What do you think of Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s proposals to incentivize more affordable housing?
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C. Negative; won't work (463 Votes)
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B. OK; some potential (402 Votes)
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A. Very promising; will work (130 Votes)
This is not a scientific poll — results reflect only the opinions of those voting.
31 responses to “What do you think of Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s proposals to incentivize more affordable housing?”
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Instead of incentivizing “affordable” housing through these big businesses, we should be incentivizing the landlords to open up their homes for rental at a truly affordable rate. These “affordable” housing that Caldwell is seeking are very limited and only puts a small dent in the problem. We need to give tax credits or tax breaks for landlords that are willing to offer truly affordable rates for their rental units. And to encourage landlords to take in renters that are at a high risk or have a history of problems with past landlords. We need to insure their properties so that they will be more willing to offer up their units. Simply building more units within limited condos is just not going to do it. Instead, we keep raising property taxes and we wonder why the rents are so high here in Hawaii. We create affordable housing shortage and then we wonder why we have so many homeless people. And so what do we do? We raise the property taxes even more to try and solve the very same problem that this tax is creating. How absurd is that?
Instead of incentivizing “affordable” housing through these big businesses, we should be incentivizing the landlords to open up their homes for rental at a truly affordable rate. These “affordable” housing that Caldwell is seeking are very limited and only puts a small dent in the problem. We need to give tax credits or tax breaks for landlords that are willing to offer truly affordable rates for their rental units. And to encourage landlords to take in renters that are at a high risk or have a history of problems with past landlords. We need to insure their properties so that they will be more willing to offer up their units. Simply building more units within limited condos is just not going to do it. Instead, we keep raising property taxes and we wonder why the rents are so high here in Hawaii. We create affordable housing shortage and then we wonder why we have so many homeless people. And so what do we do? We raise the property taxes even more to try and solve the very same problem that this tax is creating.
Instead of incentivizing “affordable” housing through these big businesses, we should be incentivizing the landlords to open up their homes for rental at a truly affordable rate. These “affordable” housing that Caldwell is seeking are very limited and only puts a small dent in the problem. We need to give tax credits or tax breaks for landlords that are willing to offer truly affordable rates for their rental units. And to encourage landlords to take in renters that are at a high risk or have a history of situations with past landlords. We need to insure their properties so that they will be more willing to offer up their units. Simply building more units within limited condos is just not going to do it. Instead, we keep raising property taxes and we wonder why the rents are so high here in Hawaii. We create affordable housing shortage and then we wonder why we have so many homeless people. And so what do we do? We raise the property taxes even more to try and solve the very same problem that this tax is creating. How absurd is that?
Instead of incentivizing “affordable” housing through these big businesses, we should be incentivizing the landlords to open up their homes for rental at a truly affordable rate. These “affordable” housing that Caldwell is seeking are very limited and only puts a small dent in the problem. We need to give tax credits or tax breaks for landlords that are willing to offer truly affordable rates for their rental units. And to encourage landlords to take in renters that are at a high risk or have a history of situations with past landlords. We need to insure their properties so that they will be more willing to offer up their units. Simply building more units within limited condos is just not going to do it. Instead, we keep raising property taxes and we wonder why the rents are so high here in Hawaii. We create affordable housing shortage and then we wonder why we have so many homeless people. We raise the property taxes even more to try and solve the very same situation that this tax is creating. How absurd is that?
Instead of building more affordable housing. How about opening up affordable housing within the resources that are already available? There are many homeowners that can open up their units for rental or offering up more affordable units if they are given an incentive through tax credits or tax breaks. We have this tax and spend problem that is the very cause of our housing shortage. The more we raise property taxes the more there will be less affordable housing. It’s just simple economics.
Raising property taxes results in higher rents. Higher rents result in more homeless. Simply incentivizing developers will only put a nick in the housing shortage. We need to work with the landlords to open up affordable housing through incentives.
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If we truly want to open up affordable housing, we need to incentive the already available housing through incentives to current property owners. Instead we keep raising property taxes which result in higher rents. When will learn?
Instead we keep looking at developers to open up “affordable” housing. This approach is misguided as it does not begin to put a real dent in the problem. And instead we keep raising property taxes and wonder why the rents keep going up.
