So many desperate Hawaii residents, suffering through the wave of joblessness the coronavirus pandemic has generated, wonder when and how their financial distress will end. But first, there must be a beginning.
And the time to start that long climb back to economic stability must be seen as just around the corner. Local government must set a date in the near future for restarting tourism, announce it early enough to allow businesses to prepare — and then stick to that timeline.
The city had no choice but to lock Oahu down pretty tightly in
order to quash a surge in new COVID-19 cases that had topped 300 per day and threatened to overwhelm Hawaii’s hospital system — disastrous for this island state.
The first two-week “Stay at Home/Work from Home Order” had suppressed the surge to a point, but not enough to fend off the current 14-day extension. That, too was necessary: The community spread has to be reined in as much as possible now, so that the state will be better able to tamp down localized hot spots before they ignite fully.
But the inescapable fact is that Hawaii must get back to business promptly: Reopening the so-called “nonessential” retailers in particular is crucial to economic revival. And, given that these businesses lean on tourism for a share of clientele, leaders must push ahead to restart tourism on a date certain.
Moving forward is the right impulse. Last week it was endorsed by Lt. Gov. Josh Green, speaking on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Spotlight Hawaii webcast. Green advocated that Oct. 1 become the date for a “soft launch” of the long-delayed and much-needed pre-travel testing program, the core element needed for a reboot of trans-Pacific travel to Hawaii.
Green affirmed that negotiations with partners such as CVS and
Kaiser Permanente who could provide COVID-19 tests for travelers — possibly a mix of the fast “antigen” tests as well as the familiar nasal swabs — are going well enough to commit to that date.
That would send the right signal to the long-dormant travel industry, which would be able to begin booking visitors for the months ahead. Gov. David Ige should sign off on the commitment, and soon.
There also must be a clear exposition about how the plan works, also sooner rather than later. The public and the business sector need to hear that crucial elements of navigating through the pandemic, including status reports on contact-tracing efforts as well as the testing regimen, are in place.
Employers within the local economy, especially the long-suffering restaurants and retail shops, also need certainty that their businesses will be allowed to open in the next adjustment of city restrictions.
Myriad statistics highlight just how important tourism is to the survival of the Hawaii economy, in the broadest sense.
At the start of the lockdowns in March, Oxford Economics, a global forecasting agency, issued a state-by-state economic study listing anticipated losses of all the hotel-
supported jobs, including those involved in the hotels’ supply chains. Of Hawaii’s roughly 140,000 industry-supported jobs, more than 63,000 were at risk, according to the study.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced Thursday that Hawaii had the nation’s highest “insured unemployment rate” — workers who file unemployment claims — for the week ended Aug. 22: 20.3%.
On a more personal level for those who love local eateries, that same day the online food-industry tracking site Food-A-Go-Go listed 47 restaurants statewide that have permanently closed their doors.
These trends long ago led Tina Yamaki, president of the Retail Merchants Association of Hawaii, to sound thes alarm about businesses in trouble — including mid-sized employers who were ineligible for much of the federal aid distributed in the pandemic’s early days.
“It’s not just the small mom-and-pop stores,” she said, speaking Friday on Spotlight Hawaii. “We are also seeing national and international retailers going bankrupt, going out of business or pulling out of Hawaii.”
Yamaki, as well as Sherry Menor-McNamara, Chamber of Commerce Hawaii president, took hope from the Honolulu City Council’s adoption of Resolution 20-208, the “Honolulu Economic Recovery and Employment Support Package.” Among other assists, this measure proposes lease rent relief for commercial, hotel and resort properties; Councilman Tommy Waters has said he would ask Mayor Kirk Caldwell to release $100 million in federal funds to underwrite the initiative.
This aid is plainly merited. Many of Hawaii’s local businesses are doing all they can to hang on, innovating to find new ways, online or in person, to deliver products and services. They’ve cut costs. But they truly need help covering the rent, one of the biggest non-labor expenses they bear.
Hawaii must do all it can to keep its infection rate low, but plainly the virus will be here for many long months. It’s time to learn how to live with this virus — and the state will never accomplish that without bolstering the businesses that support its people.
