As homeless people continue to camp out on the lawns of City Hall and state legislators look for money and answers to ease Hawai'i's homeless problem, the availability of self-help housing — homes built by occupants and volunteers — is on the decline.

Two of the three main self-help housing organizations on O'ahu, Honolulu Habitat for Humanity and the Consuelo Foundation, have quietly gotten out of the business of self-help housing. A third group, the Self-Help Housing Corporation of Hawai'i, did not respond to several requests for interviews last week.

For years, Honolulu Habitat for Humanity and the Consuelo Foundation helped low-income families build and buy their own houses at a cost of about $70,000 per house, which today represents barely a down payment on the $650,000 median price of a single-family home on O'ahu.

The Consuelo Foundation, which aids disadvantaged families in Hawai'i and the Philippines, stopped its program in 2004 after helping clients build 75 homes in Wai'anae. The foundation ended the program when its liability insurance premiums threatened to jump from about $30,000 a year to $275,000. The insurance covered the nonprofit in case unskilled clients got hurt building their homes.

"We've built 75 homes, but our general liability insurance would have gone up — or been canceled — if we continued to use nonprofessional, nonqualified builders," said San Vuong, chief financial officer for the Consuelo Foundation. "It's ridiculous. But we felt that money could be better used for other things than to pay for insurance."

Together, Habitat for Humanity and the Consuelo Foundation produced about 15 new homes a year for low-income people.

The number may be low, but the absence of the programs represents a symbolic blow for efforts to get homeless people into their own houses, said Laura E. Thielen, executive director of the Affordable Housing & Homeless Alliance.

"Being able to build and own your own home is a huge, huge boost for a person," Thielen said. "Now, people that might have been capable of home ownership are stagnated in the rental market, and that creates a bottleneck. So those people on our beaches don't even have room to get into the rental market."

State legislators are considering more than a dozen bills aimed at various aspects of the homelessness problem, potentially making this "the best legislative session ever," said Terry Brooks, president of the nonprofit Housing Solutions Inc. "It will be huge."

But none of the bills would directly help resurrect the self-help housing projects.

Rep. Mike Kahikina, D-44th, (Nanakuli, Honokai Hale), said it's probably too late in the session to address the issues holding back Habitat for Humanity and the Consuelo Foundation.

"I didn't know it was an issue," said Kahikina, chairman of the state House's Housing Committee. "I wish they came to see us to talk to us, to see if we could help. Legislatively, we should intervene to see that this sweat equity continues. But at such a late hour, we probably can't take it up until next year."

Kahikina called both groups "very successful.

Margot Schrire, public relations and volunteer manager for the Institute for Human Services, O'ahu's only emergency homeless shelter, said the issues "really boil down to economics."

"The cost of labor and construction material and land have created very big barriers to developing anything affordable," Schrire said. "There's no money in it, and right now developers are far more interested in other, lucrative projects. That's what we're up against."

If Hawai'i's homelessness picture could be illustrated as a pyramid, homeless people would be on the bottom, and homeless shelters and low-income rental housing would sit somewhere in the middle, said Janice Takahashi, chief planner for the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawai'i, the state's housing agency in charge of both affordable housing and homeless issues.

Near the tip of the pyramid used to be self-help housing projects like the ones built by Habitat for Humanity and the Consuelo Foundation, Takahashi said.

"The sweat equity, self-help part was really an important piece for low-income families," Takahashi said. "They actually had an opportunity for home ownership that was far more realistic than a market-rate mortgage."

Gora-Aina, 47, and her husband, Saff Aina, 46, were among nine low-income families who together built nine single-family homes in Wai'anae from 1998 to 1999.

All of the families were examined for their potential to keep up with the mortgage and lease payments, and their commitment to work every Saturday and Sunday building all nine homes.

When the construction was complete, a lottery determined which family received which three bedroom, two-bath house.

"It's the very first home that we've ever owned," Gora-Aina said. "We love it."

Honolulu Habitat for Humanity followed a similar formula until the group ran out of ways to find new sources of land, said Anne Marie Beck, Honolulu Habitat for Humanity's executive director.

"We don't have any land, and we haven't been able to get land — either by purchasing it or getting it donated," Beck said. "So right now, we're not able to house the homeless, which is a big loss in the effort to get people into simple homes."

Unlike the Consuelo Foundation, Honolulu Habitat for Humanity is insured through the international Habit for Humanity. The group also has more than enough volunteer labor and money for construction materials.

"It's the land," Beck said. "So that leaves (qualified homeless people) waiting and praying for someone like us to get some land. Until then, it's tough."

With no sources of cheap land, Honolulu Habitat for Humanity instead has focused on rebuilding the existing homes of low-income families that meet federal poverty guidelines.

Quinten and Shannon Cuesta didn't work on their duplex in the Consuelo Foundation's Ke Aka Ho'ona subdivision in Wai'anae.

But the Cuestas received the same favorable rates when the original homeowners could not afford the mortgage of $550 a month and $30 lease payment.

Quinten and Shannon both have jobs — he's a maintenance worker at the University of Hawai'i; she's a tutor at Makaha Elementary and works weekends at the Nanakuli McDonald's. But they found themselves living on Tracks Beach in Nanakuli with their two children when their monthly rent leaped from $750 to $1,050 per month.

On Jan. 30, they finally moved into their new Consuelo Foundation duplex. With a 25-year mortgage he can finally afford, Quinten Cuesta now has a reason to be optimistic.

"It's beautiful, it's comfortable and I can actually do this," he said. "Before, we were having trouble paying for our utilities and rent and food. Now I can put food into the freezer and icebox and actually put a dollar or two aside. I thank the Lord for it every day."

Cuesta only wishes that more homeless people could get the same breaks. "With how the price of rent is increasing, I am sorry that they cannot continue to work more projects like this," Cuesta said. "It would be so helpful for all of the homeless people out there. I'm surprised there isn't more being done."

Imiola Gora-Aina lives in what may be one of the last homes on O'ahu built with sweat equity — and she considers it a tragedy that people like her may no longer have even the hope of building their own houses.

"I have a deep love and appreciation for the home that we live in," Gora-Aina said. "It's wonderful because we worked really, really hard on it — and on the other homes. If we were to go into the marketplace now, we would be houseless. We would never be homeowners."