Nodaddypleasenotanotherpost!
hahaha, agree! nodaddynotthebelt, I guess all those whippings with a belt left you traumatized! LOL
Median income stats should be questioned. Further inflated real estate prices create false wealth as well as higher taxes assessed against the property.
They’re aiming for the $1mioon target in valuations so they can stick Alt-A taxes onto all of us!
typo…should be $1-million
I stopped listening a long time ago to anything Kirky has to say.
Amen
The key is to help moderate income people to buy homes. In the late ’70s they had a couple of projects that put these people in a home. They were affordable and attracted young families. The homes were not big, mostly single family, some duplexes and even some townhouses. Really helped people get started.
Unfortunately, most of those voting on this poll don’t even know what the mayor proposed, much less the merits. It’s just a popularity contest on Caldwell. If someone else were making the same recommendations, the result would be different. Caldwell did get a lot of stakeholders, including unions and developers (who also got incentives), to make concessions to build affordable housing on land provided by the City, so among the initiatives being considered, it’s probably the one with the best chance of success.
BB: Your comment is insulting. If anything, I find the folks who comment in this forum and on The BiQ’s to be not only well informed but thoughtful and insightful, especially when it comments to the mayor. We can agree or disagree on any issue, but to suggest that we do it without researching and understanding what the mayor, or the subject of any topic, is indicative of a dismissive attitude that has no place here.
I didn’t say the people “commenting,” if you read my post. I said the people voting on the Big Q. Most of those voting aren’t commenters. There are some good, thoughtful comments, which is why I come to this section. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of knee-jerk anti-Caldwell venom spewed as well, which goes to my contention that a lot of the comments are politically based, not policy based.
Quality job and business opportunities is needed so people can afford to buy homes. That’s what was missing during the State of the City address. Incentives for high tech, biotech, research, organic farming and other lucrative sectors need to be brought here so the economy can thrive
We just have too many people. Why were homes affordable in the late 1970’s with mortgage rates approaching 15%? Blame the Federal Reserve with dollars backed by nothing. Don’t forget that we have low inflation. Really?
“Affordable Housing”? I don’t think so. Quirky boy tries to disguise this but it is just more developer money and perks in his pocket. $600,000.00 for a studio or 1 bedroom is not “Affordable Housing” and is meant for investors and the rich exclusively.
Tons of homes for a $1 in Detroit so move already! Start with the bums and then the next batch of cronies is all the “D” union non-essential government workers! Detroit is the perfect city to revitalize. They can all work remotely from the mainland. We have great fiber-optic connectivity so most white collar government services can be outsourced to the mainland or even overseas.
The Construction Industry & the Unions, didn’t put their input yet.
It takes more than a Mayor.
Way too little is not nearly enough. All buildings permitted as residential must be occupied by residents of Hawaii. Building codes must be updated to include all structurally sound building materials and methods and be open to newer and better materials and methods as they become available. The definition of “Affordable Housing” must be redefined as “workforce affordable” and recalculated to be workforce affordable. Workforce affordable residences must be retained by the owner for a standard period of time before it can be re-sold (such as 7 – 10 years but never less than 5 years.) Practices like developers paying a “fee” to avoid their responsibility to actually create affordable housing as they develop must be reversed. Those parts of the visitor industry that are parasitic and have a net effect of more harm than good must be throttled back until they no longer have negative net effect in Hawaii.
“Affordable” in Hawaii is free beach space to camp out on with warm weather all year, welfare, food stamps, free meals at Salvation Army, donations from tourists, tents on the sidewalks,…… politicians not doing very much since it is all about rail and police can’t do their job because the ACLU and courts won’t allow it.
About time that we address this. We’ve been kicking the can down the road for over 30 years.
It’s funny. Everything Honolulu is thinking of doing has already been done in San Fran, L.A., Portland and Seattle and none of it has worked. All run by liberals.
Next will be the “one billion dollar” idea to “solve” the homeless problem. Seattle tried it and now they have more homeless they don’t know what to do with them. They are all over the waterfront drinking and smoking pot because it’s legal. Downtown Seattle smells like a toilet, not good for tourist.
It will happen here, nothing you can do about it.
Caldwell is again trying to take care of his developer contributors. He owes them. Inconceivable that so many voters were duped by this con man.
It’s a smokescreen to line the pockets of his union puppeteers, caaa’mon Kirk you think we’re stupid?