Name on ballot:

Tina Nakada Grandinetti

Running for:

State House – District 20

Political party:

Democrat

Campaign website:

tinaforhawaii.com

Current occupation:

Postdoctoral Fellow in Housing Policy

Age:

34

Previous job history:

Office Manager for Representative Amy Perruso

Previous elected office, if any:

No answer submitted

Please describe your qualifications to represent the people in your district.

I am uniquely qualified to represent the people of District 20 because I bring lawmaking experience, policy expertise, and a demonstrated track record of community leadership. I had the privilege of managing the office of State House Representative Amy Perruso for 3 years, and took an active role in working with advocates to write and advance bills related to housing, tax fairness, education, and local agriculture. I know how the legislature works, and I know how it doesn’t. I also bring housing policy expertise that will help me to address the growing issues that we are facing in District 20 concerning the cost of housing, increasing homelessness, and the proliferation of monster homes. I earned a PhD in Urban studies, focusing on Hawai’i’s housing crisis, and I currently work at a national policy institute to support communities across the country who are fighting displacement, gentrification, and housing insecurity. Finally, in my personal life, I have worked as a community organizer on critical issues like the fight to Shut Down Red Hill and efforts to prevent the eviction of 130 families at Kapiolani Village Apartments. I am skilled at mobilizing and empowering members of our community to take action and get engaged on the issues that impact their lives.

What is the most-pressing issue facing residents in your district and how would you address the problem?

While canvassing my district, the biggest issues that my community shared were all related to housing: rising housing costs, monster homes, and increasing homelessness. In my view, all of these concerns are the result of decades of housing and land use policies that have made Hawaii a hub for a global real estate market that is disconnected from the local economy. To address the housing and homelessness crisis, we need a ground-up, comprehensive housing policy agenda that focuses on the needs of local working families. In my current role as a postdoctoral housing policy fellow at a national policy institute I have the privilege of working with housing advocates across the country to advance policies that prevent displacement, gentrification, and housing insecurity. I am excited to introduce these best practice policies to our legislative conversation. A comprehensive approach to addressing this worsening crisis should: disincentivize speculation in our housing market, prevent displacement by strengthening protections for low-income homeowners and the 48% of Hawaii households who rent, fund a comprehensive continuum of care for people experiencing homelessness, demand accountability from developers, and provide state support for community-ownership models that create a pool of truly and permanently affordable housing.

What would you propose to be done at the state level to help residents cope with Hawaii’s high cost of living?

In my experience, the biggest cost burdens on Hawai’i families are 1) housing, 2) utilities, 3) groceries, 4) childcare and kupuna care. With nearly half of Hawai’i households renting, it’s time we have a serious conversation about rent stabilization measures that would cap allowable annual rent increases while ensuring a reasonable return for landlords. To address the rising costs of utilities bills, we should seriously consider working toward community ownership of our public utilities, which can not only bring down costs, but can make our electricity grid more resilient in the face of climate change. To bring down the price of food, we need to support local agriculture and move away from our dependence on imported produce. And to address the rising costs of childcare and kupuna care, we should pursue universal pre-K, paid parental leave, and increased support for family caregivers. With equity in mind, we should also revisit our current tax structure and incorporate G.E.T. exemptions for essential items like locally-grown food, diapers, feminine care products, and medicine, to lower the tax burden on working families.

What can the state Legislature do to help Hawaii home and condo owners with rising property insurance rates?

The property insurance issue is a climate issue. In the short term, we should take immediate action to stabilize our insurance market by requiring that insurers base any rate increases on actual data rather than perception. We should look to states like California, Kentucky, and Minnesota, which are requiring insurers to offer lower rates to property owners who make their homes more resilient against natural disasters. We should consider establishing a state-backed high-risk pool that will allow buyers to get coverage, although it is important to note that these costs will eventually be carried by the public. Ultimately, to really address the root cause of this problem, it is critical that we understand that the impending property insurance crisis is a direct result of our climate crisis. While condo owners are feeling the impacts first, we are quickly moving toward an uninsurable future. These changes are occurring nationwide, so we should be working with our congressional delegation to urge the federal government to regulate the insurance market. In the long term, here at home, we must seriously reassess planning, permitting, and infrastructure requirements to reflect our changing climate reality. We need to account for more frequent and intense fires, storms, and flooding events, and for a scarcity of water, and we must begin making meaningful public investments in climate resilience for our homes, neighborhoods, utilities, and infrastructure.

Can Hawaii’s tourism-dependent economy be diversified, and, if so, what can state government do to support the effort?

We should lessen our dependence on tourism by making bold public investments in regenerative agriculture to produce local food for local consumption. We currently spend less than 1 percent of our state budget on agriculture and we still import roughly 80-90% of our food. Investing in diversified, regenerative, local agriculture will help to enrich our economy and make us more resilient in the face of climate change and other disasters. So many young people are eager to care for aina, revitalize indigenous food systems and grow food for our community, but are unable to pursue careers in agriculture because they are not paid a living wage or cannot access state agricultural lands.
It is also important to note that our labor movement has a critical role to play in this conversation. The people who profit most from our dependence on tourism are outside corporations, which means that much of the economic benefit from these industries leaves the state. We need to empower our workers to ensure that all industries, from tourism to agriculture, from construction to tech, are serving the needs of the working people who make them run.

