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August 14, 2022 7:21 AM   Subscribe

Is There a Way Out of Hawaii's Housing Crisis? - "The Aloha State is drowning in a flood of the same factors creating a housing crisis all over America. It will either become a model for solutions or a cautionary tale."

@stanleypchang: "After four years of frustration in the Legislature, this year we finally enacted the enabling legislation to build Singapore style social housing in Hawaii."[1]

Social Housing Gains Momentum in Hawaii - "Truly inclusive programs are the ones that enjoy enduring popular support. Public schools, public highways, and public parks are open to all, regardless of income."
Hawaii has been down this road before, with limited results. Hawaii abolished single family zoning statewide in 1981 with the "ohana zoning" statute, and in 2015 Oahu adopted an accessory dwelling unit program to replace it. Yet by any measure, the housing shortage is worse today than it was in 1981 or 2015. Fortunately, there are jurisdictions that have actually solved the problem. Two of the best known, Singapore and Vienna, Austria, did it through social housing.[2,3,4]
@Noahpinion: "There was a bill in California called AB 2053 that would have established a California Social Housing Authority and built tons of social housing throughout the state."

California Social Housing Act - "More than two in five Californians spend over 30% of their income on housing. Millions of Californians struggle to afford housing near jobs, transit, and good schools. 97%+ of California cities haven't produced enough affordable housing. We need more housing for people at all income levels, and social housing can provide it."[5,6,7]

@CSElmendorf: "Is environmentalism the main obstacle to infill housing in California? Over last 2 years, I've done significant pro bono work on CA housing bills & the sausage-making I've observed points to a very uncomfortable answer: Yes."[8,9]

also btw...
posted by kliuless (28 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Housing for profit is just about as evil as medicine for profit.
Rent extractors and middlemen need to be excised from our society like the cancers they are.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:50 AM on August 14, 2022 [31 favorites]


That 100k development sounds great. Hope they can actualize that sort of project. I've been banging a social housing is our way out of ridiculous housing costs locally for a while now with the example of Singapore as framework and been met with a lot of *blah blah Asian racism blah blah what about my house value blah blah first nations racism blah blah Capitalism*. Having some place beside Singapore to point to would be a godsend.
posted by Mitheral at 10:27 AM on August 14, 2022 [4 favorites]


100.000 units sounds insane, could there be a typo? And why would you want to build 100.000 units in one dense site, when the need is more like half of that number? 100.000 m2 might be more realistic, but you don't use the metric system in the US? I think Vienna is a better model for most places than Singapore, and I'd strongly oppose planning for a CO2 heavy technology with no space for urban greening right now, when it will surely be obsolete before it is finished.
posted by mumimor at 10:38 AM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]


Some of it is driven by locals trying to hold on, but Hawaii real estate is also popular purely for investment. The state has the lowest property taxes in the nation, and real estate appreciation dependably beats inflation.

Buried way too far down in the article.

The answer to any affordable housing crisis seems to be "tax the investors", and yet that's not what anyone is willing to do. Make it so that genuine residents pay nearly no taxes on their properties, while landlords, vacationers, and investors pay through the nose. They'll sell to park their money in a different investment vehicle, and the housing market loosens up.

Just like world hunger, it's a distribution problem, not a supply problem!
posted by explosion at 11:11 AM on August 14, 2022 [70 favorites]


Once the price of housing goes down is it possible that increased demand from people trying to move to HI when it becomes remotely affordable going to bring it back up?
posted by Selena777 at 12:48 PM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]


Just like world hunger, it's a distribution problem, not a supply problem!

This isn't serious solution. It's a supply and demand problem that will never be addressed by treating it like a distribution problem. As if the magical redistribution solution is even a real possibility.
posted by 2N2222 at 1:22 PM on August 14, 2022 [4 favorites]


Once the price of housing goes down

I’d bet on that. Once the price of housing goes down, that just increases the number of wealthier outsiders that can purchase vacation homes there easily, you can see this happening in, well, basically anywhere people vacation :(
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:35 PM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]


In many states "taxing the real estate investors" is expecting state legislators to pass a tax on the state legislators' assets and income streams.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 2:11 PM on August 14, 2022 [13 favorites]


Having some place beside Singapore to point to would be a godsend.

Well, there's also Austria, Finland, Sweden.
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:52 PM on August 14, 2022


Once the price of housing goes down

I’d bet on that. Once the price of housing goes down, that just increases the number of wealthier outsiders that can purchase vacation homes there easily, you can see this happening in, well, basically anywhere people vacation :(


Social housing doesn’t have to work this way. Singapore’s social housing is not sold on an open market. Citizens have to queue and then be selected in batches via a lottery. Secondary sales of units are tightly regulated so that an immigrant like me cannot buy one.

