Housing policy jams UH faculty

An estimated 160 University of Hawaii faculty members will likely vacate university housing on Oahu in coming months under a revised policy that enforces time limits on rental leases for the first time in nearly two decades.

The new policy, approved unanimously by the Board of Regents at its monthly meeting in April, reinforces rules already on the books that limit residents to one-year leases while adding a new provision that allows annual renewals for up to three years only for tenured and tenure-track faculty.

University officials say the move was needed to free up inventory at its three rental complexes for newly recruited faculty. Under the lax enforcement, some residents have lived in housing since the doors opened in the 1990s.

"We’re not looking to evict people. It’s as their terms become due, they can apply to renew past that," regent Cora­lie Mata­yo­shi said at the meeting. She is chairwoman of the Personnel Affairs Committee, which vetted and endorsed the new policy to the board. "There is a competing interest. It is really important for retention, but on the other hand we need to be able to give everyone that opportunity."

But current and former residents say the maximum three-year time frame is unrealistic and stands to hurt the university’s ability to attract — and, more important, retain — top-notch professors.

They also argue that their salaries haven’t kept pace with Oahu’s escalating housing and rental market, and that the university needs to make it a priority to build more faculty housing to serve more employees.

It’s unclear exactly what will happen to current residents who are past the three-year mark. A UH spokes­woman said the university is working on a transition plan for those tenants, which it expects to complete by the end of the month.

But some associated with UH’s Faculty Housing Tenant Association say they’ve been told unofficially that existing tenants will not be grandfathered and will need to vacate when their one-year leases are up.

Interim UH President David Lassner acknowledged that shifting from lax oversight to the new policy will be rough.

"I think that’s where the challenge is going to be and where we’re going to have to be artful," he said at the meeting. "That’s going to be extremely difficult, and I think I’m going to have to look to our team to come up with some suggestions because … compassion is in the eye of the beholder."

The university owns and manages 237 units in low-rise apartments near the UH-Manoa campus and two townhouse complexes in Manoa Valley, a coveted residential neighborhood where homes typically sell for more than $1 million. UH said all but 10 of the units were being rented as of September.

The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, the faculty union, has about 3,250 members at Oahu campuses, meaning housing benefits are available to 7 per­cent of faculty on the island.

Monthly rents range from $571 for a studio to $1,220 for a three-bedroom apartment in the Waa­hila apartment buildings, built along Dole Street in the 1960s.

In the Kau‘i­oka­ha­loa Nui and Kau‘i­oka­ha­loa Iki complexes along Lowrey Avenue, both completed in the mid-1990s, a two-bedroom townhouse apartment rents for $1,175, and a three-bedroom condominium rents for $1,789.

By comparison, a recent Craigs­list search for rentals in Manoa turned up few results, including a three-bedroom home with an asking rent of $3,500 and a room for rent going for $1,800.

As of last month, 160 faculty members (not including spouses and children) have been living in the three complexes for three or more years, representing more than 70 percent of tenants who now find themselves in violation of the revised policy. More than 1 in 3 households in the Manoa Valley complexes are single-income households with minor dependents.

"I haven’t received any notice yet, but I have to start seriously thinking about where I’m going to go," Iris Saito, an early-childhood education professor at Hono­lulu Community College who has lived in Kau‘i­oka­ha­loa Nui since 2002, said in an interview.

"I’m nowhere close to buying a home. I’ve lived there for 12 years, and only after 111⁄2 years could I start to save," Saito, 64, said, noting that she inherited debt from a previous marriage and as a single parent raised two sons, who attended private school and college.

She and other tenants say the new policy focuses too much on time and doesn’t give various life circumstances consideration for extended leases. "I managed financially in part because of faculty housing," Saito said. "I chose to support and give my sons the best educational experiences instead of saving up for a house because those were my priorities and values."

Although the university’s housing policy has always maintained one-year lease limits, the rule has been ignored for years.

"Under the policy, everyone is in violation. It’s a one-year policy," said regents Vice Chairman James Lee.

Matayoshi said, "Some chancellor way back when said, ‘Ignore policy and just allow people to keep renewing.’ And so some people have been there for 18 years, and that (has) precluded other people from being able to have that great opportunity of … being able to come here."

Deborah Huebler, director of UH-Manoa’s Office of Campus Services, said the practice has hampered recruiting efforts.

"Right now we don’t know when people are leaving, because we renew every single lease extension request," she said. "It’s very hard to use it as a recruitment tool when we don’t have vacancies coming up when people need it."

Tenants acknowledge that university professors aren’t unique in dealing with the high cost of living and housing in Hawaii. But they point out several factors that they say make it especially challenging for their profession.

For one, they say, UH doesn’t pay faculty enough to afford at-market housing. An entry-level assistant professor at UH-Manoa earns a minimum of $57,378 and a median salary of $78,552, according to UHPA salary data.

The median sale price of a single-family home on Oahu in 2013 was $650,000, while the average single-family home sold for $804,933, according to the Hono­lulu Board of Realtors.

Other factors, say proponents for long-term faculty housing, include international recruits whose work visas prohibit their spouses from working, resulting in a single-income household, and faculty who relocate from the mainland without any family to support them financially or to help with child care. They also note that younger faculty tend to have high student loan debts because of the advanced degrees required of their profession.

"We were making ends meet but not able to save long term for a home, and if we were asked to leave in three years, during a time when I’d be coming up for tenure, it would’ve made me pretty curious about other (career) opportunities," said Garrett Apu­zen-Ito, a professor of geology at UH-Manoa who lived in Kau‘i­oka­ha­loa Nui with his family for 10 years before purchasing a home in 2012.

Apuzen-Ito, 47, who was recruited from the University of Cali­for­nia, Davis, as an assistant professor, added, "In terms of supporting a Tier 1 university, some of the most important aspects are, of course, recruiting the most qualified faculty and researchers as well as allowing them the time for their careers to develop."

Vice Chairman Lee agreed. "The problem is we have a lack of housing. It’s very expensive to live in Hawaii, and we only have 200-something units. Everybody wants to stay there," he said. "I think the long-term solution is to build more faculty housing."

Maya Soetoro-Ng, an assistant professor in Manoa’s College of Education and the half sister of President Barack Obama, said faculty housing became critical for her family three years ago when her husband accepted a job in Washington, D.C.

"I wanted to stay in Hawaii. Had I not had faculty housing as an option, I likely would have had to leave Hawaii and leave my university position because I wouldn’t have been able to afford it," Soe­toro-Ng said in an interview. "I am not tenured. I was a high school teacher most of my career, so my salary is not such that I could contribute meaningfully to a mortgage."

She moved into faculty housing in Manoa Valley three years ago with her two young children, and said she’s now looking for other housing options. "Three years is not very long," she said. "I hope they find a solution that is fair and thoughtful for everyone."

The new policy does allow the university president on a case-by-case basis to grant exceptions to the three-year limit for tenure-track faculty who have not yet achieved tenure or to maintain sustainable occupancy levels.