What would you propose to help increase affordable housing in Hawaii?

For decades, the legislature has been fixated on addressing our housing crisis by building more housing faster, at any price point. However, the vast majority of housing need (75 percent) comes from low-income households, and to make matters worse, roughly 20 percent of all new home purchases are made by out of state buyers– with that number reaching as high as 40 percent in some areas. This is a result of decades of land and housing policy that have made Hawai’i a hub for a global real estate market that is totally disconnected from our local economy. In this context, we cannot simply build our way out of this crisis, especially on an island with limited land and water. Instead, we need to focus on reshaping our housing market to center local working families. To do this, I propose implementing measures to: 1) Curb speculation and outside investment by implementing targeted property taxes increases for non-owner occupied units, increasing enforcement for short term vacation rentals, and establishing a vacant homes tax; 2) Create a pool of permanently affordable housing for local people by establishing programs that would incentivize owners to place deed restrictions for local residency or permanent affordability on their property; 3) stabilize rents by implementing reasonable caps on annual rent increases; and 4) Support the creation of community land trusts and limited equity coops that lower the barriers to homeownership and create a stock of permanently affordable housing.

What can state government do to better support and improve public education in Hawaii?

Over the last two decades we have consistently decreased funding for public education. We need to reverse this trend and prioritize our keiki by investing in their education and ensuring that they have the support they need to become lifelong learners. As a result of our underinvestment in education, our teacher shortage is so severe that we have more than 1000 emergency hires teaching in our classrooms, and each year, more than 60,000 keiki are not taught by a Hawaii Qualified Teacher. The single most important thing we can do to improve public education in Hawai’i is to address this teacher shortage by paying our teachers salaries that they deserve so that we can recruit and retain local educators and shrink class sizes. Aside from increasing teacher pay and implementing automatic step increases, we can also expand teacher apprenticeship programs that recruit local students to become teachers and pay them a living wage while they complete their student teaching hours.

Should the state continue to pursue building a replacement for Aloha Stadium in Halawa? Please explain.

At a moment when 60% of people in Hawai’i are struggling to get by, I think we should seriously reconsider making large public investments in non-essential developments, and instead consider using those funds to strengthen our social safety net and build a more sustainable local economy. In any case, I would love to see a more robust participatory planning process where residents of Halawa have the most meaningful say in what happens at the heart of their community.

Should members of the state Legislature have term limits like Honolulu’s mayor and City Council members?

I support term limits for state legislators because they can serve as an important check on the undue concentration of power and influence. However, as we determine what those limits should be, it is also important to recognize that it takes some time and experience to learn how to be an effective legislator. Reasonable term limits should strike a balance between the need to limit power, allow for new perspectives, and ensure that we have effective legislators. We should also support campaign finance reforms and publicly financed elections to ensure that we do not have to wait for incumbents to term out before new candidates feel empowered to run. A comprehensive public financing system would level the playing field by providing all candidates with equal resources, thereby allowing our candidate pool to better reflect the diversity of our community. It would also reduce the influence of big donors and specific interest groups. And finally, it would benefit the broader community and enrich our democratic process by allowing candidates to focus less on fundraising and more on engaging voters and learning from district residents.

What reforms, if any, would you propose to make local government more transparent to the public?

I support ending pay-to-play donations by closing loopholes in campaign finance law so that all owners, officers, family members and employees of companies vying for government contracts are prohibited from donating to political campaigns, as well as establishing significant penalties for violators.
Within the legislature, committee chairs have nearly unilateral power over whether a bill lives or dies. I support internal rule changes that more equitably distribute power among committee members so that our legislators can engage with each other more democratically, and so that constituents can count on the fact that their elected representatives have a voice in the Legislature.

What will be your top priority if elected?

My top priority will be to advance policies that support working families and ensure that local people can afford to live in Hawaii and raise our keiki to care for our lands and waters. To me, this means making our housing market work for local people, investing in early childcare and public education, building a sustainable local food system, and advancing tax fairness. More specifically, I would love to leverage my extensive background in housing policy and anti-displacement policy by working on the Housing Committee to expand our conversation beyond simply building our way out of the crisis, and toward policies that reshape our housing market to reflect our local economy, serve local people, and respect our neighborhoods and environment.

Is there anything more that you would like voters to know about you?

Aside from my extensive experience in legislative matters and policymaking, I am most proud of my demonstrated track record of standing with our community to fight for the issues that matter. I was a founding member of the O’ahu Water Protectors, a community group that fought to Shut Down Red Hill after the Navy fuel leak poisoned our aquifer. As a member of the Honolulu Tenants Union, I contributed to efforts to prevent the eviction of 130 tenants who were eventually displaced to make room for a luxury high rise development. I have taught Political Science undergraduate classes at UH Manoa and early college classes at Roosevelt High School, and as Vice President of Hawai’i Peace and Justice, I helped to develop a youth organizing program to empower young people to engage in the environmental justice issues that affect their futures. My commitment to community is also reflected in my campaign, as I have engaged nearly 50 volunteers, and raised more than a third of my campaign funds in small dollar donations under $100. My campaign is supported by everyday working people, because I have been steadfastly committed to showing up for our community when it counts.