Change ‘affordable housing’ rules

The concept of "affordable housing" in Hawaii — always a bit of a stretch, given the costs of imported building materials, labor and especially the land — has been stretched to the breaking point.

That’s the reasonable conclusion reached by many would-be buyers or renters of the planned additions to Oahu’s housing stock, a conclusion that, thankfully, is fueling potential policy shifts by elected officials, too.

Lurking behind Hawaii’s homelessness problem is the reality that for the many individuals and families who don’t find a space in the very limited inventory of subsidized units, there are few other places on the market they can afford — including the ones dubbed as "affordable" these days.

Among the myriad examples are the various projects proposed as part of Kakaako’s redevelopment. The Hawaii Community Development Authority, which oversees planning of the special district, includes among its goals the imperative to encourage the construction of more affordable units.

But in many housing complexes, planned for Kakaako and other Oahu growth areas, a unit for sale or rent can meet the developer’s requirement for providing affordable housing while being priced for those earning well above the median income. An individual wage-earner bringing in 140 percent of the area median income (AMI) earns about $96,000.

He or she would qualify for a unit that, under current rules, constitutes "affordable" housing, said state Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, who chairs the Senate’s Human Services Committee. She said much new devel- opment is targeting precisely that range.

For a family of four, the AMI is $83,000, and current home prices are already beyond what they could afford. The latest home sales data point to new records in condo sales, with single-family houses on Oahu reaching a median of $665,000.

When the mismatch between median income and median home prices is so obvious, something has to give.

At the City Council, there’s a push to change Honolulu policy about affordable housing requirements that are imposed on developers. City Councilman Ron Menor has introduced a pair of resolutions pressing the Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) to change its affordable housing rules. Resolutions 13-168 and 13-202 deserve careful consideration when they come up before the Council Zoning Committee on Sept. 26. The proposals aim to:

» Increase the number of affordable units that a developer is required to build in new development projects and lower the prices of those units.

» Require developers to build affordable rentals as part of meeting the affordable housing requirements.

» Increase the length of time that affordable for-sale and rental units stay in the affordable category.

The city’s current policy on affordable housing was laid down in a 2009 City Council resolution and is reflected in rules DPP adopted in 2010. The long-standing practice is to require developers to set aside 30 percent of units as "affordable" in exchange for zoning approval under a unilateral agreement. They must be affordable to "households with incomes not exceeding 140 per- cent of the median income."

Just 10 percent of the units are required to be set aside for those with incomes at 80 percent AMI or lower.

Menor doesn’t seek to change the overall 30 percent reservation of homes but wants to boost the allotment of homes for the 80 percent group to 20 percent. That seems reasonable, considering the state’s persistent, and mounting, need for true workforce housing.

The fewer homes that are built for this high-demand group — rental housing in particular — the likelier it is that more families will find themselves homeless.

And if there’s ever to be hope of winnowing Hawaii’s homeless population, much more needs to be done for those at even lower income levels. The real need is for those at 60 percent of median. Chun Oakland rightly has resolved to push for ways to incentivize, through tax credits and other means, the development of lower-cost rentals.

Increasingly, cities across the mainland are broadening the definition of housing needs to include many more "single-room occupancy" units, which can provide a step out of homelessness that many poorer renters can reach.

It’s time for some new thinking about housing in Hawaii as well. There are emergency and transitional shelters in the Hawaii housing toolkit, but efforts to help the homeless only amount to empty promises if people are not given options beyond those.