Mele Kaneali’i ’27 Awarded Truman Scholarship

Hailing from Kalama’ula, Hawai’i, Kaneali’i has been interested in advocacy since a young age. “I was in a Hawaiian language immersion school until ninth grade, so I learned English in Hawaiian, math in Hawaiian, science in Hawaiian. Advocacy has always been a part of that experience,” she said. “And I have early memories of being at protests for water rights, to protect our sacred Mauna Kea, and the right to language revitalization programs. Advocacy was taught as a responsibility, but also a privilege.”

During her sophomore year of high school, Kaneali’i was exposed to the world of policy through an internship with her county council. There, she learned how the ideas of her advocacy could be put into practice through governance and the complexities involved in doing so. Since then, Kaneali’i has been committed to policy work, with a special focus on housing.

“Native Hawaiians are one of the highest houseless populations, and 55% of native Hawaiians live outside of Hawai’i because of the cost of living and lower-than-average incomes. As a native Hawaiian, seeing this firsthand in my community got me interested in this work,” Kaneali’i said. “After my freshman year, I was a legislative research intern for the county council. In my county, 20% of the housing stock is short-term rentals, which are out of the long-term housing market and owned by folks who file their taxes elsewhere. With 20% of our housing stock as tourist accommodations, we’re left with a housing shortage.”

“The reason I’m here, and the reason that I was able to get this award, is because of the resilience that hails from the communities that raised me.”

As an intern, Kaneali’i helped research a bill to phase out short-term rentals in apartment-zoned districts. “There were 7,000 short-term rentals in districts that were supposed to be for residential use. In 2025, that bill passed,” she added.

In the summer of 2025, Kaneali’i received a housing policy summer research fellowship from Hamilton’s Levitt Center, which she used to examine legal pathways to protecting the Hawaiian housing market for residents and combating absentee ownership.

Last semester, she participated in the Hamilton in D.C. program. As part of her studies, she interned with Representative Jill Tokuda (HI-02), delving into the impact of federal housing policy on indigenous communities. During the spring semester, she interned with Housing Hawai’i’s Future, where she researched the Department of Hawaiian Homelands and how its difficulties with funding contributed to housing disparities. Kaneali’i also serves on the Hawai’i State Youth Commission as a legislative lead, helping to advise the state’s governor and legislature on policy.

After Hamilton, Kaneali’i hopes to both enact change on the local level through continued work with Hawai’i’s county and state legislatures, and structural change through examining the contribution of federal legislation to Hawai’i’s housing crisis.

For Kaneali’i, her work is a continuation of the values imbued in her by her communities. “The reason I’m here, and the reason that I was able to get this award, is because of the resilience that hails from the communities that raised me,” she said.