For affordable housing, don’t let rail fail

As the legislative session comes into its final days, many crucial issues remain unresolved. One is the fate of Honolulu’s rail transit system.

In the anger over the sudden huge escalation of its projected deficit, there is a danger that the project may end and the bright hopes for construction of affordable rental housing around the rail stations will go with it.

This would be a repeat of the Ewa Villages housing scandal of the late 1990s, which led to the killing of Honolulu’s Housing Department, leaving the city unable to respond adequately to the subsequent crises in housing and homelessness.

The demise of rail and its related transit-oriented development (TOD) would deepen and prolong the severe crisis in housing and homelessness.

FACE (Faith Action for Community Equity) has long supported rail as a potential solution for housing and homelessness, and secondarily as a traffic solution.

Housing and transportation are the biggest part of a low-income household’s budget. Many such households pay more than 50 percent of their income for these two items. Reducing costs in both these areas would more than offset the regressivity of the 0.5 percent rail surcharge in the general excise tax, which provides the bulk of the funding for the rail system.

Heading into the conference committee phase of the legislative session, both House and Senate have bills that would allow the completion of the 20-mile rail system now under construction.

We urge the House and Senate to pick the best features of both bills to save rail and bring Honolulu closer to resolving the crises in housing and homelessness.

To allow rail to fail would leave Honolulu in a huge financial hole ($2.5 billion), no traffic solution for West Oahu, and an even worse crisis in housing and homelessness. That would truly be a major disaster, especially since the state Department of Business and Economic Development & Tourism projects Oahu’s 2050 population at 1.2 million — 200,000 more than today.

The Senate bill is preferable because by itself it would allow the completion of the 20-mile segment now under construction and save TOD and affordable housing.

The House bill would force the City Council to find other sources of funding, which it may not do, thus ending rail and affordable housing.

However, the best bill would be one that completes the entire system from the University of Hawaii-Manoa to Kapolei.

Hawaii real estate analyst Ricky Cassidy is quoted an April 7 article in the Honolulu Star Advertiser: "I never saw rail as a transportation solution. It’s a housing solution."

Similarly, economist Paul Brewbaker sees TOD as a major part of the solution for affordable housing.

So do we.