Community-driven progress on Hawaiʻi’s affordable housing crisis

Stable housing provides a foundation for thriving families and communities. Hawaiʻi first proclaimed a housing crisis in 1970. Since then, the problem has only worsened. Our highest-in-the-nation housing costs, coupled with the widest gap between income and rent costs, has led to one of highest rates of homelessness and out-migration in the country, harming our economy, as well as our people and their health.

The only way we can hope to address Hawaiʻi’s long-standing housing crisis is through a comprehensive, community- and data-driven approach designed not to just build more housing, but to build the housing that Hawaiʻi residents need and can afford. To this end, Hawaiʻi Appleseed is pursuing a housing strategy consisting of three parts:

1. Support community leaders who have struggled with housing insecurity;

2. Assemble a coalition representing the perspectives of a broad range of housing stakeholders; and

3. Collectively pursue comprehensive plans designed to supply housing for all Hawaiʻi residents.

Supporting Community Leaders  

The voices of community members with lived experience of houselessness or housing insecurity need to be elevated to leadership roles in affordable housing policy and practice. We can’t build effective solutions without the perspective and insight of those most impacted. In partnership with the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Community-Based Development and Hawaiian Community Assets, Appleseed supports and compensates these emerging leaders with lived experience of homelessness or housing insecurity.

Assembling A Coalition

Along with our partners, Appleseed is bringing together a diverse coalition that believes everyone deserves safe and affordable housing regardless of their circumstances. We aim to make this vision a reality through collaborative problem-solving and collective action. Decent housing is a basic human right, and providing secure homes is a wise investment in the people of Hawaiʻi.  

The Hawaiʻi Housing Affordability Coalition (HiHAC) now consists of 117 members from 52 organizations, including 12 individual members who have identified themselves as having lived experience with homelessness or housing insecurity.

Working with this coalition, Appleseed supported an ambitious 2022 state legislative agenda that included the following successful initiatives: 

1. Appropriation of $600 million for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands;

2. Creation of a $500 per month housing subsidy for low-income families receiving TANF;

3. Protections for discrimination against Section 8 vouchers; and

4. Extension of the ʻOhana Zones Program and regulatory exemptions for permanent supportive housing.  

Finland’s Housing First Model

After the close of the legislative session, HiHAC led a delegation of 24 Hawaiʻi housing stakeholders to the international affordable housing conference in Finland. Finland has reduced its houseless population from approximately 20,000 people during the 1980s to about 4,000 people as of 2021 by switching from a shelter model to a Housing First model. 

[Related: “‘Housing first’ model better than shelters,” op-ed written by two conference delegates after returning from Finland, published by the Honolulu Star Advertiser.]

The delegates included five of the people with lived experience of housing insecurity along with representatives from Kamehameha Schools, Partners in Care, Achieve Zero, Family Life Center, Hope Services, Habitat for Humanity, Faith Action, and the Maui County Council. 

The group is currently focused on sharing out the lessons learned from the experience and advancing best-practices policy solutions that will help to address our housing crisis. 

Pursuing Comprehensive Housing Plans

We need plans that build housing and provide assistance based on the incomes that residents actually have—simply adding more market-priced homes and hoping for the best won’t work. Housing that is truly affordable must be subsidized, so providing a realistic funding plan is critical. 

That’s why one of Appleseed’s next steps is to push for the development and implementation of comprehensive affordable housing plans for each of Hawaiʻi’s counties and the state as a whole, building off our work assisting Hawaiian Community Assets with the development of the Maui County Comprehensive Affordable Housing Plan.

The Maui County Council has adopted several significant recommendations from the housing plan including:

1. Reducing the sales prices of affordable homes;

2. Providing a preference for long-term residents as homes become available; and

3. Increasing taxes on investment properties and short-term rentals to support up to $1 billion in funding for public infrastructure and affordable housing. 

Appleseed is hopeful about what can be accomplished in Hawaiʻi’s other counties, and at the state level, with a similar level of planning and investment of public resources to address this critical issue for our state and its people.