Hawaiʻi Budget and Policy Center director Beth Giesting’s economic update

Beth Giesting is the director of the Hawaiʻi Budget and Policy Center (HBPC), a public policy research and analysis program under Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice. Giesting’s work highlights the intersection between healthcare and policy, with a focus on their impacts on Hawaiʻi’s low-income and underserved communities. This month, Giesting published an analysis of the “pandemic recession,” which details the nuanced impacts of COVID on Hawaiʻi’s job market, affordable housing, and different communities.

In this Q&A, Giesting updates State of Reform on the pandemic’s effect on the state economy, Hawaiʻi’s housing crisis and its role as a social determinant of health, and key takeaways from the state budget. 

“The thing that [HPBC is] always pushing is the adequacy of housing. And I really think that we are approaching an emergency situation just because our inventory is being scooped up by people who don’t even live here … 

“If we invest in more upstream, we would have a slower rate of healthcare inflation. Of course, we know that there are lots of factors that go into why we have such an expensive health care system in the United States, but at least there’s certainly a link there, you know, if chronic diseases of various kinds are more common among low income households, and housing is the biggest cost burden that most households have.”