When three former Hawaii governors called for changing the site for a new state-run stadium, they said to dump the existing replacement plans carefully put together by Gov. David Ige.

The governors made two suggestions, but only one got attention.

The trio of Neil Abercrombie, Ben Cayetano and John Waihee advised building a stadium somewhere on the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus and use the existing Halawa stadium site for some sort of state-subsidized housing.

There is a lot of “well, that’s obvious” in the gubernatorial trio’s thinking.

First, the UH-utilized stadium at Halawa was condemned; second, no one has built a new stadium. If UH is to have a football team it needs a stadium. So following the Hawaii motto, “If no can, no can,” the governors were smart enough to go heavy on the hopes and dreams, and light on specifics.

They ignored the question of whether there was room at the Manoa campus. When you start to mention open space to UH officials, suddenly every square meter has already been dreamed about, designated, marked out, with dibs called for all of the lovely campus.

As soon as Abercrombie, Cayetano and Waihee were to mention a specific plot of Manoa grass, the turf battle would commence. So it was smarter to say it would be somewhere up at Manoa and leave specifics unstated.

The governors did touch on the real problem: the lack of housing in Hawaii.

That’s the real unsaid, unmentioned and certainly unsolved problem. Madame Pele may be trying to make more land on the Big Island, but we are limited and the demand for housing is growing so that Oahu’s single- family median price is hovering around $1 million.

The current administration, like every one since the days of Gov. John A. Burns in the 1960s, has promised to hop right on the housing problem.

No one — not Quinn, Burns, Ariyoshi, Waihee, Cayetano, Lingle, Abercrombie nor Ige — has been able to solve it. Resolution may not be in the offing, but the latest plans offered by Ige seem weaker than most.

Ige first floated plans for a stadium plan along with a housing and entertainment district on the Halawa site of the old stadium.

“Full development of the real estate around a new stadium could take a couple of decades or longer,” said a news release from the state Stadium Authority.

Now, if that is just too loose and unspecific for you, how about Ige’s plans for another undeveloped tract that, if developed properly, would make any governor king — Kalihi? The state has plans to to spend at least $65 million for a replacement for the Oahu Community Correctional Center and that would then trigger the revitalization of Kalihi.

There’s a commission studying the issue, but that’s about it.

The 21st Century Kalihi Initiative was set up in 2016 to “to understand community needs, concerns, and desires for the site and surrounding area, and to articulate a vision informed and inspired by community aspirations.”

What is needed is not another study, nor initiative. What is needed is housing that people in Halawa and Kalihi can afford. The housing problem doesn’t need to be studied nor critiqued, it needs to be faced and solved.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.