Affordable-housing advocate lobbies government to do more for low-income residents

Catherine Graham, one of the leading lights of the Housing Now! Coalition throughout the just-finished legislative session, would describe herself as a passionate advocate for affordable housing — but not any kind of expert.

“Every time I feel like I have a handle on something, I go, ‘Oh, I guess I don’t. I don’t understand any of this,’” she said with a grin.

Graham, 69, retired after years of working as public relations and volunteer services coordinator for the Institute for Human Services.

She first moved to Hawaii in 1979 from her longtime home in Chicago, where she worked for the Island Holidays travel company. Studies at the University of Hawaii yielded a master’s degree in cultural anthropology, followed by more years working in tourism “because that’s where the jobs were.”

Finally a friend told Graham about the IHS post, and she decided her heart was in the nonprofit sector, taking other posts over the years before returning to the IHS job.

Her son now grown, Graham has found her way through her church to volunteer work with Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE), which advocates for low-income residents. FACE founded the housing coalition as an offshoot and developed a model micro-unit from a shipping container.

The fact that the model hasn’t been replicated in bulk by public and private stakeholders is a puzzling aspect of this issue, Graham said.

“I’m not quite sure what the problem is,” she added. “They can’t quite get it together to do that.”

Question: How would you score the Legislature on affordable housing, and why?

Answer: Last year the Legislature mandated the formation of a Special Action Team to figure out how to get 22,500 affordable housing units built in the next 10 years. That was a bold and exciting mandate.

What is needed to do that, however, is money from the state to subsidize this housing. Sen. Wil Espero introduced a bill to float $2 billion in bond funding to make these 22,500 housing units a reality.

The Legislature passed $25 million instead, even though the governor had asked for $50 million in his budget. That leads me to believe that affordable housing was not really on the legislative radar.

The governor requested $15 million to complete appropriations for a mixed-use affordable housing/juvenile detention program center — the Legislature did not fund this. That means that 184 affordable housing units will not be built because the Legislature does not want to work with the Judiciary.

There was also a bill introduced to increase the conveyance tax on sales and leases of property over $2 million — 50 percent of the conveyance tax goes to affordable housing. This seemed like a good way to increase state revenue with a one-time tax on luxury condos and other high-end property sales. The money chairs would not even consider this measure.

This session was a lot about politics and not much about the needs of the people of Hawaii. I’d give this session a “D”.

Q: Besides increasing the allotment for housing, are there other policy changes that are needed?

A: The development process is a very slow process, in part because of all the approvals and permits needed by different agencies of both the state and the counties.

The Special Action Team is looking at these roadblocks to see which ones can be safely streamlined. Additional staffing at HHFDC, the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp. might also help in speeding up the application review process for funding for affordable housing developments.

Q: How do you answer critics who say government-subsidized housing adds to dependency?

A: Who is dependent? The developers on the subsidies or the residents of the developments?

I am not a developer, or a finance person — at all. But the developers say they need the government subsidy to complete their “finance stack” to get all their funding in line.

I don’t understand why commercial banks can’t play a larger role. But the developers have to juggle low-income housing tax credits, bond financing, mortgages from banks, plus government subsidies to build affordable housing.

If we as a society want to be sure that those with lower incomes have housing, then we are all dependent on government-subsidized housing.

There are some federal government policies that state that for some lower-income housing developments, even when resident incomes increase, they cannot be asked to move. That policy should probably change so that new people can benefit from the lower rents.

Q: Developers complain that the process for accessing housing incentives is difficult. Any thoughts on that?

A: There are efforts to streamline the process. It is true that the longer it takes to get all the ducks in a row, the more expensive the project becomes. Bureaucracy is always slow and government is the king of bureaucracy. The fact is, if we want housing, we need the developers. We want a healthy give-and-take relationship with them. The housing incentives are important and we want housing built now, so making it easier to access these incentives would be a positive.

Q: Do you think vacation rentals contributed to the rental shortage?

A: I have heard various reports on vacation rentals. I know there are some owners who have multiple properties that they rent out for short term. I hear differing estimates as to how many. I think that there needs to be clarity on the fact that some vacation rentals are just rooms in people’s homes, some are rented out while the owners are on vacation for 2 or 3 months — not full time, and then there are those whole houses that are rented out when the owners are nowhere nearby. I’m just not clear how many are in that last group – and they are the ones that are contributing to the rental shortage.

Q: Are there ways the private sector could improve affordable housing inventory?

A: The private homeowners can build ADUs on their lots and rent them out at an affordable rate.

The private sector can acknowledge the housing shortage and homeless problem and not complain when an apartment building in their neighborhood is rehabbed as a “Housing First” project to house formerly homeless families and individuals.

Q: “Safe zones” where the homeless can camp rather than on sidewalks — is there a role for them?

A: I think we really have to figure out the ‘Safe Zones” issue. We can house the homeless working families and others who have fallen on hard times, get those with mental health issues the care they need and put money into drug treatment programs — but in the meantime, yes, we need to work harder on the idea of safe zones.

Q: Is Kakaako fulfilling its potential in terms of providing housing that we need?

A: That’s the question. You know, 801 South Street, they say that is. I haven’t met anybody who lives there. … And they say a lot of people who bought in there used to live in Makiki, so they just moved up to a new place. So that empties the Makiki apartment, and that’s a good thing.

But we need more of those.

Q: What about trailer parks? Should we have them here?

A: We don’t have enough room, really. That’s a problem, I think.

Even the ADUs (accessory dwelling units) — I was so excited about passing that law about ADUs. There was a letter to the editor not too long ago about somebody who was saying they got all excited, too. And they got their whole neighborhood behind it.… discovered they didn’t have enough sewer capacity.

Q: So, we have multiple problems to overcome, that’s the story?

A: I think that’s it. …

After we got that shipping container going, people said they were interested in working with us and we started this coalition, the Housing Now! Coalition. It’s people who are interested in homeless issues, a lot of church people, people who don’t belong to FACE, and that’s why they’re in our coalition.

But now we’re up against the developers and we can’t tell if we’re being sold a bill of goods by them. It’s hard to know when to be friendly with politicians or developers, and when not to be. It’s just hard to know.