hawaiian culture was all around then thanks to many other transplants the Las Vegas area is full of restaurants catering to Hawaiian taste and cultural events expressing Hawaiian pride and of course you know Zippy's going to be up there which I think is going to be huge for the locals up there but I love how they point out other transplants now I know the term transplant in Hawaii I don't even know where that came from but it's been this term now that I think people are using for people like from the mainland or other countries that just move here but I never grew up using that term but it's a term that I think we're just starting to use right now but I think it's so interesting now that Hawaiians or people from Hawaii or both are now the transplants and they're going and they're going to a brand new place where there is a culture that they're unfamiliar with that they may feel uncomfortable with and in fact in Nevada and in the Las Vegas area there is a Native American tribe and I wonder just thinking about how transplant is used when we talk about people transplanting and as transplants and coming here and them learning the culture or should they learn their culture I wonder now that as worded here Hawaii people are transplants do we when we are transplanted do we go and learn about those other cultures while we're there I don't know the answer to that but I'd be curious to know if any of these people who moved to Las Vegas from Hawaii took the time to learn about not just Vegas but the Native Americans who originally settled there or their culture Beyond just the casinos anyway just something that I thought about a three bedroom home price at three hundred thousand dollars in a Las Vegas suburb would be 1.2 million in Honolulu that home either had to have your home passed down to you or have to work for jobs yeah it is 1.2 million dollars and and you gotta knock the thing down and then rebuild and so you're just basically buying the land I've seen it so many times for homes that are being sold here you're basically just buying the land and yeah it feels like more and more the only way that people of my generation who grew up here who don't have family help that are super wealthy the only way that they're ever going to be able to afford a home is either it being passed down or just working multiple jobs and I mean multiple as in like that's right four four full-time jobs a few months after they moved about 20 other relatives including Purdy's mother uncle and sister followed them over time it just became exhausting trying to make ends meet it's heartbreaking that's the choice we make the majority of us I think we just got priced out of home 20 other relatives dang that's a lot I mean it makes sense right the whole family just ends up moving because you get one person that goes and they tell everybody oh my gosh they're so cheap it's so easy here come on you got to come up here you gotta come up here and meanwhile you're back home here in Hawaii and you're thinking ah nah I don't want to move and you keep trying and trying and trying to keep telling you oh come on it's so good come on it's so cheap no income tax come on it's so cheap and you're like but I think eventually when you have a relative up there who's UC incur encouraging and inviting you and almost like recruiting you to come up I think it's hard after a while to resist that and that becomes more and more appealing which doesn't surprise me here but 20 it's it's kind of Plenty as it was stated here over time it just became exhausting trying to make ends meet and I think that's probably a feeling that a lot of people have you know if you're born and raised here versus someone who moved here from the mainland or somewhere else it's a little bit different that exhaustion at least and how you respond to that exhaustion if you're from the mainland and you move here and you feel that exhaustion that grind that you just oh it's too hard I don't want to live here no more you can go back to where you're from you can go back home which is probably somewhere a lot cheaper than being in Hawaii so you always have a place to return to it's different though when you're a local and you're going through that same exhaustion and that grind because this is your home this is this is where you're from and so instead of going back home you are home and it's that's the expensive place so you end up having to move away to escape that that feeling that almost suffocating feeling sometimes and that's the hard part that's that's the part that for me if I ever had to make that choice I would feel very hurt that I feel like I have to leave it kind of reminds me of the book The Lorax by Dr Seuss where the animals and all those wonderful creatures were sent away because the place was becoming so polluted now I'm not saying that's becoming so polluted here but the point is that that that scene where he just sends everybody away and hopes that they could then come back one day when things are all better I feel like that's how I would feel I would feel sad that I have to go and it's not by choice but it's just more just to make my life a little easier Las Vegas's affordability was liberating she said with cheaper rent and groceries and no state income tax she could stretch her paycheck further we were just living up in the dollar store she said in Hawaii that type of store doesn't exist and that's not to say that everything about Las Vegas or Nevada is great but yeah cheaper rent and groceries no state income tax it'd be nice but I do want to correct something here in Hawaii we do have a dollar store it's called Daiso except it's not a dollar like in Japan it's like three dollars and more so you know three times as much but hey at least we got dollar store in 2019 Doreen Hall van decided to move to Las Vegas to be closer to her daughter who had moved to Seattle for more job opportunities on Facebook she gushed about how much cheaper everything was from bread to rent but you start to worry about staying connected to her culture or living far from home when we move off Island we are disconnected because we're not on our land anymore but in her new home she found she has more time and less stress I was so busy back home trying to make a living when I moved to Las Vegas it really put a pause in my life and I could see things a lot clearer and I think this is a really important point and I'm glad that she mentioned what she said in this part I didn't read all of it but I think it's very important to identify the connection that people do have to Hawaii particularly native Hawaiians and the connection to the Aina and the land I'm not going to go too much into that but I do want to ask whether that's worth it is that trade-off worth it for what she's describing here so that she doesn't have to be stressed out all the time and she has more time for herself is that worth the trade that yeah you're you're not connected to the land in Hawaii but by moving somewhere else your Life's a lot easier and I guess that's something that every person will have to decide for themselves but to me it sounds like that was the best choice for for her in the home stretch here we go but in August 2021 exactly four years after leaving Hawaii the parties moved back home Purdue said that his wife wanted to take care of her mother who began showing signs of dementia their daughter also got accepted to Kamehameha schools a highly selective and relatively affordable