Don’t slide on TOD housing goals
To optimize the area around rail transit stations, it’s critical that affordable housing become a “must have” component of new projects — not something that developers are able to buy their way out of.
It’s why the City Council must proceed cautiously on the proposed Mana‘olana Place luxury condominium-hotel tower, in which the developer would pay $2.4 million in fees to forego its affordable housing requirement. This decision will no doubt set the tone for future development in transit-oriented development (TOD) zones — and selling out from the get-go is ill-advised.
One option on the table is for the developer, California-based Mana‘olana Partners, to buy or develop 16 affordable rental units within a half mile of a Honolulu rail station. While better than none, the 16 units are just a starting point and nowhere near enough.
A final Council vote on the proposal last week was rightly deferred and the measure was sent back to the Zoning Committee, which is expected to take up the 36-story project at its Thursday meeting. Council Zoning Committee Chairman Trevor Ozawa was correct in noting that what happens with Mana‘olana will affect future comers along the rail line.
“I don’t want to get it wrong. I don’t think any of my colleagues want to get it wrong,” Ozawa said.
Getting it right means taking a strong stand with developers within TOD zones: Producing affordable housing is not an option, it’s a mandate.
Mana‘olana Partners is seeking Council approval on the first-ever Interim Planned Development-Transit Permit, establishing precedent for future TOD. Under TOD guidelines, developers can enjoy relaxed height, density and parking restrictions if they incorporate affordable units in their projects.
The current proposal would allow Mana‘olana’s 109-residential-unit, 125-hotel-room tower to exceed the current 350-foot height limit, to go up to 400 feet. Other variances sought include relaxation of setback requirements and half the required parking.
If the city allows these variances — plus allows the developer to buy its way out of providing direly needed affordable housing — there simply is not enough community benefit.
While dropping in-lieu money into the Housing Development Special Fund would seem like a reasonable alternative, that fund, unfortunately, has not produced any affordable housing units in years. The dismal track record does not instill confidence that livable units will emerge any time soon.
City officials might think they’ve driven a hard bargain by securing $2.4 million for the trust fund when the developer originally proposed $1.1 million. But with so little housing stock that is affordable on Oahu, it’s time that elected leaders, city administrators and the community press the point to developers that affordable housing is a needed and crucial commitment.
Harrison Rue, the city’s community building and TOD administrator, said Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s draft affordable housing strategy calls for requiring most developers to either provide affordable housing onsite, offsite or contribute an in-lieu fee based on $45 per square foot of residential space.
“The (Mana‘olana) project includes 53,390 square feet of residential floor area over 350 feet,” Rue said in a recent statement. “At $45/square feet, that is $2,402,550.”
Caldwell will need to rework his affordable-housing strategy. The city cannot move the needle on affordable housing if it continues to let projects off the hook. That’s unacceptable in a state with the highest per-capita rate of homelessness and in need of 20,000 new affordable rentals now.
Further, the promise of affordable housing in TOD zones was a key selling point for community buy-in on both rail transit and TOD; it must be delivered.
Community activists were not impressed with the housing escape clause — and with good reason.
“We have supported rail and TOD very strongly … because we felt this was a way to get affordable housing,” said Bob Nakata, a representative for Faith Action for Community Equality and the Housing Now Coalition.
The latest draft of the Ala Moana Neighborhood Transit-Oriented Development Plan touts “new affordable housing designed around walkable streets, mauka-makai views, prevailing breezes, and rooftop amenities.”
The Ala Moana TOD, it states, would include “a mix of for-sale and rental housing within a range of prices (that) would help attract a wider demographic.”
The city must stick with the plan and commit to increasing affordable housing stock as part of TOD. That means driving harder bargains with developers and setting smart precedents within TOD zones — in a range of housing prices, for a range of Hawaii’s people.
18 responses to “Don’t slide on TOD housing goals”
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Good editorial. The City should not allow developers to buy their way out of providing affordable housing with in-lieu payments or campaign contributions.
So far, nothing about rail transit construction or development has gone as planned. A failure here would be no surprise.
Moreover, the city should help the developers sell the inits. Don’t let these units be a drag on the project. They’re usually the last units to sell and they take months and months to sell. Provide the clients and sell out these units before the project even starts
So you think all of a sudden things will CHANGE ? Clueless in CORRUPT Hawaii !
Here we go again. Elected bureaucrats willfully failing to do their jobs, instantly change their mind when given a brand new $1 bill and an envelope stuffed with Zippy’s free food coupons by greedy developers.
TOD housing will only work if developers are held accountable, made to toe the line, not bribe their way out of it. $2.4 million for the trust fund is chump change for this developer. Want to bet they would have a different attitude if told they must pay a $24 million fee for the trust fund for the exemption?
Only way to get a greedy developer’s attention is to hit them with bribe fees so high, as in 10 times or more than they now pay. No more exemptions for building height, anything, unless massive fees are assessed so they have to think twice.
Git’r done.
