Politics plagues housing initiatives

Oahu’s homelessness problem, and the larger shortage of affordable rentals overall, are quickly mushrooming beyond the capacity of government to manage them, unless the powers-that-be join forces and ramp up efforts to match the scale of the problems.

So far, that hasn’t happened. Instead there is intramural warfare at Honolulu Hale, with a City Council working at cross-purposes with the administration, which almost guarantees a muted response to the crisis.

The primary clash, as usual, is a political one. The Council is chaired by Ernie Martin, who is expected to challenge Mayor Kirk Caldwell in his bid for re-election in 2016. That rivalry is playing out in the current budget battles on several fronts, but the fight over funding for low-cost housing initiatives may be the most tragic example, one that leaves more people living on the streets.

Caldwell makes a credible argument that his program for providing transitional and, ideally, permanent housing for the homeless could be managed by the administration, once it receives the money it needs to hire more staff.

Various requests for staffing funds he has requested for this purpose — $3 million last year and $1 million this year — have been cut from the budget. That money, at least in part, should be restored to the budget before the vote that’s set for May 12.

The operation that the administration has planned, and which everyone seems to want, will require more staff support to make the real-estate deals to acquire and repurpose city properties in ways that can accommodate more homeless families.

In lieu of re-evaluating its budgetary policy, the Council has been toying with the idea of restoring the city housing agency that was dismantled in 1998. The Council Executive Matters and Legal Affairs Committee last week took up the proposal, Resolution 15-43, which requests that the Honolulu Charter Commission put a question on the ballot next year authorizing the re-establishment of the department.

The resolution, introduced by Councilman Ron Menor last week, includes the fair critique that "there is no central department within the city for people to turn to for help." Menor has said that the Office of Housing develops and carries out policies, while a division of the Department of Community Services administers the federal Section 8 rental assistance aid program. A new Office of Strategic Development was created to help with low-cost housing projects.

Reorganizing these positions into a consolidated office makes sense, but recreating the full-scale bureaucracy of the department shut down 17 years ago over a corruption scandal is unnecessary.

The Council should work with the administration, finding some compromise on staffing support to enable faster progress on the development of the "microunits" that have been envisioned as part of the housing solution.

The Office of Strategic Development is awaiting bids on a small-scale demonstration project, using adapted container or modules, in Waianae. There is also a second project creating microunits in Winston Hale, the city-owned low-income rental property, in which schematics have been drawn up.

The Council has provided ample bond money to enable developments of this kind — $32 million so far, with an additional $32 million in a planned-for second installment. But the reality is that it also requires staffing to put that financing into action.

There’s a public perception that the city should be well past the demonstration-project phase by now, and it’s a correct one. However, the way to move the needle on this is a coordinated approach by the Council and administration, and not one snakebitten by politics.