Lawmakers reconsider bills to limit tenants’ stay in public housing complexes

State lawmakers want to move some long-term tenants out of Hawaii’s public housing complexes to make room for new occupants to help solve the state’s homeless crisis, but they are finding that strategy won’t be easy to implement.

House and Senate lawmakers this year introduced bills to limit tenants to no more than seven years in some public housing complexes, an approach that is meant to free up more public housing for homeless families trying to move off the streets.

However, a major obstacle to that plan is a body of federal regulations that prohibits the state from imposing time limits on tenancy in public housing projects that are federally subsidized. Those rules apply even if the tenants have occupied their housing units for decades.

The state now has about 15,000 families waiting for slots to open up in public housing, and tenants who stay in public housing for generations “is an issue that truly should be addressed, and is one of the main reasons for the long waitlists,” said Hakim Ouansafi, executive director of the Hawaii Public Housing Authority.

To try to cope with that problem, lawmakers introduced bills this year to authorize housing officials to limit families to no more than seven years in state-subsidized public housing complexes.

House Bill 2638 would also create a program to help those families to save money during their time in public housing to prepare them for the day when they must move out and find another place to live.

That seven-year limit would apply only to 14 percent of the 6,195 public housing units in Hawaii, or about 864 units that are subsidized by the state instead of the federal government.

Ouansafi also warned lawmakers that about 70 percent of the tenants in public housing today are elderly residents or people with disabilities, and he urged lawmakers to exclude those tenants from the seven-year time limit as well. Those tenants are often on fixed incomes, which means they cannot pay more for housing.

“You cannot ask an elderly person to move out of the system,” Ouansafi said in an interview. “Where are they going to go?”

Lawmakers agreed. On Tuesday, Senate Housing Chairman Breene Harimoto scrapped the seven-year time limit entirely, saying it does not appear to be workable.

“I’m very concerned about the lack of housing stock,” said Harimoto (D, Pearl Harbor-Pearl City-Aiea). “I agree with the philosophy that we’re trying to have turnover, to have new people come in, but until there’s places for these families to go … these people are likely to end up in the street, and we’re back to where we started.”

House Housing Chairman Mark Hashem (D, Hahaione Valley-Aina Haina-Kahala) excluded seniors and disabled people from the proposed time limit but lowered the limit to no more than five years for other tenants.

The House bill would apply to about 260 of the 864 units that are not federally subsidized. Still, Ouansafi said the measure is worthwhile.

“I think it does set the tone that public housing should not be for life,” he said. “The essence of the public housing was that it was never meant to be for life.”

House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke joined with other lawmakers to sponsor the House version of the bill, and said she is not disappointed in the changes. She said she always had a pilot project in mind that would cover a small number of tenants.

“What I always thought we needed to do was start with a small population to see if it’s viable, and in the meantime we’ll be talking to the federal government” about the possibility of imposing time limits on tenants in federally subsidized public housing units, said Luke (D, Punchbowl-Pauoa-Nuuanu).

Ouansafi said Congress has just approved changes in the the federal “Move to Work” law that would allow more jurisdictions to impose time limits on public housing tenants in federally subsidized projects. He said Hawaii has been lobbying to participate in that program, and will apply to participate when it is expanded.