Gov. Linda Lingle is continuing to demonstrate leadership in addressing the loss of affordable housing presented by the sale of Honolulu's Kukui Gardens.

She's already pushed through legislation to invoke eminent domain to prevent the sale to avoid the loss of 857 affordable rental units.

Now, Lingle has taken another aggressive step by challenging the right of Kukui Gardens' owners to prepay its existing loan with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

That's good news for tenants, who say the prepayment is a way to sidestep HUD oversight and facilitate the proposed sale of Kukui Gardens to Carmel Partners of California for $130 million.

Kukui Gardens Corp., owners of the project, have said it needs to pay off the HUD loan to pay for deferred maintenance in advance of a sale.

But the governor's action rightly makes clear the state's goal of protecting affordable housing by threatening HUD with legal action if the prepayment arrangement is allowed to go through.

The state asserts that allowing the prepayment would be illegal and set bad public policy. Indeed, the National Housing Act prohibits HUD from accepting any prepayment unless a project is deemed to no longer meet the rental housing need for lower-income families in the area.

That's clearly not the case of Kukui Gardens, which continues to serve a growing need. The loss of those units in the event of a loan prepayment and ultimate sale would greatly diminish the state's affordable housing rental stock. The state is already playing catch-up after failing to invest in affordable rental housing for decades.

Lingle's action comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed by a Kukui Gardens tenants group to stop the sale. That group has recently announced it has access to up to $80 million to buy the property.

It's all added pressure on the controlling interests of Kukui Gardens to reconsider its decision to sell.

The governor, who has said she would prefer to see a non-profit buy the project, is right to weigh in aggressively. Given a choice between eminent domain or the loss of affordable housing units, applying pressure to HUD and Kukui Gardens owners to find a better answer is definitely in the state's best interest.