The price of housing in Singapore is still going up, but social housing prices are increasing much more slowly than condo units.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 7:32 PM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]


How about not letting non-native Hawaiians buy property any more?

I think that'll have a rather significant impact.
posted by The Adventure Begins at 7:58 PM on August 14, 2022 [6 favorites]


How about not letting non-native Hawaiians buy property any more?

Somehow I think the US Constitution would block such a law. Also, not all non-native homeowners are buying to invest. Mrs. SaysThis and I moved to the Big Island last year and love it.
posted by billsaysthis at 11:42 PM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]


Hawaii already has Hawaiian homestead houses and such. Not enough for sure, and they're still too expensive, but there's absolutely a precedent.

The Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_home_land
posted by fnerg at 12:57 AM on August 15, 2022 [2 favorites]


This isn't serious solution. It's a supply and demand problem that will never be addressed by treating it like a distribution problem. As if the magical redistribution solution is even a real possibility.

It's a distribution problem in the sense that there are relatively few places with the necessary infrastructure (schools, hospitals, transit, museums, walkable streets) to make them desirable places to live and lots of places lacking such infrastructure where no one wants to live.

If we start building more transit in second- and third-tier cities, invest in healthcare, invest in education, found new cultural institutions, maybe it would open up new places where people might want to live.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:41 AM on August 15, 2022 [2 favorites]


Public transit might be something that encourages a person with limited options to stay, but is it something that encourages a person with options to move? Also for many communities the fact that people don't want to live there leads to attrition of that kind of infrastructure (schools and hospitals, for instance) where it existed before.
posted by Selena777 at 7:08 AM on August 15, 2022


It's a distribution problem in the sense that there are relatively few places with the necessary infrastructure (schools, hospitals, transit, museums, walkable streets) to make them desirable places to live and lots of places lacking such infrastructure where no one wants to live.

The math is really simple in the US:
The places that are building lots of housing and keeping it relatively more affordable are gaining lots of population. Dallas/Ft Worth gained 100,000 in population in 2021 alone. Texas has high property taxes. It doesn't prevent people from moving because they aren't high enough to be confiscatory. Hence, jacking up taxes in Hawaii wouldn't 'work' to drive people away. Maybe it would give more money for social housing.

Phoenix is not too far from that number either, at about 60,000 in 2021 alone. Phoenix also has relatively high property tax.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:12 AM on August 15, 2022


Phoenix is in a literal desert and an example that population has to go somewhere, even if that somewhere has severe water scarcity issues. They're not so much keeping it affordable as they're ignoring the externalities of unrestricted growth and passing the savings (and eventual catastrophe) onto the consumer.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:33 AM on August 15, 2022


Phoenix is in a literal desert and an example that population has to go somewhere, even if that somewhere has severe water scarcity issues.

Yeah it sure is. It's a direct example that people will move anywhere the can afford so they can live. Quelle surprise! Why don't they care more about some eventual future water crisis than their day-to-day lives?
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:10 AM on August 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


Hey, as someone who was raised in the Phoenix-adjacent area, lots of us (those born and raised here at least) DO worry daily about the future water crisis. We are also pissed at all the people from California moving here and driving up housing prices. 5 years ago, this was the most affordable metro area (with almost 5 million people) for housing/rental prices. The last 2 years has absolutely destroyed that. The house-worth estimation bots tell me our house price increased over 120% since we bought it in 2016. That is literally insane. Completely unsustainable. Wages in the area have absolutely not kept pace to be able to even rent a crappy studio or one bedroom at these prices.

But still people move here. A hot as balls city in the middle of the desert. Hawaii has way more going for it as a great place to live. I don't know what they could do to build enough housing. Eventually every non-millionaire native resident could end up living in government built social housing, with every private plot sold to an out of town investment firm or billionaire, and there would STILL be people willing to move there. It's just too beautiful and desirable. Honestly the US will never give them independence back, but I feel that's what it would take to get a grip on the housing issue. Being able to make the hard and fast rules, at least a little bit like New Zealand.

Also, are our property taxes high? It's somewhere between 3-4%. There's a lot of added taxes for schools and special bonds and stuff, but I don't count that as the same.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 10:01 AM on August 15, 2022


Why don't they care more about some eventual future water crisis than their day-to-day lives?

It's not an eventual future water crisis. There are communities in the greater Phoenix area which are running out of water right now, and even newer communities that are being built (and sold) without any water rights at all, something that a lot of buyers haven't really thought about until they have to truck in water every week.
posted by hippybear at 10:24 AM on August 15, 2022


There's a significant difference between a city just getting bigger, and a city that's getting denser.

Hawaii and places like Manhattan, San Francisco, and Singapore can only get denser since they're limited by geography. And the places that you want to build apartment buildings or towers usually have buildings already on them, so you have to buy back the land somehow, at a price that just keeps on going up.

