Save the sale of the city’s affordable rental housing

With apologies to all who worked so hard to preserve the city of Honolulu’s stock of affordable rental housing in perpetuity, many of us have lost sight of how critical this affordable rental housing is for the people of Honolulu making $50,000 or less annually.

Let us remember that the Hannemann administration got rid of the city’s Housing Department, saying that housing was not a city function and was preparing to sell off these rentals in order to fund what it regarded as higher city priorities. The residents were all going to be pushed out into the open market, where most would have ended up homeless.

Those of us who believed that affordable rental housing was a core city function, including the City Council and other city officials, residents and concerned advocates for the homeless, fought to recreate a city Housing Office.

Many of us then pushed for the creation of a private-public partnership in which the city kept ownership of the land and a private developer would own, manage and operate the housing.

The sales agreement, nearing finalization, would result in 65 more years of affordable rentals, no evictions, $50 million in renovations for the approximately 1,200 units, $70 million in debt reduction for the city, $7 million in operating costs savings annually for the city, and about $35 million in recycled Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding.

Now, a sudden and unexpected dispute between the city administration and the City Council over control of the allocation of these CDBG funds has threatened the financing efforts of the buyers, who say that their potential investors have been scared off by the dispute, seriously complicating their ability to put their financing package together.

For the sake of the residents and the city’s budget, it is imperative that all sides again work cooperatively to bring the agreement to a successful conclusion, or otherwise preserve these affordable rentals in perpetuity with no evictions.

It has taken courage to get this far, and will require more to continue. I believe it is worth the effort to preserve these affordable rentals, the only large chunk of affordable rentals in the horrible Honolulu housing market for those families making $50,000 annually or less.