The recent bullying of a state employee at a public meeting and threats against her family on social media is totally unacceptable. Given the passion, the spread of misinformation, and the tragedy unfolding in West Maui, the frustration and anger may be understandable, but the threats are 100 percent not OK.
Healthy public discourse is fundamental to the existence of a healthy democracy.
Suspending the Sunshine Law in the Gov. Josh Green’s Emergency Proclamation on Housing (EP) essentially kicks the public out of the discussion.
Our democracy needs more public involvement, not less.
Reducing the community’s ability to participate, and saying to them “trust me we’ll do what’s best for you,” is not the answer.
Bypassing state and county legislative processes intended to manage development, and granting decision-making power to a single person, or even a handful of the hand-picked, just adds fuel to fire.
What big business likes to refer as “barriers to development,” exist to protect agricultural, cultural, and environmentally sensitive areas that are irreplaceable. The petitions, the lawsuits, and the concerned citizens filling the room lined up to testify, are there to protect and preserve that which sustains them.
Attempts to take away these protections, whether real or imagined, and take away the process enshrined in law that protects the peoples voice, will unfortunately, inevitably, and unacceptably result in anger and harsh words.
Green and his advisers are now in a position to learn from this and reset the process, or put it aside altogether.
If you believe as I do, that thousands of people living in cars, bushes, doorways, at the side of the road and under bridges, constitute a crisis and true emergency, then that should be the focus. If you believe also the fundamental lack of affordable housing is the core reason people are houseless, then emergency efforts on creating permanently affordable housing must be the clear and unambiguous priority.
Perhaps the place to start is the title. Instead of the Emergency Proclamation Relating to Housing, perhaps insert the words permanently affordable.
With this new clear unambiguous mission in mind, going back to stakeholders and the general public, for more not less input, would also be valuable. If a thorough conversation is conducted many strategies will emerge that don’t require cutting out public protections in order to motivate new large scale development.
According to research published in 2022 by Hawaii Business Magazine: approximately 80,000 homes are likely now sitting empty across the islands. These are vacation homes, vacation rentals, second homes, third or forth homes in some cases, and often just empty apartments (so-called “investor units”). Amending tax policy at both the state and county levels could greatly influence and motivate these property owners to do the right thing and rent out their properties to local residents. We need to tax them until they scream, or until they leave (oh wait most don’t live here anyway), or hopefully they decide to convert to a long term rental.
Similarly, there are thousands of “undeveloped single family residential lots” sitting vacant on every island. Tax policy can be used to incentivize these owners to promptly build a rental or sell their lot to someone who will. In addition, there are other thousands of potential “Additional Dwelling/Rental Units” (ARU’s and ADU’s) all located in areas with infrastructure in place.
Tax incentives and/or grants to pay for septic systems or other needs, could motivate many homeowners to build an affordable rental and keep it affordable for X years, thus ensuring them retirement income or a place eventually for mom and dad to live.
There are many strategies that could be used to tackle and solve this problem. Each needs to be explored.
The answer does not have to include sacrificing important public, environmental and cultural safeguards in order to ensure developer profits.
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Gary Hooser served eight years in the state Senate, where he was majority leader. He also served for eight years on the Kaua‘i County Counci. He presently writes on Hawaii Policy and Politics at www.garyhooser.blog.
“…business likes to refer as “barriers to development,” exist to protect agricultural, cultural, and environmentally sensitive areas…”
There it is in a nutshell, Gary. “Protecting” agricultural land via land-use, zoning and other rules & regulations is the very cause of the severe shortage of housing in Hawaii. What these counterproductive policies do is restrict the supply of building lots…this, of course, drives up the price making it virtually impossible for people to buy what is available. The higher prices for the building lots, such as they are, is then only affordable to the more affluent…this leads to the persistent claim that the “wealthy” are buying up all the land and to the observable increase in the number of homeless encampments.
Any rational thought about this problem should lead one to realize that it is government interference in the real property market that is the root of the problem. Of course no politician or bureaucrat will acknowledge this because that would be admitting that they (not the wealthy) have made this an ongoing disaster for Hawaii’s people. Castigating the wealthy gives these hacks cover.
Another thing we see when the issue of allowing agricultural lands to be rezoned for housing is the whining about the environment. It’s obvious to any thinking person that those who shriek the most about protecting the environment are largely those that already have houses so are unaffected by the shortage of such. In other words: I have mine; tough beans for the rest who do not. Complaints about the resulting traffic from housing development is a real government issue…and it’s one responsibility that they have consistently failed to accomplish. They’ve known it would become an issue for at least five decades.
Until politicians and bureaucrats are honest enough to look at themselves and the many studies by economists showing that restrictive land-use regimes are the problem, nothing will change. If more government interference worked we would not see the affordable housing an issue for decades now.
Finally, Gary, we saw the video of the so called bullying by BJ Penn. Characterizing what he said as bullying is just a typical reaction by government officials who don’t like to be challenged. Penn’s most poignant point was that those in government work for us (not the other way around) and that these so called public servants need to actually listen and not argue with citizens’ complaints and concerns. The sad reality is that these public hearings seem to be nothing more than a charade to lead people to think that they actually have a voice in establishment of policy. Most often the policy decisions are a foregone conclusion before the public hearings even happen.
RSW
RSW: So you are advocating that zoning policies should be relaxed by the government and allow unlimited building of new homes. In your view, this would lower the price of housing and, in your view, housing would become more affordable. This is the exact policy that lead to Honolulu becoming a dense, urban jungle. We don’t have the roads, water, and other infrastructure to handle unbridled growth. Kauai is special because it remains semi-rural and not over-built. Keep Kauai, well, Kauai. We don’t want to become like Honolulu.
James…”in my view”? You obviously are ignorant of fundamental economic principles. In the most elementary way (KISS) I can put it…it’s all about supply and demand. Here’s a brief lesson:
With restricted (by the gov policies) supply and high demand for housing & building lots only one thing can happen…prices rise to bring equilibrium between the two.
Increase the supply substantially & prices will stabilize and eventually fall.
The reality is that voluntary markets are FAR more efficient at solving problems than is government force.
You obviously didn’t read my post when you toss out the tired old trope about roads and traffic. I reiterate (that’s repeat in case you don’t know the word): That is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of the county and state government. Meddling in the real estate and housing market is not. So what have they done? Stuck their noses in the latter and virtually shucked off the former.
It’s apparent that you are one of the perpetual whiners who is comfortably situated in a home–whether you own it or have a nice rental situation. The short of it is that you couldn’t care less about those desperate to find a home to purchase or rent. Pretty selfish, IMO.
RSW
Gary,
Look at what you’re doing to the island. You are the one that allowed the big landowners to escape paying their fair share of taxes for 30 years. You are nothing but a political hack that only knows one word tax those that saved, worked hard, and cleaned up many neighborhoods on the island.
While many turn to drugs or are take their bi annual trip to Vegas to blow money they should have saved you cry foul for those that made bad decisions.
If Kauai were to elminate the legal vacation rentals, most could not afford to pay the property tax bills, maintinence. The reality is the county would need to raise taxes on all other properties to cover the cost of the loss of 60% of the revenues from the operating budget.
The real problem is what the County has allowed for 50 years to stop developemnt of thousands of acres now owned by 10-12 large land owners who now control 70% of the open land on Kauai.
Just like we see daily with many polititican today those that are old only no one song and its time to go!