Keep stock of Chinatown units for those at lowest level

The leasehold sale of Honolulu’s affordable rental projects has come down to a struggle between those who want to not only save those residents in the 60 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) and below from displacement into homelessness but also to preserve the units they occupy in perpetuity for that income category, and those who believe that preserving all those units will turn Chinatown into an economic ghetto.

Those of us who feel they should be preserved in perpetuity feel that this population of office workers, cashiers, small business owners, government workers, retirees and the disabled should not be equated with the homeless. They constitute much of the workforce of Chinatown.

The struggle centers on three buildings in Chinatown: Chinatown Gateway Plaza, Marin Towers, and Harbor Village, which have a total of 526 units, 309 of them occupied by those at 60 percent of AMI or below.

They have a mixed income structure that also includes those at 60-80 percent of AMI ($58,000 to $77,000 annual income), those at 80 percent of AMI ($77,000 to 114,000 annual income), and market units for those whose income is $114,000 and up.

The buildings were originally built with no units in the 60 percent-and-below category, 20 percent in the 60-80 percent category, 40 percent in the 80-120 percent category, and 40 percent in the category above 120 percent or above $114,000 a year.

The strongest arguments of those who say they are against ghettoizing Chinatown are, first, that those at 60 percent and below cannot spend enough to create a healthy economy in Chinatown; and, second, that Chinatown Gateway Plaza is the only one of the 12 projects operating in the black and not losing money for the city because their higher-income tenants are paying more rent.

These arguments are being put to the test as closer analysis of income data for these buildings are provided by the Honolulu Department of Community Services to the City Council over the past few years showing significant numbers of the 60 percent-and-below renters are paying more rent than those in the higher income brackets.

For example, in Chinatown Gateway Plaza, a renter with income of $34,000 a year pays $1,027 a month, and another at $97,000 a year pays $783 a month. There is another with income at $22,000 a year who pays $721 a month. There are many examples of renters with incomes above $80,000 a year paying rents of $900 a month. Such renters have incomes of nearly $7,000 a month and are paying less than $1,000 a month in rent.

What this all amounts to is that affordable housing policies in Honolulu are OK for those above 80 percent of AMI, not so good for those between 60-80 percent, and bad for those at 60 percent of AMI and below.

To reduce the number of units available for the last group and push many of them into homelessness and to stigmatize them is unconscionable. The city must preserve its existing stock of units for those at and below 60 percent of AMI.

Years of mismanagement by the city, changing political leadership and policies, and inadequate political will to raise rents in a timely way for many years has created the housing crises we now have. The crisis should produce the political will to solve it.

Let us all get on board with the business of serving our city-wide community and all our people.