State should act to advance TOD

The encouraging news is that the state has seized on the principal opportunity for narrowing the gap in its affordable housing supply and appears to be running with it: transit oriented development, or TOD.

How fast it can run, and how close this vehicle will bring Hawaii to its stated affordable housing goal, will depend on coordinated governance.

Hawaii doesn’t have the best record with that — an understatement, surely — but a new blueprint does represent an opportunity to apply new models of urban planning to this ambitious effort, as well as the lessons learned.

The state’s TOD Strategic Plan was just unveiled by the Office of Planning. It identifies more than 30 projects, including some that will make better use of existing public- housing complexes such as Mayor Wright Homes in Palama and Puuwai Momi near Aloha Stadium, which itself is pegged for redevelopment.

It’s a product of the Hawaii Interagency Council for Transit-Oriented Development, which was established by law two years ago to coordinate TOD planning statewide.

The plan, a 292-page document, cites the state’s projected need for about 64,700 units to be built in the decade that started in 2015. And of those units built by 2025, 68 percent are needed for households earning at 80 percent of the area median income, or less.

This priority is often underscored at every level of government. But up to this point, TOD has been seen as largely a campaign of the City and County of Honolulu, which is financing the construction of the 20-mile elevated rail project under the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation.

However, it’s the state that owns the most land along the rail alignment, and it’s there that the state can get the biggest bang for the buck in producing affordable homes.

Further, state officials have decided that the overseeing body, known as the TOD Council, also could coordinate housing developments for the booming population on the neighbor islands, projects that would be located in places served by the counties’ public buses.

The concept of coordinated planning by a central agency is a good one — assuming that planning is paired with some measure of authority over the delivery of the projects.

This enables more practical enforcement of affordability requirements and other standards in exchange for building incentives, and it streamlines a process otherwise likely to bog down.

That was the idea behind the formation of the state’s Hawaii Community Development Authority. HCDA was similarly established by statute to “cooperate with private enterprise and the various components of federal, state and county governments to bring community development plans to fruition,” according to its website.

Its most prominent community project has been the redevelopment of Kakaako, which has been taking shape over the past decade. There has been master planning with rules, all of which has provided some surety to developers. A new vibrancy, with a mix of residential, commercial and industrial uses, is already in evidence.

Something of that kind is what’s needed in the implementation of state TOD, with efforts to improve on HCDA results.

For example, development planning should have consistent guidance through rules that, for example, allow for increased density without creating canyons of concrete. Variances should be given sparingly, and not become a standard practice that allows each project to essentially hammer out its own deal.

In Kakaako, there was an overhaul in the master plan midstream, and the HCDA board in the past yielded too easily on some variances. The public should be able to expect more consistent results with TOD projects on state land and under state supervision.

In his State of the State address last week, Gov. David Ige said that the state is “on track to meet our goal of 10,000 new housing units by 2020, with at least 40 percent affordable.”

Ige did say he’s requesting $100 million from the Legislature to fuel this effort.

While he did not provide the details on implementing the goal — something he should have included in his speech — it seems plain he was referencing the strategic plan. And he’s clearly banking on large gains from public housing clusters and high-rise projects.

The coordination challenges the state faces are significant, with overlapping jurisdictions of counties and other state agencies, such as the housing trust of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. The City Council imprint is there in the TOD zoning ordinances, and public hearings are still ongoing to fold in community desires, as well.

Amid all these voices, lawmakers would be wise to consider giving real oversight authority to the TOD Council, or some agency like it, to properly steer the TOD enterprise. We have this golden opportunity to cut into the isles’ critical housing shortage, and we can’t afford to stumble on the way.