Shortly after graduating from the University of Virginia’s law school in 2002, while working as an attorney in Legal Aid Society of Hawaii’s Kona office, Gavin Thornton discovered that the state had been overcharging public housing tenants for more than a decade. The dispute became Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice’s first case, with $2.3 million recovered on behalf of the renters.

These days, Thornton serves as a co-director of the Honolulu-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of low-income individuals, families and communities. It endeavors to pinpoint underlying community problems by conducting research on housing, health, education, immigration and disability rights issues.

Among current efforts Thornton’s excited about: plans in the works to launch Appleseed’s “Hawaii Budget and Policy Center,” which will conduct research and data analysis on our state budget and tax structure, providing findings to policy makers ever in need of reliable information to more efficiently and effectively address poverty and inequality matters, he said.

“Good data and analysis underlies successful companies we’re all familiar with. That concept can be applied to governance, and the new budget center aims to dramatically increase Hawaii’s capacity for data analysis focused on creating better public policy,” Thornton said.

In tandem with its Budget and Policy Center, which is slated to be up and running in 2018, Appleseed intends to release a budget primer. “It will look at the process used to create the budget — where the state gets its money, how it spends it, how we compare to other states, and how things have changed over time,” Thornton said.

“The folks in the (governor’s) administration and the Legislature who work on the budget have a tough job. They have a massive amount of information to process, and they have to make difficult decisions that people are bound to disagree with. The purpose of the primer is to provide a bird’s eye view of how the budget has evolved over time and some of the major issues at play, which will hopefully inform future decision-making.”

The son of a U.S. Air Force serviceman, Thornton grew up in California, Turkey, Virginia, Germany, and finally in Minnesota, upon his father’s retirement. A Kailua resident for the past five years, he said, “Hawaii is home now — I have stronger ties and have lived here longer than any place else.”

Question: What will it take to get a grip on affordable housing in the islands?

Answer: We have the highest housing costs in the nation. We have the lowest wages in the nation when you account for cost of living. From 2005 to 2014, average residential rents doubled. Rents increased at three times the rate of wage increases.

For households making $44,000 a year — two-and-a-half times what a minimum wage earner makes — out of every 100 homes needed, only 40 are affordable and available.

All told, the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism projects that the state will need an additional 64,700 to 66,000 housing units between 2015 and 2025, yet Hawaii’s housing stock has only been increasing at a rate of 1,115 units per year.

Hawaii needs a grand vision for addressing the affordable housing crisis. We have excellent studies on the scope of the problem and what the need is, but there’s no road map for getting to where we need to be. We have great ideas on how to build a few hundred additional affordable units here and there with small amounts of additional subsidies, imposing affordable housing requirements, or allowing accessory dwelling units. But we don’t have anything that says: “We need x number of units affordable to households under y income level, and here are the options for bringing those units on line.”

To get a handle on the crisis and turn it around, Hawaii needs a comprehensive plan for how we will address the entirety of our housing shortage, and we need to create systems to ensure the plan is implemented effectively.

… Subsidy alone won’t cut it. We need to speed up the permitting and approval process. We need to adjust our expectations on what a home should be and consider options that use shared facilities to bring costs down. We need to preserve the affordable housing we already have. We need to bring all the ideas and stakeholders together and figure out what it is going to take to work our way out of this problem and how we are going to work together to get there.

The place I would start is by creating the capacity to do this, either within the government or at a nonprofit. There are many smart, creative, wonderful people working on this issue, but most of them have day jobs. We need someone, or a few someones, that can devote 100 percent of their time and attention on bringing together all the ideas and stakeholders to develop and implement a comprehensive plan.

Q: Rail transit-oriented development was pitched as a chance to ramp up affordable housing inventory. Real-deal opportunity? Or pipe dream?

A: It’s definitely a real-deal opportunity, and one we can’t afford to squander. We’re investing billions of public dollars into rail. That public investment is increasing the value of the land around the rail stations. The value of the land can be increased further because with the availability of mass transit, we can build higher and more densely and we can cut down on the number of parking spaces needed at a building.

We need to make sure that this increased value, created with public dollars, is shared with the public through requirements to build affordable units or some other means of recapturing an appropriate share of the public’s investment. Transit-oriented development will not solve the affordable housing problem, but it is an important part of the solution.

Q: Thoughts on Hawaii’s minimum wage and tax disparity issues?

A: This year, Appleseed spearheaded an effort that resulted in the passage of a state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The credit is based on the federal EITC, which is responsible for bringing more children out of poverty than any other program in the nation. The tax reform package passed by the Legislature is expected to generate $135 million in tax relief for low-income working families over the course of five years — that’s tremendous progress.

… On the minimum wage issue, I think it is important to understand that when we don’t adjust the minimum wage, it loses its value to inflation. In 1975, minimum wage was worth $11.18 in today’s dollars. In 1991, it was worth only $6.82 in today’s dollars. The annual income of a minimum wage worker in 1975 would have been around $23,250, whereas in 1991, it would have been around $14,190 — a more than $9,000 difference. Today, our minimum wage is $9.25, which isn’t enough to live on, and, if we don’t increase it, will quickly erode through inflation.

Q: What do you expect Appleseed’s top priorities will be heading into the 2018 session?

A: We will be working on tax issues again, pursuing changes that will help alleviate the tax burden on people in poverty. We are also looking at a revenue-raiser — not a new tax, but a method of collecting tax from non-residents who are investing in property in Hawaii. Hawaii is entitled to collect tax on the income from those investments, but without a collection mechanism, non-residents are just paying the tax in their home states. We want to reclaim those taxes. In addition, we are planning to work on minimum wage and supporting paid family medical leave.

Q:What do you find most challenging/frustrating about your work? Most rewarding?

A: I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to do this work. The problems that we are trying to solve are both challenging and frustrating. Affordable housing, hunger, poverty and inequality — there are no easy solutions to these issues. But we are gaining ground on them, and that is tremendously rewarding.

For example, it feels good to know that we’ve helped put food on the table for thousands of low-income working families by reducing their tax burdens. We are working to create an environment where everyone has the opportunity to achieve economic stability and success, and we are making progress.

One of the best things about this work is the people. The work that I do puts me in contact with smart, capable, caring and inspiring people — we have many in Hawaii. They give me hope.