Unburden the burdened: Why Hawaiʻi should expand its rental voucher program
When 57 percent of Hawaiʻi renters spend over 30 percent of their income on housing—and 29 percent spend more than half—the instinct to reach for a simple, immediate solution is understandable. Rent regulation, or rent control, seems like an easy fix: just cap how fast rents can rise, and the affordability crisis begins to ease.
The problem? Price controls treat a symptom, not the disease. They protect current tenants, not the rent-burdened families still searching for a home. They do nothing to increase the housing supply Hawaiʻi desperately needs. And in practice, they often end up benefiting middle- and high-income households more than the working families they’re meant to help.
There’s a better way. Rental vouchers target assistance to those who need it most—not just those who happened to sign a lease years ago. Vouchers can scale, can be designed to respond to local conditions, and don’t carry the same risks of distorting the market or discouraging new development. If we want to help struggling renters without making our housing shortage worse, vouchers are the smarter choice.
Who Actually Benefits From Rent Regulation?
A 2024 global study found rent regulation lowers rents by about 9 percent for covered units—but it also raises rents by nearly 5 percent in uncontrolled units as landlords shift costs. Yes, rent regulation tends to keep tenants in place longer—but that’s also the problem: the benefit goes to whoever happens to already hold a lease, not to the renters who are most struggling.
New York City’s rent-stabilized program covers over a million units, but has no income limit. About 10 percent of tenants in rent controlled units earn six figures. More than 86,700 households earning above $200,000 a year. Many have lived in their units for years. The program rewards tenure, not need. Decades of rent stabilization in New York haven’t prevented landlords from falling behind as costs outpace caps, nor have they shielded tenants from the deeper threats of job loss and medical debt that price controls simply can’t address. A quarter of stabilized households are still severely rent-burdened.
In California, 57 percent of rent-controlled units are occupied by middle- or higher-income renters. In San Francisco, rent control did keep rents down for current tenants—but it also prompted landlords to convert units to condos or redevelop buildings entirely. That reduced the rent-controlled housing stock by 15 percent and pushed rents up across the city. Corporate landlords were the most aggressive, while smaller owners were left to absorb the fallout.
Vienna is often cited as a rent-regulation success, with 60 percent of residents living in city-owned or nonprofit housing that features broad income eligibility. But most experts credit Vienna’s success to massive public investments over decades, including land banking since the 1920s and a 30 percent allocation of the city budget for housing. But even Vienna isn’t a perfect model—rents have risen about a third since 2015. That suggests expanding supply, not just capping prices, is the real key.
In Germany, rent controls slowed growth but did little to increase supply. Berlin’s 2020 rent freeze caused available rental availability to drop by 42 percent before courts overturned it.
Stockholm’s negotiated rents mean apartment waitlists now average nine years.
Controlling price without adding supply doesn’t solve scarcity. It just shifts the burden, and often onto the very most vulnerable among us.
Why Vouchers Work Differently
Unlike rent caps that protect only current tenants, rental vouchers can directly target for assistance those who need help the most. Because vouchers target need rather than tenure, they avoid the market distortions that come with rent caps—and don’t create incentives to push tenants out.
That said, vouchers do carry tradeoffs that would need to be addressed to create a successful program:
They need funding every budget cycle rather than simply taking effect by rule.
Federal rental assistance already reaches only a fraction of eligible households nationally, and people often wait years because programs run out of money before they address the full scope of need.
Vouchers depend on landlords agreeing to accept them. In a tight market, a landlord with several applicants might quietly pass over the one using a voucher unless source-of-income protections are actively enforced.
Rather than relying on the federal voucher program, Section 8—which is chronically underfunded and leaves people waiting for years across all of Hawaiʻi's counties—several states have built their own voucher programs.
Massachusetts has run a statewide voucher program since 1966, serving thousands of households. Tenants generally pay 30 percent of income toward rent, and vouchers can be used anywhere in the state. The program is funded entirely through annual state budget appropriations.
Connecticut’s Rental Assistance Program serves several thousand low-income households with housing choice vouchers and relies on general funds. Families earning up to 50 percent Area Median Income (AMI) are eligible.
Hawaiʻi’s counties could fund their own rental voucher program by adding a surcharge on high-value properties—sometimes called a pied-à-terre tax—and dedicating the revenue to vouchers or bolstering existing programs.
At the state level, we can:
Increase the State Rent Supplement Program amount to more than $500/month.
To encourage participation, landlords who accept vouchers could receive guaranteed rent payments, free inspections, and home improvement support, with the same benefits available in every county.
Another tool using existing funding: converting Housing Choice Vouchers to project-based vouchers. This locks affordability to a specific unit for its lifetime—instead of leaving tenants to find a landlord who will accept their voucher.
But Hawaiʻi also has a deeper problem: too little housing—not just high prices. Amid global instability, trade wars, tariffs, and the uncertain regulatory environment of Hawaiʻi, we have been slow to increase our rental stock.
If we’re serious about supporting renters, we need to focus on those who are already burdened—and make sure our policies don’t discourage new housing. Rent control has worked in places where it came alongside long term public investment and direct aid to renters. But a cap only helps a few. A better approach: invest in and expand vouchers to get help to the people who truly need it.
