Council advances affordable housing transparency bill

In spite of opposition from Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration, a Honolulu City Council committee Tuesday advanced legislation requiring public disclosure of city incentives for affordable housing developers on Oahu.

The panel’s Housing, Homelessness and Parks Committee recommended a committee draft of Bill 11, which seeks greater transparency over publicly funded incentives for affordable housing projects, to receive a third and final reading by the full Council.

The next full Council meeting is scheduled for Nov. 5.

Introduced in January by Council Chair Tommy Waters and Vice Chair Andria Tupo­la, the measure would require the city Department of Housing and Land Management to submit semiannual reports detailing incentives awarded, received, authorized or approved for affordable housing projects.

As drafted, Bill 11 would require the city to report on financial assistance, including grants, bonds, loans and other monetary support, as well as real property tax exemptions, fee waivers and deferrals, development-­related exemptions and other benefits provided to affordable housing projects.

Reports also would identify each project’s name, tax map key number, address and developer, along with the estimated value of nonmonetary incentives, the legal basis for each incentive and the cumulative value of assistance provided to each project.

The reports also would include the total number of dwelling units and affordable units in each project, the city agency administering each incentive, and any known federal or state grants or awards received by the project.

The bill defines affordable housing projects as housing offered for sale or rent to households earning 140% or less of the area median income, adjusted for household size.

According to Hawaii state data for 2026, 140% of AMI for Honolulu County is $150,920 annually for a single person, and $215,600 for a family of four.

DHLM opposes Bill 11’s reporting requirements as drafted.

At Tuesday’s hearing, DHLM Director Kevin Auger said his department and the administration “share the Council’s view that the public deserves to know whether the city is getting a good value from the housing incentives that Council approves.”

But he noted the city’s “chief concern” with this measure “is that it won’t provide much that’s truly useful, and it will do so at great expense.

“The stated purpose of Bill 11 is to require the reporting of affordable housing incentives to City Council but the breadth of the bill is problematic,” Auger said. “The expansive definition of ‘affordable housing’ — housing offered for sale or for rent to households earning 140% or below the AMI — would cover the homes lived in by close to three-quarters of Oahu’s population, including, for example, a family of four earning up to $215,000 a year.”

He added if DHLM took on this work it would be “endless.”

“And the question that we have is to what end?” Auger said.

Auger argued that the measure focuses on documenting incentives rather than determining whether they make a difference in housing production.

Determining whether an incentive makes a difference would require analyzing what developers could have built under ordinary zoning and regulatory requirements, along with construction costs, financing and market conditions, Auger insisted.

Instead, DHLM recommends studying housing programs to determine whether incentives make projects more financially feasible by comparing costs with and without the incentives.

Auger noted the Council also did not solicit “input or discussion” from DHLM while crafting Bill 11.

“And it’s not been revised to provide for any of our comments, concerns, or feedback since its introduction,” he said. “Based on the foregoing, we respectfully ask the committee not to advance Bill 11 and continue to work with the department to further refine the tools we are already developing to determine whether or not the city and its taxpayers are getting good value from the housing incentives the Council approves.

“Bill 11 is a prime example of unneeded bureaucracy; it’s a rearview mirror-­focused reporting requirement that would consume precious departmental capacity that will negatively impact our strategic plan to deliver more affordable housing,” Auger said.

In response, Tupola, the housing committee’s chair, questioned DHLM on its lack of input on Bill 11.

“In all of the letters you guys sent from March and September there were no amendments suggested,” Tupola said. “Do you guys have a list of suggested amendments that you have for this bill?”

“We’ll be happy to follow up with you, chair, to provide those to you,” Auger said, but added “fundamentally, we don’t like the bill at all. We don’t think it’s an appropriate approach.”

In the end, the committee — which on Tuesday included Tupola and Council members Scott Nishimoto and Augie Tulba — passed Bill 11 out for final adoption.

After the meeting, Auger told the Honolulu Star-­Advertiser that Bill 11 “was introduced by its sponsors without consulting DHLM.”

“After it was introduced, DHLM staff reached out to Waters’ office requesting to discuss how to craft a more effective approach than the one proposed by Bill 11,” he said. “We followed up that discussion with additional feedback. The bill has not been adjusted to address the feedback provided.”

Asked how many affordable housing developers operate on the island, Auger offered a broad estimate.

“If you’re referring to developers of ‘affordable housing’ as defined by the bill … that likely would include nearly every developer of housing on Oahu,” Auger said.

Waters has defended the need for Bill 11.

“Every incentive the city extends to a developer is a public investment, and taxpayers deserve to know exactly what that investment is producing,” Waters said in a previous written statement.

He noted the city lacks a consistent system to track the full scope, cumulative value and impact of its affordable housing incentives.

“That transparency is how we verify that these tools are delivering affordable units for local families, and how we make smarter decisions about where to invest next,” Waters said previously.