Josh Green: Emergency 10-point plan for Hawaii’s housing crisis

Editor’s note: If there’s any doubt about the high stakes for Hawaii’s people as we choose a new governor, the intense campaigning now underway dispels it.

In the spirit of providing information to readers, the Star-Advertiser’s Sunday Insight section asks the main, actively campaigning Democratic gubernatorial candidates — Kirk Caldwell, Vicky Cayetano and Josh Green — about their detailed strategies for Hawaii’s most urgent and toughest issues.

Their visions will be presented on the last Sunday of each month prior to August’s primary election: today, May 29, June 26 and July 31.

Today’s topic: Affordable housing

Hawaii’s housing crisis has reached a state of emergency.

It’s an issue that impacts us all in some way, touching almost every other major challenge we face as a state.

It affects our ability to deal with urgent issues like homelessness, the cost of living, education, access to health care, workforce shortages, Native Hawaiian concerns, economic inequality, and more.

Young people in Hawaii can’t afford to live on their own, with thousands choosing to move to the mainland for good.

Essential workers either give up their struggle to find affordable housing and leave our state, or turn down opportunities to work here in the first place.

Hawaii suffers a chronic shortage of 1,200 teachers each year as we struggle to retain qualified and experienced educators, mainly due to our high cost of living and unaffordable housing.

In 1920, the Department of Hawaiian Homelands was created to deliver land to Native Hawaiians for homesteading. More than a century later, DHHL has more than 28,000 Native Hawaiians on its rolls while holding over 200,000 acres of unused land.

Today, Native Hawaiians are twice as likely to become homeless in Hawaii, a disparity that is both unjust and cruelly ironic.

Tens of thousands of illegal vacation rentals and empty investor units flood our state, reducing the supply of affordable housing and inflating prices. Luxury developments consume land and infrastructure resources, and military housing allowances further impact supply.

We must take action now, and commit to a new era of building affordable homes for Hawaii’s working families.

After consulting with experts and stakeholders from across the state, I have put together a 10-point emergency plan to address our housing crisis which, if I am elected governor, will start on Day One of my administration:

1. Immediately issue an executive order to all state and county housing agencies to speed up construction of affordable housing by eliminating red tape, streamlining processes and approvals, and coordinating efforts to address the crisis.

2. Make housing for Hawaii residents our top priority by aggressively enforcing existing laws to shut down the 25,000 illegal vacation rentals across the state, taxing the 35,000 vacant investor units, and limiting permits and increasing taxes on new luxury developments by out of state investors.

3. Create a “Path to Home Ownership” for first-time home buyers and essential workers with a new state-subsidized loan program, including financial education and assistance to help navigate the home buying process.

4. Create an Office of Emergency Housing to serve as a “one stop shop” to eliminate bureaucratic red tape and provide faster services and approvals.

5. Use vacant state lands to build affordable homes and rentals with federal, state and private partnerships.

6. Continue to increase the rental housing revolving fund, increase the low-income housing tax credit, and create new deductions and incentives for long-term rentals to low- and middle-income families.

7. Direct the Department of Hawaiian Homelands to deliver land immediately to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries for homesteading, and to work with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to build housing for Native Hawaiians.

8. Reduce homelessness by building kauhale housing villages and funding new programs, services, and incentives such as vouchers to house the homeless.

9. Work with the counties to lower the costs of building affordable housing by addressing water, sewer, park and other fees as well as zoning and exaction requirements, all while maintaining environmental protections.

10. Work with Hawaii’s congressional delegation to increase federal housing voucher funding, homeless funding, infrastructure funding, and a bond cap increase to build housing.

We must also reach out to our construction industry, labor unions, the U.S. military, and every other major employer and stakeholder in Hawaii to bring to bear their expertise, manpower, and capital to aid in this effort.

We will partner with developers across the state to build tens of thousands of new units of affordable housing, which will in turn create new jobs, build our communities, and grow our economy.

Our housing crisis will likely continue to be the most challenging issue we face in the coming years.

It will be crucially important that our next governor comes into office with the trust, credibility, and the strongest possible plan to take on this challenge.

Josh Green is lieutenant governor of Hawaii; he also is a doctor and previously was in the state Senate.