The islandwide dearth of affordable housing, and the homelessness crisis that arises in part from that shortfall, is too consequential to the people of Oahu to allow it to be treated as a political football.
Yet that is what it has become under the City Council chairmanship of Ernie Martin, who last week made an appalling show of arrogance about the latest request from Mayor Kirk Caldwell for a new office of eight people dealing with housing projects.
That was the opportunity to show some of the leadership Honolulu needs on its most vexing problem, and so far, Martin hasn’t shown it.
Martin and Caldwell are plainly political rivals. If politics is the problem, then it’s time for the chairman to make way for someone who can run the Council without that same distraction. Honolulu needs a City Council that can approach these issues professionally.
Of course, the mayor’s request made on Wednesday is ripe for critique. Among the questions: Are all these new positions necessary, as opposed to incorporating some existing staff?
And what oversight can be provided to ensure the deals negotiated are not prey for corruption — a vulnerability that plagued Honolulu’s forays into housing development in past decades?
These are among topics for discussion when the debate over the administration’s proposed budget begins this week. The administration also must explain its strategy with its homelessness center at Sand Island, which has been slow to reach capacity.
Caldwell unveiled his proposal for the new Asset Development and Manage-
ment Division in a televised news conference Wednesday. The positions, the mayor said, are needed because the job of negotiating deals for boosting the city’s inventory of affordable rentals is “really, really hard work.”
The basic response from the chairman? A snarky boo-hoo. Instead of any substantive critique or serious response, Martin preferred a laugh line, offering the mayor a box of Kleenex tissues.
That’s theatrics, the sort that the weary public has come to expect when an election season looms. On Friday Martin acknowledged that he has not shut the door on running against Caldwell later this year.
But homelessness will not be resolved with repeated, unproductive clashes. Lead, follow or get out of the way, as the saying goes. If Martin cannot take this problem seriously, he should step down as Council chairman and hand the reins to one of his colleagues who can view things more dispassionately.
“Although we’ve invested significant resources with respect to this problem, we’ve made very little progress,” Martin told the Star-Advertiser Friday. “And that’s very frustrating, not just for the mayor, but for the Council as well.”
What’s lacking here is the recognition that creating a more robust agency focused on this issue is necessary to make the kind of progress Martin said he seeks.
The chairman points to an entire laundry list of properties he believes the administration should be pursuing, tapping the $62 million in bond funding the Council has allotted to the effort. But that essentially makes the mayor’s case for him: Repurposing these properties to fit the constraints of the available funds is complex business, and does require expertise and staff.
Sandy Pfund heads the city Office of Strategic Development, which is currently shepherding the mayor’s affordable housing initiatives. The Council itself set the policy path for the administration by directing that the funds must be spent on properties that the city controls, Pfund said, and that means acquisition and leasing arrangements that take time and resources to nail down.
She’s correct about that. It’s the job of the legislative branch to set policy for the city. But now that it has, those lawmakers need to enable the executive branch to execute the policy.
Instead, for example, Martin’s Council has added delays to negotiations for the River Street homelessness project, which is sorely needed in that community. Holding up the project’s development agreement at this stage puts the financing arrangements at risk, and without good cause. The Council is delaying that project with one hand while slapping the mayor for dragging his feet with the other.
The Council, led by Martin, prefers to pick fights with the mayor instead of combining forces to fight homelessness. Honolulu voters are losing their patience with that kind of nonsense.
