Letters: Stop monster homes that really are apartments; Stop Putin’s war, humanitarian crisis; LGBTQ education bill harms religious freedom

The problem with monster homes is out of control. The City Council needs to take firm action to curb these monstrosities, which are apartment buildings masquerading as “single-family homes.”

Don’t just take a landlord’s word that all tenants are related. Put some teeth in the laws that limit occupancy to five nonrelated persons, or a family plus three nonrelated persons.

Make the owners pay property taxes as apartments, with a surcharge for their trickiness in trying to game the system.

The Council is well aware of this problem but seems powerless, or unwilling, to act for our residents’ well-being.

Don’t even mention the city Department of Planning and Permitting; there is likely monkey business in permitting for these projects.

This letter is not aimed at McMansions, which are graceless vanity projects. It is directed squarely at the huge, lot-filling horizontal apartment buildings proliferating in Kaimuki and Palolo Valley.

John Arnest

Wilhelmina Rise

Suburban sprawl creates car-dependent culture

U.S. urban planners have been pushing for years to build more compact cities, but the builders and county councils have preferred to blanket the suburbs with a monoculture of 3,000 square-foot homes with a three-car garage on a quarter-acre lot at the end of a cul-de-sac, governed by homeowners’ agreements and NIMBYs that prohibit any store anywhere nearby.

Stores can only be in shopping zones often miles away from homes, with jobs even farther away.

Convenient and frequent bus service is rare. So when gas reaches $6 a gallon, we can now realize that we have painted ourselves into a car- dependent corner.

Look at Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Dallas-Fort Worth on Google Earth as typical examples.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us” (Walt Kelly, 1970).

Harold Senter

Aina Haina

Stand-your-ground laws don’t lead to violence

The commentary by Chris Marvin (“A Hawaii stand-your-ground law would encourage violence,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, March 7), was biased, sensationalistic and very misleading.

I, too, am a retired combat veteran. His assertion that House Bill 2464 “tells citizens that … they can choose to escalate the violence, shoot to kill, and claim self-defense” is absurd. He should know better.

There are at least 38 states with similar stand-your-ground laws. None have morphed into a Wild West environment as he suggests.

Hawaii Revised Statutes §703-304, which HB 2464 amends, is not a gun law and only removes the requirement to retreat if threatened with any type of deadly force. There is still a requirement of reasonable belief that there is a substantial risk of an attacker causing death or serious bodily harm.

If found to be unreasonable, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go directly to jail.

Tim Gedney

Hawaii Kai

Stop Putin’s war, humanitarian crisis

The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military risks many people disliking or even hating all Russians. This is most unfortunate and certainly mistaken.

The soul of Russia is beautiful, as reflected in the awesome music, art, literature and architecture created by Russians for centuries.

More than 13,000 civilians in some 50 cities in Russia are risking imprisonment to protest the unjust war.

What is to dislike are the aggressive actions of the Putin regime in starting a catastrophic war in Ukraine, and what is to hate is the destruction of Ukrainian cities, including civilian residences and infrastructure, plus the suffering, injury and death of Ukrainians.

The countries of the world, including the U.S., and the United Nations, European Union and NATO must do everything possible to stop the war and ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, and of suffering of the Ukrainian and other refugees fleeing the horrors of this warfare.

Leslie E. Sponsel

Hawaii Kai

Expensive fighter jets are false gods of metal

It is impossible not to notice an increased number of flights of military aircraft, including several F-22 Raptor jets. Each one of these “false gods of metal” F-22s costs $334 million and $70,000 per hour to fly.

This year’s U.S. military budget is $778 billion. That’s $24 billion more than President Joe Biden requested in the midst of growing human needs, including responding to a global pandemic, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and war refugees, and averting climate disaster.

Remember the words of former president and general Dwight Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Stop glorifying war and weapons of mass destruction and get back to basics: Honor the Earth and respect and love one another as a human family.

Jim Albertini

Kurtistown, Hawaii island

LGBTQ education bill harms religious freedom

I am appalled, although not surprised, that all but four of 51 members of the state House of Representatives have so little respect for, or apparent knowledge of, the U.S. Constitution that they would support a bill that clearly violates a most basic tenet we hold dear (“Hawaii bill to add LGBTQ information to sex education advances,” Star-Advertiser, March 8).

The very first amendment of our Constitution says that there shall be no law respecting an establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The recent bill to add LGBTQ information to sex education for our public schools was described as being necessary to teach students what is and what is not sinful behavior.

By definition, sin is that which God has determined to be wrong. Since when is it the duty of our public schools to proselytize our children?

The Rev. Kimon Nicolaides III

Waikiki

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