We have a housing crisis. A single-family home in Hawaii now boasts a median price tag just shy of $1 million. With even “affordable housing” exceeding $600,000, our youth wonder if calling Hawaii “home” is really worth it.
Many factors make housing uniquely difficult in Hawaii: outdated zoning laws, complex land-use controls and eyebrow-raising government policies, to name a few. But the challenge boils down to a lack of affordable, long-term housing supply. According to SMS’s 2019 Housing Planning Study, we need 50,000 new housing units by 2025 to satisfy local demand. That number exceeds what the Ige, Abercrombie, and Lingle administrations — combined — built over their 18 years of service.
What little progress we have made in recent years has been subverted by division among ourselves and the resulting dominance of a vocal minority of impassioned property owners. Genuine concerns of cultural integrity and respect for the land have transformed into vehement opposition to protect “my property values, my views, my (gated) community!”
Meanwhile, our kupuna subsist on a Social Security income barely enough to pay for rent and groceries. Our youth leave on the same planes toting hordes of tourists — and never look back. Our Native Hawaiians, in receipt of injustice long inflicted, wait decades — 28,000 of them — for their promised land in the form of homesteads.
The housing crisis threatens our past, our future and the people who embody the very spirit of Hawaii. Let their preservation be our purpose.
This is not a manifesto for irresponsible development, but a call to fulfill our kuleana.
We must construct a vision for our aina and persist in the common search for solutions. Our government, enterprise, nonprofit and philanthropic institutions complement each other in expertise, labor and humanitarian spirit — only in concert do we possess the means for change. Therefore the question is not which of us will solve our crisis, but what we as individuals will contribute to the struggle.
We can only begin, however, if we surrender our misgivings against each other: Government cannot always serve as our scapegoat, nor are developers set on destroying our neighborhoods. Similarly, public voice must be allowed stakeholder status from the very beginning so we wield power of parity — and not last-moment veto. If we endeavor for the profit of society rather than profit of power or purchase, we will realize true solutions — while preserving culture, environment and community.
The modern era exhorts us not to forget our fundamental values. I think of my grandparents who lived and served through war and hardship, and yet never lived in a place they could call their own. I see them reflected in those who share our common need — how could I not fight to give them a home?
There is no kamaaina discount on the price of paradise. Our demise will not come at the hands of opposition, but indifference. Let it be known that our democracy is not a homeowner’s association, but a hale — a refuge, a gathering place.
Likewise, our strength has always been our sense of community — land and people, one and inseparable. We must come together and care for each other, just as our forebears who learned to live together in the era of the plantation.
Aloha must live on.
So let us not continue to gentrify, for division within community engenders destruction of society. Let us instead live up to our creed “Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina i ka pono” — the life of our land perpetuated in righteousness. We cannot afford the alternative.
Damien Chang is a McKinley High School graduate, Class of 2020, who is now at Harvard College.
“Raise Your Hand,” a monthly column featuring Hawaii’s youth and their perspectives, appears in the Insight section on the first Sunday of each month. It is facilitated by the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders.
www.CTLhawaii.org
