Hawaii may have reached a tipping point in assembling the political will needed to push for affordable housing. At least, Drew Astolfi hopes that’s the case.

Astolfi is executive director of the isle chapter of Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE), a nonprofit advocacy group primarily championing lower-income housing. He noted a kind of sea change at hearings held earlier this month on a West Maui project known as Olowalu Town. Half the project — 750 units — had been pledged to affordable housing.

Often the opposition to development — whether it’s based on environmental concerns or on general "not in my backyard" (NIMBY) resistance — has the dominant hand in debates, he said, but the tide seemed to turn this time. The upshot of the hearing: Housing needs had become paramount.

"Maybe there is a tipping point," Astolfi said. "I’m feeling it, anyway. I feel desperate to get affordable housing built — especially rentals, but for homeownership, too."

There’s reason for such worries, given the persistent Hawaii market conditions. Where housing markets in many states are skittering along at basement levels, the median price for a single-family home is predicted to approach $800,000 in three years, according to the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.

Already the low housing inventory has pushed the median up to $635,000, basically erasing the losses of the market crash — and pushing affordability even further beyond the grasp of many families. In this climate, it’s easy to conclude that the demand for affordable housing is outpacing efforts to meet it.

But some of the developers who specialize in this area, as well as the nonprofit corporations and organizations that work on behalf of needy residents, say progress is being made — slowly — and that there are additional strategies that can be tried. Approaches include: transit-oriented development where high-rise projects can be situated; land trusts that underwrite one of the principle costs; and master lease programs, with nonprofits helping the poorest people overcome hurdles with landlords.

In about a month, Hawaii housing professionals, advocates and government officials will gather with national experts at the National Conference on Affordable Housing in High Cost Areas (see page F4).

Counties set the level for what qualifies as "affordable," said Kevin Carney, one of the event’s organizers and regional vice president of EAH Hawaii, a nonprofit housing development and management company. On Oahu, the criteria is housing priced for purchase by households bringing in 140 percent of the area median income (AMI) or below.

"At the top levels, you need a six-figure income to qualify for those," Carney said. "You need to get to 80 percent and below of AMI to be affordable for middle managers, and 60 percent and below to talk about the service industry."

Carney is also president of the board of Housing Hawaii, the 501(c)3 nonprofit coalition formed to advocate for affordable housing interests following the last national conference held in Hawaii, which was 2005. Independently of the Sept. 11-12 conference, there’s a lot going on.

Some of the state’s gradual progress toward affordable housing goals stems from work by the Hawaii Housing Finance & Development Corp., he said, the agency that awards the tax credits developers use to keep unit prices and rents down.

Among its more recent projects, the corporation partnered with a private nonprofit developer, Pacific Housing Assistance Corp., and broke ground on a 160-unit rental project for seniors in Iwilei.

Housing Hawaii’s mission is to increase the supply of affordable homes, but there’s also been movement to preserve the existing inventory of units. At the end of the month, city officials are due to announce the final terms of a contract to privatize Honolulu’s 12 subsidized rental projects, with the city retaining the land but leasehold ownership of the properties and their management being turned over to Honolulu Affordable Housing Partners LLC.

HAHP will make a one-time payment of $142 million to the city and invest an additional $42 million to renovate the rental housing complexes within the first two years of the lease, according to the initial announcement.

Last week, the Hawaii Community Development Authority, which oversees the redevelopment of Kakaako, decided Kamehameha Schools could fulfill its requirement to provide moderately priced units within the district by converting part of the old Pagoda Hotel, just beyond the boundary, to condos.

In recent years the movement has been away from government-produced affordable housing — the state’s Kuhio Park Terrace and Kuhio Homes project in Kalihi also is being renovated by private partners — and toward arrangements in which government provides incentives to private developers.

One veteran of the federal tax-credit incentives, for example, is Craig Watase, president of Mark Development Inc.

Watase has long maintained that such incentives are more effective than requirements that developers carve out a set percentage of units for low-to-moderate incomes. More recently he’s become one of many avid cheerleaders for transit-oriented development as one of the most potent lures available for driving the production of more housing in a more compact area, avoiding further suburban sprawl.

The idea is that the transit stops would bring potential customers who would support commercial activity, he said, creating new business opportunity and demand for surrounding property. The city could use that newly enhanced value as a bargaining chip: In exchange for rights to develop, say, a shopping center, a builder could be required to provide affordable units. The profits from the commercial project, Watase said, would make the housing development pencil out more easily.

"But now we’re dealing with land that’s valuable because of the transit line, not ag land," he said.

Most advocates agree that filling in urban Honolulu with more high-rise housing, by transit centers or anywhere else, is good planning and has worked elsewhere. Portland, Denver and Vancouver are cities that reaped the benefits of TOD, said Dean Uchida, senior project manager at SSFM International, a civil engineering firm. Uchida is a veteran of the state Senate’s Affordable Housing Task Force, which issued a report on possible solutions in 2006.

In order to enable more compact development, Uchida said, the central role for government lies in overhauling the aging municipal infrastructure and boosting its capacity — sewers, water, roads — to accommodate all these new units.

There are other strategies aimed at basic problem-solving for builders of new homes, as well as low-income tenants in search of a landlord. Uchida said Hawaii’s housing policies should allow for architectural innovations on lower-cost structures. In the past Hawaii allowed single-wall construction, waved off sidewalks and other elements, he said; some out-of-the-box thinking is needed again.

"Maybe we need to go back and look at ordinances," he added. "If it’s not a public health and safety issue, give the developer some flexibility."

Victor Geminiani is executive director of the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, where staffers are putting finishing touches on a report examining various housing barriers. Some transitional housing projects should be made permanent, and more self-help housing programs, with tenants helping to finish a low-cost housing "shell," should be considered, he said.

At the lowest end of the spectrum are the homeless or those on the edge. Doran Porter heads the Affordable Housing & Homeless Alliance, which is seeking funding for an initiative he and his staff developed, "Save My Hale." In this program, the agency would hold a master lease for a low-income tenant, vet the applicants, provide training in household budgets and basically run interference between tenants and landlords.

Porter also favors ideas such as land trusts, in which the trust owns the fee but homeowners have an interest. This model has worked well in Atlanta and other cities, he said.

What’s needed most, all agree, is a collective acceptance of lower-cost solutions.

"We’re all in this together," Geminiani said. "We’re on an island, and we have to resolve it together."