An increase in housing prices and rents has made it more difficult for young adults to make a break from their families and live on their own in Hawaii.
Hawaii is No. 1 among the states for the most multigenerational families living under the same roof, according to U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
About 11.6 percent, or 36,203 households, are multigenerational, DBEDT said. That’s twice as much as the U.S. average of 5.7 percent. California is second at 8.2 percent, followed by Washington, D.C., at 7.8 percent.
"The reason is the high cost of rent," said Rowena "Nani" Manubag, who lives in a four-bedroom Ewa Beach house with 15 family members, including her mother, sister, husband, children and grandchildren.
"It’s so high for them to go out and find a place," Manubag, 52, said of her three children. "The downside, if you live on your own: You don’t have that support."
The high cost of housing limits homeownership, especially for the younger generation, said state economist Eugene Tian. Hawaii’s homeownership rate was among the bottom four nationwide at 57.7 percent compared with the U.S. average of 65.1 percent, according to DBEDT.
In addition to economic reasons, Asians and Pacific islanders, who make up a majority of the population in Hawaii, have a cultural tradition of living with their extended family.
"Certainly the pros are, as we say, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ When you have multiple generations, people can care for each other — grandparents caring for grandchildren, parents caring for their parents," said Marianne Berry, director of the University of Hawaii Center on the Family. "If Hawaii’s got more multigenerational households, then there’s hopefully a higher availability of relatives to care for young children. That takes a little bit of the pressure off of having to find child care. With that (comes) the passing down of cultural traditions and family stories and all of that as well as the social support the family can provide. Those are very large contributors to well-being."
In addition, there are more people contributing to the household income, Berry said.
On the flip side, having so many people in one home can also contribute to stress and conflict, she said.
"There’s more people that either agree or disagree about how we operate in this household," Berry said. "The issue of space and who’s pulling their weight, who does what, can certainly be a source of stress in families. You put rats closer together in a cage, at some point they start chewing on each other because we all need a little space."
On average Hawaii’s multigenerational homes have six people living in four bedrooms, according to the UH Center on the Family, which used the most recent data from the 2011-2013 American Community Survey.
There’s no limit on the number of family members who can live under one roof, though no more than five unrelated people are allowed to live in a single dwelling, according to the city. City ordinance also allows a family and three unrelated boarders to reside in a home. If the home is being used as a residential care home or treatment facility, then up to eight people can live in the home.
Luciano Minerbi, UH professor of urban and regional planning, said compounding the high costs of housing is the fact that there isn’t the right type of building to fit the "traditional extended family" found in Hawaii and most of the South Pacific, where large families live in multiple structures on the same property or nearby with separate cooking areas.
"We tend to have housing and apartments for the nuclear family, not the extended family," he said. "That’s not the pattern of housing in the Pacific, where you tend to have extended families, relatives and obligations to be the host of relatives if they come and visit. In Samoa every family has a guesthouse for guests that come and visit. Then they move over here and that’s what they’re accustomed to, but they get crowded into a building typology that doesn’t fit their needs and lifestyle."
Minerbi said that’s why many immigrants with limited incomes live in crowded conditions across the islands or "cannot live close by or live together and help each other as they’re traditionally accustomed to."
Hawaii needs up to 66,000 homes if it expects to satisfy demand for housing over the next decade, according to a recent report by DBEDT.
The study — which projects a demand of between 64,700 and 66,000 additional housing units over the next 10 years, with more than 25,000 needed on Oahu alone — describes an unbalanced housing market with a constrained housing supply on one hand and increasing demand on the other.
"There is a mismatch between housing and the needs of the people," Minerbi said. "We tend to build for foreign investors. We don’t meet the needs of our people, and that’s why we have a problem."