private school system that gives admissions preference to students with Hawaiian ancestry the family moved to Kapolei to share a five-bedroom house with their extended family now that the parties have three children they rent two of the bedrooms Purdy is trying to find time to take his kids to Hula lessons since moving back the family has only been to the beach once It's a Grind it's hard it's really expensive he said but I also feel like we're exactly where we're supposed to be right now so that's kind of an interesting twist to this article something that I didn't quite expect in the beginning that actually moved back to Hawaii but I think the reasons are very relatable to take care of one's family back home in Hawaii and that's something that a lot of people are going to have to figure out for themselves and their family if they decide to move away for whatever reason and their their parent stays here in Hawaii it's one of the reasons why I decided to move back not that my parents needed care but I could already see that if I decided to live on the mainland I would miss all these years that I could have with them before they would need that care and really if I had a family up on the mainland how hard would it be for me to fly back home to care for them when my work and my wife my kids they're all up on the mainland I can't bring them all here because that's going to uproot them and they never would have experienced Hawaii so they would be like foreigners here I guess we'd all be kind of considered transplants I know for me that was the right choice to do it at that moment and I'm glad that I had these 10 years that I've been in Hawaii since I've been back with my parents to be able to see them enjoy them and also with my brother and other extended family but I'm glad that I was able to be back here so that's a great reason one that is very relatable to moving back and of course getting into Kamehameha schools is also great for the daughter it's a great private school very affordable like they said and being native Hawaiian there's a lot of opportunities for post-grad Stuff where you can go off to college and have access to all these wonderful scholarships so I hope that the daughter and the rest of the family take advantage of that this time they moved to Kapolei instead of Waipahu so even further west and they share a five-bedroom house with their extended family but I do wonder how much that rent is now if they're paying 2300 back then for a Waipahu house with four bedrooms now that they're in a five bedroom in Kapolei boy It's gotta be so pretty expensive but I think it's really great you know trying to find time to take his kids to Hula lessons and yeah since moving back they've only been to the beach once which is kind of sad because in Kapolei the beach is like boom it's like right there you know but again I completely understand for us the beach is about I don't know less than five minute drive but we haven't been in a while especially since we got back from our trip to Japan just been totally busy this past month so I understand that yeah sometimes even though you're so close to the beach the proximity doesn't really matter because it's more about just the time because when you come back home from work or it's a Friday and you're just so tired it's like the last thing you want to do is pack up the car all this stuff and go to the beach try find parking and then drag everything out and deal with the sand and then afterwards shower and that's a lot of work then you got to go work again so I completely understand and the fact that it closes with I also feel like we're exactly where we're supposed to be right now I think that's really great I do wonder if they're going to move back to the mainland though and I guess that depends on how long they'll be caring for the mother who is showing signs of dementia and if they want to stay because the daughter is in Kamehameha schools but I do wonder if they have the opportunity to move away again or are thinking about it will they will they take that chance knowing now how cheap it is you know it's one thing to hear people talk about how cheap it is but you just stay back here in Hawaii but something else when you actually go up there and you move and you get to experience all of that almost like that freedom and then you come back here and you're like oh man it's it's hard again you know and and just thinking about my experience being away you know there's a lot of things that I do miss about the mainland you know I know it's it's different I know I know but being local boy I I there's some some stuff about Colorado about Oregon about California that I miss you know the weather some of the people some of the food and just that ability to be able to go anywhere in the country just drive the exposure to different experiences you just don't get that here in Hawaii and of course there's so many wonderful things in Hawaii and I try to take them for granted because being a way I know that that pull that draw to want to come back home but when you're back home Hawaii sometimes it's it's really hard and you look you look at how other people are doing or you see your friends or family and they're starting to move away and you're just kind of thinking you know man is that what we should do I talked about this before on what we're planning on doing and whether we're going to stay here in Hawaii the plan is that we're we're trying to make it work here that we're going to see and I think we'll be okay but I know a lot of other people are going to struggle I mean that's just how it is now for a lot of people I wish it wasn't like that so I hope that what this article shows people is it's really hard to to move away it's not just a financial thing either I mean there's definitely that part where oh yeah of course it's so everything is so cheap all the cost of living is so good and and why didn't we do this sooner oh my gosh my quality of life is so high of course there's going to be that and that Financial reason is a pretty strong one but I think it's also a cultural thing there's no other place like Hawaii you know there's no other place where you walk down the street and you see like a mix of people you know Chinese Japanese Korean like Filipino like there's no other place that you can see that maybe an airport I don't know but like you don't get to see that anywhere else and it doesn't feel weird that's just how it is here I think it was a purely financial decision a lot of people would just end up picking up and leaving but there's family there's culture there's food there's so many other things here in Hawaii that keep people here that when people do make that decision to leave it's really really difficult and it's really tough It's like a it's like a tearing of a part of them that they leave back here because of where they grew up all the experiences that they had and for someone who only knew Hawaii as their home moving to somewhere else to me that just would be extremely difficult so thanks for watching and a lot hello hello hello hello hello hello hello from Hawaii

Channel: Hello From Hawaii

Views: 26,461

Keywords: living in hawaii, Life in hawaii, what is it like in Hawaii, Moving to hawaii, hello from hawaii, hawaii, oahu, honolulu, hawaii life, life on hawaii, hawaiian life, native hawaiians move to vegas, hawaiians move to vegas

Id: 6cN9EKN5Ufg

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2023