Saying "it's cheap to move to Phoenix" is comparing apples and oranges. The typical "new" American city is car-centric and sprawling, more of an enlarged suburb than a city in the classical sense.
posted by meowzilla at 10:25 AM on August 15, 2022


Also, for people who are suggesting no new immigrants to Hawaii as a policy, there simply is not enough locally-grown labor for skilled professions. We're already facing a shortage of medical personnel and teachers, and making it even harder for people to come here and find a place to live isn't going to help.

I don't know that we're unique in terms of local kids not being able to find work/housing situations that let them stay, while also lacking trained people for essential positions, but it is 100% a multi-factoral situation.
posted by DebetEsse at 11:51 AM on August 15, 2022


Saying "it's cheap to move to Phoenix" is comparing apples and oranges.

No it is not. Sure some percentage of new construction in Phoenix is on empty land, but they have tear down activity the same as LA or anywhere else. And new construction everywhere is generally more dense than 1970s-2000s, which was the lowest density period.

Also Singapore is at a uniform density of 28,000 people per sq mile, Manhattan at 25k, SF is at 18k, and most of LA and the rest of the SFBay area is way less. So maybe Singapore is maxed out (it is not - Paris is at 2X Singapore), but the LA metro area is not (literally there are still empty lots everywhere) and most of the rest of the US is not.

Also, maybe Phoenix's future is uncertain, and people will leave. Big deal - tons of people are still leaving the midwest and upper NE. People move. Maybe they will move back to the upper NE.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:13 PM on August 15, 2022


So maybe Singapore is maxed out (it is not - Paris is at 2X Singapore)

That is very interesting! because to me, Paris looks like a livable, beautiful city and Singapore looks like a capitalist authoritarian fantasy. I may be wrong, but this really interests me, and I'd love to hear from anyone who knows both cities (better than as tourists).
posted by mumimor at 1:10 PM on August 15, 2022


Hawaii has the same core problem as we do where I live - high home build prices (if you can get one) and a large proportion of investor-owned homes mean that many people living here cannot afford to own or to rent a home, even if one were available. COVID has exacerbated this issue significantly, with supply chain problems rocketing material prices (the inevitable result of ridiculous offshore manufacturing arrangements developed over many years) and the rise in remote working making the city far more attractive to relatively cashed-up people from the southern capitals has skyrocketed property values. My son and his girlfriend have been trying to find a new rental property for months but, with a vacancy rate of 0.6%, a young couple with little renting history doesn't have much hope.

We also have the same problem of not enough affordable housing for the people that live here, coupled with a desperate shortage of skilled workers, so welcome migrants with open arms. It all just adds to the downward spiral of affordability if you're not already in the housing market.

Something that adds to the affordability problem (I don't know if it's the same in Hawaii) is that baseline expectations have grown immensely over the last few decades. When my parents were looking at their first home, it would be a timber three-bedroom, one bathroom 'starter home' with no garage, no carpets or curtains and no landscaping. Today, that 'starter home' has grown to a brick four-bedroom, two-bathroom place with a double garage, fully landscaped and fixed furnishings included.

Higher density housing in areas that have existing infrastructure has to be the solution for many, if not all, cities struggling with housing affordability, in my view. The idea of building units on the location of a defunct stadium seems great, although 100k seems excessive. I also don't see any alternative but for governments to step up and fund this. There's demand for affordable housing, but there's a gap between the people who want it and their capacity to pay market prices. Who else is going to fill that gap apart from governments?
posted by dg at 8:35 PM on August 15, 2022 [2 favorites]


because to me, Paris looks like a livable, beautiful city and Singapore looks like a capitalist authoritarian fantasy

I'm only a tourist in Paris, but they have the banlieues, which are almost certainly not what you're picturing when you're thinking of "Paris" but which are, obviously, densely populated.
posted by praemunire at 9:10 AM on August 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm only a tourist in Paris, but they have the banlieues, which are almost certainly not what you're picturing when you're thinking of "Paris" but which are, obviously, densely populated.

This may or may not make a difference in anyones opinion, but les banlieues are separate administrative sections. In Paris-proper, there is a rule against buildings that are more than 8 stories tall, and of course a dense network of parks and boulevards. There is also regulation to limit the sizes of stores, securing the life of street markets and small local shops.

I often meet people who say "we can't fight against the economy", but reality is that we can. Politics are a thing, and politics can regulate economy, anywhere.
posted by mumimor at 9:26 AM on August 16, 2022


but les banlieues are separate administrative sections.

Yes, but I think the inner ones are counted in the Paris density calculations, which is how they get so high with the height caps. Don't know for sure, though.
posted by praemunire at 2:20 PM on August 16, 2022


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