A Honolulu City Council bill to establish a preference for Oahu residents among those who apply for city-supported housing is in play, awaiting a rescheduled second reading. It’s a simple, workable idea that can help ensure residents have a better shot at accessing housing; it should be heard, and viewed favorably.
Bill 19 (2024) specifies that any housing developed by the city, funded with city taxpayer dollars, or purchased and managed by the city must offer a preference to those who live and work on Oahu. That’s fair. It was introduced by Councilmembers Radiant Cordero and Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, who say it’s one element of the city’s response to the continued outflow of Oahu residents to other states because of Hawaii’s high cost of living and inadequate supply of affordable housing.
As supporters note, more than 67,000 residents left Hawaii for good between 2021 and 2022. And the barriers to housing access hurt disadvantaged groups the most: U.S. Census Bureau data shows that a higher proportion of Native Hawaiians — 55% — now live outside of their ancestral home than within the islands.
“For decades, our residents have been calling for relief from high housing costs and for the creation of more affordable housing,” Cordero stated. “This measure seeks to ensure that our residents come first and that any housing created by the city or with city funds will first be offered to those who live and work here on Oahu.”
The bill’s supporters compare the eligibility preferences to those used in Boston, a high-cost, low-supply housing market where the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) processes more than 10,000 applications for subsidized housing each year, and applicants can be on the waiting list for up to five years.
Faced with more demand than can be met, Boston amended its municipal code to state, “It is the policy of the city of Boston to ensure that every program and/or initiative which targets or intends to target housing and was/is … guided by the City of Boston shall, to the greatest extent allowable under law, include a preference for Boston residents.”
Similarly, Bill 19 establishes a preference requirement for Honolulu County residents who apply for any city program or effort that “promotes or is intended to promote the provision of housing.”
Boston’s municipal code and Honolulu’s proposed law do not exclude nonresidents from housing. Rather, they place residents ahead in the line of people waiting for housing, in comparison to nonresidents. Bill 19 states, “This policy installs only a preference for city residents and does not exclude non-city residents from such programs or initiatives.”
Other factors can still vault a housing applicant who is not classified as a resident closer to placement. The BHA, for example, also uses “priority” rankings, which rank applicants higher if they have urgent needs — for example, they’ve been displaced because of a disaster or government action, or live in transitional housing. “Preference” provides a smaller bump for factors such as being a veteran of military service, or living, working or having a job offer in the Boston metropolitan area.
Bill 19, soundly, uses Hawaii state law to define residents who qualify for the preference. That would include anyone who has lived on Oahu on a full-time basis for at least 200 days, considers Oahu their permanent home, and who intends to return to Oahu whenever they leave the island.
The preference can help guard against “subsidy shopping,” where a person outside of Oahu learns of a housing opportunity and relocates here to take advantage of it. Even in such a case, that applicant wouldn’t be excluded from city-supported housing; all other factors being equal, they would simply need to live permanently on Oahu for 200 days before moving higher on a waiting list.
Bill 19 is mere common sense, as it requires tangible evidence and a stated commitment that an applicant for city-supported housing is an Oahu resident vested in this community.
