Column: More housing for economic recovery in Hawaii

The lowest-hanging fruit for pulling Hawaii out of our economic downturn is housing construction. Our enormous latent housing shortage has not gone away during the pandemic. This is a golden opportunity to close the gap for our young people and future generations by building reasonably priced housing for the middle class.

The pandemic has highlighted just how overcrowded our existing housing is: seven coronavirus cases in one Kalihi home in May, eight cases in one Kauai home in June, 10 cases in one Oahu home, also in June. Those clusters illustrate years-long trends: the most expensive home costs in the country, the worst homelessness rates in the country, and the greatest gap between housing costs and wages in the country.

In normal times, our overcrowded housing is often dismissed as “cultural.” Today, it’s a public health crisis.

Housing demand still outstrips supply because for years, housing construction has fallen far short of demand. Between 2001 and 2018, Oahu had 244,298 babies born, and 126,024 people die.

These are local people, not wealthy overseas investors, homeless people on one-way tickets, mainland Airbnb renters, and so on.

Even if we make the unrealistic assumption that 118,274 new local people all marry each other and stay married to each other, they will need 59,235 new homes to live in. Sadly, only 37,826 homes were built. We had a shortage of 21,409 homes just for new local people. That shortage hasn’t gone away since the pandemic began.

Market data confirm the persistent demand for housing, even during this economic crisis. The median price for Oahu’s single-family homes actually increased by 3.5%, to $797,000 in May 2020 compared to May 2019. The median price for Oahu condos increased by 4.4% to $399,000 during the same timeframe. Nationally, experts predict annual housing price increases of 3% over the next two years.

Housing has the added benefit of being much quicker to construct than the establishment of an entire new industry in Hawaii, like tech. Shovel-ready projects include the 100% affordable Kawainui Street proposal in Kailua and the Ala Moana Plaza rental tower in Kakaako, which is 20% affordable. Other major projects are in the works, such as the Aloha Stadium and OCCC (Oahu Community Correctional Center) redevelopments. The time needed to tee up those projects will also be an ideal time to develop and train the workforce we’ll need to build them.

Even if Hawaii successfully attracted a critical mass in some other industry in vogue, like tech, where would these highly paid employees, many from the mainland, live? They’d have to squeeze into the same housing inventory we currently have, driving up prices for everyone, but most of all on local people least able to afford rising rents. That’s what happened in the Bay Area, where local people have been protesting against well-paid “tech bros” for years.

Economists are now estimating that Hawaii’s population could decline by tens of thousands over the next few years. Some see this as a natural solution to our housing shortage. But those people leaving are local people. Indeed, nearly half of all Native Hawaiians in the world now live outside Hawaii. Forcing people born and raised their whole lives here, including much of the Hawaiian community, to move away is an absurd way to deal with our housing shortage. Instead, let’s seize the initiative finally to build enough housing supply to meet demand.

Community advocate Ellen Godbey Carson is former president of the Institute of Human Services and of the Hawaii State Bar Association; Christine Camp is CEO of Avalon Development; Nathaniel Kinney is executive director of the Hawaii Construction Alliance.