Lee Cataluna: Realistic economic recovery will be uncomfortable

If you’ve ever been through major surgery or been with someone who is recovering from surgery, you know that a significant factor in recovery is the mean nurse who makes you get up and walk. The nurse might not actually be mean at all, just serious and professional and focused on the goal of making you well, but when you’re lying there feeling weak and vulnerable, having someone say it’s time to get up and move when you’re worried about busting the surgery staples can feel pretty cruel.

Hawaii is going through a major all-system shock. In order for the state to start to heal, there’s going to have to be some very honest and painful truth-telling and some steps that hurt like hell. At times it’s going to feel like one step forward, two steps back. It certainly has felt that way this last week with the rise in the number of COVID-19 cases. Anybody who says there’s an easy way to do this is either lying or trying to get you to vote for them. At this point nobody is reckless enough to try to sell simple solutions.

Getting better is going to hurt.

Rebuilding the economy is not going to mean building more houses or new retail centers or additional hotels. It’s going to be using what is already there, maybe making something new out of what we already have, and re-scaling many things down to a manageable size and capacity.

Hawaii has to have agriculture to survive. Agriculture has somehow become a dirty word, but it is large-scale farming that often makes use of science to enhance yield. Whatever Hawaii grows should be something pretty close to a staple rather than a niche product that sells only to gourmands and connoisseurs. It has to be something that people in Hawaii will eat or use ourselves so that we can survive on it when the world market is in the tank.

Hawaii has to make something to export. All that is sold now is Hawaii itself, in terms of real estate, vacation rental nights, outdoor experiences and beach access. The supply of Hawaii land is finite, so places like Kakaako are going vertical and selling boxy apartments high above the actual ground.

Hawaii also can’t sustain as many people, both tourists and residents. There may be residents who find that relocating their family to another state helps their career, financial and educational goals better than gutting it out in Hawaii. We can’t cry over an exodus. We have to wish them well, trust they know what they’re doing and promise to send packages of li hing mui. This constant fantasy of bringing expats back home sometimes seems like a bias against those who continue to live here.

And once and for all, government has to get control of the illegal vacation rental market and those transient accommodations that are permitted but embedded in neighborhoods outside areas zoned for commercial or resort use. It cannot be the only sector of the economy where no rules apply. All that tourism should be funneled into hotels, which would help get more local people into jobs.

All of this is scary. Recovery is scary. But not recovering is worse.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.