Hawai'i Public Housing Authority board members decided yesterday to move forward with a controversial plan to convert public-housing units in Kalihi into a transitional homeless shelter.

A motion to drop the plan failed by a 6-5 vote.

"I have faith it will work out," said Kaulana Park, an authority board member and one of the architects of the plan to convert 14 public housing units at Puahala Homes into shelter space for two years.

Park and other supporters of the proposal pointed out the units had been vacant for years, and only once the board agreed to their conversion did they get renovated. They also said the families who will move into the units will be subject to tougher rules than their neighbors.

But dozens of residents, several lawmakers and even the director of the state Public Housing Authority have voiced opposition to converting the units at Puahala Homes, saying it would be unfair to the more than 7,000 people on the waiting list for public housing. They also raised concerns about how the families would fit into the community.

"I don't know how it's going to work," Vickie Milo, a longtime resident of Puahala Homes, told the board yesterday before it voted on the issue. "It's going to be very, very challenging."

The units will house families from the state's Next Step shelter in Kaka'ako, for which officials are trying to find a new site. Though the Puahala units are ready, it's unclear when families will move in.

The board voted on Oct. 28, 2007, to convert the Puahala units into transitional shelter space. The decision was made without extensive input from residents, and yesterday several board members said that's where the state went wrong. Even those who supported the conversion said board members should have gone to the community first.

After the October vote, the authority held several public meetings.

And Park told the board yesterday that the tenor of those meetings has gone from Puahala residents being absolutely against the conversion idea to more and more in support of it — or at least not so much against it.

Lonnie Rivera, of Puahala Homes, is one of those who made that gradual shift — after hearing about the state's plans for making sure the transitional shelter is well-managed. The 13 families the state wants to move into the units will be under a strict zero- tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol and would have to agree to other rules.

They will also be going through programs to get back on their feet.

But Rivera said she doesn't want to see any other units converted. And amid the firestorm surrounding the Puahala plan, officials have not said whether there are hopes to convert units at other projects.

The authority board vote yesterday came as state officials try to map out the future of the Next Step shelter. The Next Step families chosen to move into Puahala have been at the shelter for as long as two years.

Russ Saito, state comptroller and the governor's special adviser on homelessness, told the board that though the need for the Puahala units is not as pressing as it was back in October — when the state feared it would have to be out of the Next Step site by this summer — the situation for the Kaka'ako shelter is still tenuous at best.

The state had planned to build a new urban Honolulu shelter with a $20 million request in the last legislative session. But lawmakers decided not to fund the project. Now, the state has been told that it would be able to stay at the Forrest Avenue warehouse at least a little while longer.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs needs the property to build its new headquarters, but has said groundbreaking won't be held this summer — as originally planned — but sometime next year at the earliest.

Still, Saito said, the state has a month-to-month lease for the warehouse property and could be kicked out at any time. Because of the situation, the state has told shelter officials not to take in new people.

There are now about 200 people at Next Step.

That's down from a high of more than 300 last year.