EV-ready stalls to be required in new buildings on Oahu

Requiring that all new buildings come with parking stalls that can be used to recharge electric vehicles is among the changes in a planned revamp of Honolulu’s energy code that won final approval from the City Council on Wednesday.

The bill also reaffirms a state law that requires new houses use solar water heaters unless the builder or property owner obtains a variance from the Hawaii State Energy Office. An earlier version of the bill went a step further and would have disallowed gas heaters through the variance process.

The final draft of Bill 25 (2019), which passed 9-0, got mixed reviews from representatives from both ends of the issue. Construction industry leaders continue to believe the proposal adds too much to the already high cost of housing on Oahu while some environmental and sustainability advocates argue the latest draft is too watered down.

The bill now goes to Mayor Kirk Caldwell, who can either sign it, veto it or let it become law without his signature. It’s likely Caldwell will sign the bill since the mayor’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency helped craft the measure’s language.

Josh Stanbro, who heads the office and is Caldwell’s chief resilience officer, wrote a four-page memo supporting the latest draft.

The final draft of the bill, introduced by Council Zoning Chairman Ron Menor, allows a scaled “points system” formula to determine how many stalls need to be “electrical vehicle charger ready” instead of abiding by an across-the-board 25% EV-ready requirement in the original draft.

Stefanie Sakamoto, an official with the Building Industry Association of Hawaii, testified that her group still opposes the bill. “We remain concerned about the rising cost of housing, now even more so due to the economic devastation due to COVID-19, ” Sakamoto said. “We would simply ask that some kind of economic analysis be done on Bill 25 prior to adding more costs to homebuyers,” she said.

Nathaniel Kinney, executive director of the Hawaii Construction Alliance, said the EV charging stall requirement is based on the premise that there will be a high demand for electric vehicles. But given the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, “we don’t think that there are many customers out there that are looking at buying a new electric vehicle right now.” he said. The issue could be revisited when the economic situation improves, he said.

Meanwhile, the Blue Planet Foundation submitted written testimony opposing certain provisions of the latest draft, including the relaxing of requirements for EV-ready stalls and allowing builders to opt out of installing solar water heaters by obtaining a variance from the Hawaii State Energy Office.

Menor acknowledged that the nine-month debate on the issue had often been heated. While the result is “a measure that’s not perfect,” he said, his committee tried painstakingly to balance the city’s renewable energy goals with the need for more affordable housing.

“I believe that this measure moves us in the right direction in addressing the critical issue of climate change, and establishes a legal framework within which this issue can be more proactively addressed in the future,” he said.

Councilman Brandon Elefante, who voted “yes, with reservations,” said he believes parts of the bill “have been too compromised and too watered down” to meet the city’s long-term energy efficiency and savings goals, particularly when it comes to the EV-ready parking stalls provision.

He noted that those units in the lowest affordable housing categories are exempted from any EV-ready requirements, “potentially forcing these projects that are at least able to afford it to make more expensive retrofits in the future and thus pass the cost on to future homeowners and tenants.”

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, the Council gave final approval to:

>> Bill 60 (2019), which amends the 2019 affordable rental housing ordinance to allow developers and owners of affordable rentals to end the affordability requirements of the units at 15 years in exchange for a slew of incentives that save them thousands of dollars per unit including greater density, taller allowable heights, less setback, no required parking, waivers from building permit application and wastewater facilities charges, no park dedication fees and a 10-year tax waiver on property taxes. The original ordinance said the units must be kept within the affordable caps in perpetuity.

The new bill was supported by developers and bank representatives who said the program has been slow to find takers because property owners are wary of rental caps in perpetuity. But Kathy Sokugawa, the city’s acting planning director, raised serious concerns. “We fashioned the incentives around a perpetually affordable building …,” she said. “I’m hoping the Council understands that’s a major change in the way the program was originally adopted.”

But Menor said the 2019 ordinance, which was adopted amid much fanfare, has yet to yield any new affordable rentals. Sokugawa said the Department of Planning and Permitting has received only two applications since it was signed into law by Caldwell a year ago this month.

>> Bill 28 (2019), which allows, for a one-year trial period, a developer to receive financial incentives — such as a waiver from paying sewer facility charges — for building affordable housing units to be priced based on no more than 120% of area median income as determined by federal housing guidelines. But Sokugawa, the city’s acting planning director, noted at a February committee meeting that it imposes no affordability period, or time frame for the units to be affordable, thus allowing an affordable unit to be resold at a higher price the day after its initial sale.

To ease the concerns, Menor included language requiring that any developer seeking such waivers secure a development agreement with the city that specifies units pricing and other details.

The bill was supported by developer Michael Hodge, who said he is planning a 56-unit “modular technology” housing complex consisting of one-bedroom and studio units all with prices at 100% AMI and below.