The reality is most of the TOD’S will end up being SLUMS & GHETTOS because the sound and vibrations of the RUSTING RAIL project if ever finished will drive people far away from the Stations. Only those who cannot afford to move away will remain and as usual with low income housing the area & building areas will be trashed. Go look at the low income housing in Pearl City and Waipahu and tell me I’m wrong. WAKE UP HONOLULU AND STOP THE RAIL AT THE ALOHA STADIUM. Use the existing guide way as a reversible highway allowing all Leeward residents to use it. Just think NO FUTURE OVERHEAD OR MAINTANANCE FOR THE RUSTING RAIL. NO NEED TO RAISE TAXES. MUCH FASTER TRAFFIC IN BOTH DIRECTIONS BECAUSE THE HIGHWAY WILL ALLEVIATE THE CHOKE HOLD. WAKE UP HONOLULU AND DON’T LET THE UNIONS CLOUD YOUR BRAIN.
Affordable housing is for those with middle incomes and not for low income people. What could be an easier concept to understand?
These F O O L S have got it WRONG every single time. Such INCOMPETENCE and just plain SELLING OUT and DESTROYING Oahu !!!
The city should commit to providing at least 20 clients who could cover the cost of these 16 units.
These units would be sold at the very earliest to give the company money to fund the rest of the project.
Don’t let affordable housing be a drag on development costs.
These units should be an incentive for the developer too quickly sell a small portion of his development.
It is Friday, and I want to get through the workday too, but it is important to think so early in the morning. Think this editorial through, accurately. Yes we need affortable housing, and yes we need it near train stations. And, yes, public officials – State, city, HCDA – bargain hard with private developers in order to give permission. It bears mentioning that your editorial does not describe the full package of benefits, what is also given besides simply the money. It is also true that the money is important. So important that you need to examine it more fully than simply saying that it equals 16 units, a number so low as to make many people in this blog choke, laugh, cry, assume that are public servants are corrupt or incompetent. All of which is not the case. All of which needs to be said here. And what needs particularly to be said is that someone calculated out these 16 units, probably on the back of a napkin, and then used it to criticize the development in these hearings. Fair enough, but that is a number in a debate and for debate. But, this is an editorial. Not written in the heat of the moment. And you the editorial staff repeated it, without thinking about it. Maybe it’s Friday, but a little critical analysis is in order. 16 units is correct if your money goes to build it at market, including buy the land at market. Especially land like that in the TOD area, in the best place place of all for tod stations, the resort area of Waikiki. Which is what the rules of TOD say. You have to build it within half a mile. Bad rule. But even then, in that area, affordable housing is not done that way. You don’t just buy and build.It is not market housing. It is affordable housing and it is done a lot more carefully because, yes, it is so hard to do. With financing coming from many sources. And Land coming that is much less expensive. 16 units in Waikiki equates to 60 units in Kalihi. But the rules don’t allow that. Not too smart those rules. Then, that 60 units could become 200 units or more in a normal, and I use that word advisedly, affordable housing development. One done by Catholic charities. Say, in Waipahu, serving our elderly. Or sheltering families making 60% or less of the area median income. Or, that 200 units could help 1,000 families making 100% or less of area median income, workforce housing, with a down payment and the first year of mortgage payments. If you think of it that way, then you get a lot more bang for the buck. And a lot less banging on the head of public servants, politicians, and developers….which is fun to do, but is counterproductive if you want to increase affordable housing.
It’s simple economics, assuming as I do that architectural/functional design can retain senses of security and distinction for the market-price residents who will live in the mixed-class neighborhood of common parking and elevator banks, etc.
Nonetheless, the developer might be wise to satisfy the affordable housing requirement through singles-sized apartments, half designed for physically handicapped per ADA “universal design,” and half for fledgings fresh out of parental quarters. Those are folks most likely to use the bus/rail systems anyway!
Snake Eye Krook Cadwell has no problem with grey area “ethics”. He lives it every day.
The maintenance fees alone on these units will preclude them from being “affordable”.
HNL: Wat a JOKE.
his best “friends” are the landowners, developers and unions. He doesn’t give a flying you know what about the people in the city and county of honolulu. He just takes care of himself and his buddies. He’s the real deal when it comes to play pay to play. He needs to be put out of office along with his crony cabinet included.
Baloney we should be grateful Caldwell for his long public service.
Baloney. Fire this loser. Has yet to do an honest days work. A leech on taxpayers.
Weewiliki…please go turn a barstool upside down and choose one of the ends to sit on.
I went through this when I lived near the then-new Daly City BART station.
After BART, property assessed values went way UP. “Location, location, location”. Proposition 13 protected some home owners from the greedy tax assessor by limiting annual property tax increases to the official cost of living index. Cool, yes? Renters of what had been affordable housing, were “priced out”, and moved, somewhere.
I can NOT be the only person in HNL that knows how dis stuffs work?
But crtics of of rail say that property values will go down because low income people buy the affordable units near the station?