The state’s new chief housing coordinator, Nani Medeiros, has a poster-size graphic on her office wall that represents the many thoughts she has about how to add more affordable housing across the islands by working
with the counties to eliminate unnecessary regulations, offering
incentives to builders, updating outdated state rules and getting
incoming state directors to think about how their disparate departments can contribute to the goals.
At stake is easing life for financially struggling families, providing affordable homes for first responders and health care workers,
keeping young workers at home, attracting badly needed doctors and nurses, and allowing construction trade workers to buy the homes they build, Medeiros said.
“We’ve really got to be attacking all of this simultaneously,” Medeiros told the Honolulu Star-
Advertiser on Monday.
She wants to add a new challenge to the incoming Cabinet of Gov. Josh Green — and the people he appoints to state boards and commissions — to view their work through the prism of how their separate
responsibilities can increase the islands’ inventory of affordable housing.
Medeiros pointed to the newly appointed director of the state
Department of Transportation, Ed Sniffen, who was once told that a developer wanted to build a road from a housing project on Oahu’s West side to connect to a highway. Instead, Sniffen — then the DOT’s deputy director for highways — told the developer that DOT was good at building roads and would do it, instead, if the developer added more affordable housing to the project, Medeiros said.
Medeiros has worked for both Republicans and Democrats at the state Capitol, including former Gov. Linda Lingle, and appreciates the challenges through the eyes of developers.
Before joining the Green administration in a newly created position, Medeiros was executive director of HomeAid Hawaii, a hui of Hawaii builders that worked with Green during his tenure as lieutenant governor to develop Hawaii’s first kauhale village of tiny homes to provide permanent housing for homeless people in Kalaeloa.
“Protecting and providing housing for locals, that’s my No. 1, that’s where I start,” Medeiros said in her office in Green’s fifth-floor suite of offices atop the state Capitol.
She used the graphic on her
office wall — filled with squiggly lines connecting one broad concept to the next — to review her various strategies to make building affordable housing easier and available faster.
Medeiros has yet to pitch some of the ideas to the governor.
But the graphic — a work in progress — is emblematic of Green’s penchant for hand-drawn whiteboards to deal with a wide range of difficult issues, from reducing homelessness to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic as a Hawaii island doctor treating low-income and immigrant families.
Medeiros’ ideas include a wide-ranging series of incentives, fines and new taxes, and a detailed review of county and state regulations to identify whether they add unintended costs to construction, and therefore higher prices for buyers.
Medeiros pledged to make all of the administration’s progress — or setbacks — “transparent.”
“Whether it’s success or failure on how we are doing in government, even if it’s bad news, were going to put it out there,” Medeiros said.
There aren’t enough lines or connecting dots to show all of Medeiros’ ideas and concepts, but they include:
>> Incentives “to get developers to come to the table,” including the possibility of offering pre-development loans instead of requiring
developers to pay millions
of dollars in upfront pre-
construction costs that can escalate into the tens of millions of dollars to build affordable housing.
>> The creation of an inventory and database of vacant business properties across the state that could be redeveloped into affordable housing, including in urban areas of Honolulu. The idea likely would require zoning exemptions to allow for residential development in business districts, which have been used before in the Waikoloa area of Hawaii County, Medeiros said.
“It really is time,” she said. “We need to reconsider policies on zoning to develop workforce housing.”
>> The possibility of urban single-room occupancy units with communal kitchens, bathrooms and common areas for like-minded employees looking for a housing equity stake at relatively low investment.
>> Recruitment of nonprofit organizations from the mainland interested in developing affordable housing.
>> Low-interest homeownership programs and low-
income tax credits “to keep our kids so they can stay in Hawaii.”
Whatever happens, Medeiros said she wants to include anyone with an idea to speak to Green one-on-one for five minutes to share their suggestions to solve problems toward the goal of increasing affordable housing.
“I don’t know what I don’t know,” she said. “In no way are we closing this off to
anyone.”
