Hopes for affordable housing can be extinguished easily, caught between two opposing forces. Developers tend to be leery of committing to long-term affordability because of the costs. Then, when there are willing developers, there can be pushback from neighbors who don’t like the boost in density that lower-income projects require.
Examples of both scenarios have surfaced in recent weeks. In the first case, the city has passed
Bill 60, a measure aimed at incentivizing property owners to add new affordable units on existing low-rise apartment buildings. In the other, a proposed mid-rise affordable rental project in Kailua has run into some community opposition.
All of this demonstrates the high hurdle state and local governments will have to surmount to meet the growing need for housing for those with lower earnings. Plainly, there will be even more people in this category as Hawaii struggles to climb out of the current economic slump.
Although Bill 60 does have the potential to move the needle a bit — several builders stepped up during Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s signing ceremony to say they have projects planned — it will be a short-term fix. That’s because the new law is a set of amendments to a previously passed measure, Bill 7, which was not getting much interest.
And among the amendments is one that now caps the term of affordability to merely 15 years. Bill 7 was passed a year ago as a five-year pilot project in which the units would need to stay within range of lower-income renters in perpetuity.
The city Department of Planning and Permitting reports that only two applications were received in that first year.
So the deal was sweetened in Bill 60. In exchange for controlled rents for a 15-year term, builders would get incentives to save them thousands of dollars per unit.
The provisions include relaxed density, height and setback rules, no required parking, waivers from building permit application and wastewater facilities charges, no park dedication fees and a 10-year waiver on property taxes.
Oahu residents can hope that more affordable dwellings will come online in exchange for these concessions, but the short affordability term doesn’t solve the long-term rental shortage. The public must demand other approaches to the housing crisis.
At the same time, controversy has flared over another, potentially longer-term affordability solution.
The development firm Ahe Group and three partners have proposed to build a pair of four- and three-story buildings including 68 affordable units at Oneawa and Kawainui streets in Kailua.
That stirred controversy among neighbors in the adjacent single-family residential Coconut Grove community, who raised the familiar concerns about traffic and viewplane obstruction.
The builders would need state-issued tax credits and city fee waivers to support the project and need City Council exemptions from density and height restrictions. But the benefit would be substantial: rentals for households earning 30-60% of area median income, with rents kept affordable for 61 years.
It should be hard for the Council to oppose a project addressing this need, given the stubborn housing shortage. Alternate sites that would be more acceptable should be explored, but those are in short supply, too.
Further, the housing problem doesn’t rest with the counties alone. When the Legislature reconvenes June 22, lawmakers need to see what can be salvaged from their ambitious affordable-housing agenda.
If anything, as the recession pushes more people into the lower-income tier, the call for leaders to show some political will on the housing issue has become even more difficult to ignore — and more urgent.
