What do we want? Housing! When do we want it? NOW!

This is the cry of affordable housing advocates across the state of Hawaii as we are suffering from a lack of housing inventory and astronomically high rents and purchase prices. Last year’s Legislature set up a special action team to figure out how to get 22,500 affordable housing units built in the next 10 years. What is an affordable housing unit and for whom is it affordable? Housing advocates are asking these questions all the time.

An affordable housing unit is defined by the area median income (AMI) as defined nationally by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for each locale. For Honolulu, the AMI is $100,000 for a family of four. That means that half our households earn more than that and half earn less. Affordable housing, then, should mean housing for those earning less than the median.

There are government subsidies for developers who will build for this income level. Those making less than the median income are our schoolteachers, government workers, social workers, police officers, firefighters, construction workers, hotel workers and many others. We want appropriate housing for all of these.

How many of these folks are living with their spouses and children with their own parents because they cannot afford their own place? Unfortunately, this is the norm in our islands. And how many of our residents, because they cannot afford housing, now live in their cars or on the streets?

Developers need government subsidies to build “affordable housing” as defined above. They have no financial issues with building for market rate or luxury markets, but because the cost of construction in Hawaii is so high, they need assistance from the Rental Housing Revolving Fund (RHRF) administered by the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp. (HHFDC) to finance a project for these lower AMI levels (30-100 percent of median). Every year the Legislature appropriates money for this subsidy — but if we really want to make a dent in our housing shortage, more money needs to be appropriated.

State Sen. Will Espero has proposed Senate Bill 591 (co-signed by 20 of the 25 senators), which allocates $2 billion in bonds to be used for developing affordable housing, infrastructure, public housing and transitional shelters. Similar bills have been proposed by Rep. Tom Brower and Sen. Josh Green. All of these bills unanimously passed out of their respective Housing committees and now await hearings in the Senate Ways and Means Committee and the House Finance Committee. These bills need to be heard by these money committees to continue the discussion and educate policymakers and the public on Hawaii’s affordable housing crisis and these helpful measures.

To pay for the debt service of the $2 billion bond float for affordable housing, FACE (Faith Action for Community Equity) and the Housing Now Coalition are supporting efforts to raise the conveyance tax on property transactions over $2 million that will go toward the RHRF, along with bills that will increase the percentage of the conveyance tax from 50 percent to 60 percent that goes to the RHRF, and removing the cap, now set at $38 million. We also support Gov. David Ige’s executive funding requests to help affordable housing and homelessness.

The housing bills now circulating in the Legislature can set the foundation for a breakthrough in our housing crisis.

This is the time for legislators to make bold decisions and approve the $2 billion bond bill, while interest rates are still low, and before the new administration in Washington, D.C., can jeopardize our housing situation in some way.

Catherine Graham and the Rev. Bob Nakata co-chair the FACE Housing Task Force and the Housing Now! Coalition.