A new Pentagon report on military housing in Hawaii found that nearly 14% of residential rentals on Oahu are occupied by service members and their families.
The annual defense spending bill passed by Congress contained provisions requiring the secretary of defense to conduct a review of the military’s housing needs and their effects on the local housing market and to provide a report to the House Committee on Armed Services.
The Pentagon’s response was a short, eight-page report. Its executive summary succinctly declares that the report, which cost $76,000, “responds to these provisions.”
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D- Hawaii), who sits on the Armed Services Committee and authored the provisions requesting the report, was underwhelmed.
“This uninspired report from the Department of Defense confirms what we all knew: that the military has a major impact on our housing supply and the availability of housing that our kama‘aina and families can afford,” she said in a news release Friday. “If the military is going to be a real partner to Hawai‘i and a good neighbor in our communities, then it’s high time to step up, get creative, and deliver real solutions and investments towards the biggest challenge affecting our people.”
There are roughly 48,500 active-duty service members and reservists stationed in Hawaii. While many of Hawaii’s political and business leaders have touted their presence and spending as a boost to the local economy, their influence on the housing market has at times been a subject of fierce debate.
Military housing allowances in some cases give service members and their families an advantage in looking for housing, which some have charged contribute to high rents as local families struggle with rising costs of living.
In 2011, the RAND Corp. prepared a report for the Pentagon on the impact of military spending on Hawaii’s economy and found that while most military housing in Hawaii comprises privatized on-base units, roughly half of active-duty members live off base and typically rent their housing.
The Pentagon’s latest report says that 60% of service members stationed on Oahu today reside on military installations. The report cites 2023 American Community Survey estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau that found that of the 105,868 occupied, private rental units on Oahu, the military estimates that 14,700 are occupied by active-duty service members.
It also found that 2,150 service members own homes on the island.
The report says the Defense Department acknowledges that the size of the active-duty military component of Oahu’s private rental market — 13.86% — “is not negligible,” but also adds “it is difficult to calculate the comprehensive impact on housing supply and rental prices, without accounting for other, potentially confounding factors.” Those factors include the economic incentives of short-term rentals or “the many intangible benefits of military families living in the community, (i.e., all the ramifications of having two largely separated communities).”
According to a cost-benefit analysis in the report, it would cost the military $10.8 billion to build the 13,614 government-owned housing units needed to house 100% of service members in Hawaii on a military installation, not including infrastructure such as roads and electricity to support those homes.
Additionally, the military would have to increase maintenance costs by $170 million annually and utility costs by $90 million, without adjusting for inflation.
Alternatively, the report estimates that if the Defense Department were to turn to privatized military housing for troops currently renting off base, it would require approximately $3.6 billion in additional government equity under the minimum government equity requirements for privatized housing.
In a one-sentence conclusion, the report states the department is committed to working with the state and congressional defense committees to ensure service members and military families have access “to livable communities that provide healthy, functional, and reliable housing now and in the future.”
Not enough, Tokuda said.
“When I requested this report, I expected that the Department would do so with fidelity and come to the table with tangible ideas for these shared challenges,” she said. “This report failed to do that. We must hold the Department accountable to the shared responsibility they have to address our housing crisis and deliver real solutions for our people.”
Military spending and construction has continued to grow in Hawaii as the Pentagon shifts its attention to the Pacific, considered to now be the military’s top priority theater of operations amid tensions with China.
U.S. Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii), who sits on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said in a statement that the data in the report “clearly heightens the importance” of efforts over the years by Hawaii’s congressional delegation to ensure more military housing on base and fewer service members in the local housing rental market.
But Case also highlighted a report finding that one challenge facing both active-duty service members and nonmilitary residents seeking rental housing on Oahu is that “many private landlords prefer to offer their homes as short-term vacation rentals, thereby decreasing the supply of rental units available to the community.”
“I believe that the continued allowance of widespread short-term vacation rentals and continued inability to fully target illegal vacation rentals, significantly reducing the available supply of private rental units for local residents, is far more of a factor in high housing prices than current servicemember participation in our rental market,” he said.
