This Maui housing project is hugely popular and sorely needed. Will it finally get built?

Kenna StormoGipson, the housing policy director for Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice, said local families simply can’t compete with outsiders in today’s market. Private developers haven’t kept up: In 1990 Maui issued 3,534 building permits—a figure that’s dropped steadily over the years, down to 1,348 in 2017, according to a recent state study.

Today, the lack of housing stock for residents is so dire that Hawaiʻi’s Republican Caucus introduced a bill this session that aims to create “a separate local housing market.” The bill proposes to keep homes built with government funds price-controlled forever, “to build an inventory of housing that will always be affordable to the local wage earner.”

“When you have the Republican Party saying that, it says something,” said StormoGipson.

A recent analysis by a Hawaiʻi Appleseed researcher found that 70% of homes sold in 2020 went to investors or second homeowners, up from about 50% five years ago. In the last two years alone, the median sales price shot up by more than $380,000 — more than what a typical Maui household makes over the course of four years, according to census estimates.

On Friday, the same day that the Maui County Council agreed to take the first step in approving the Waikapu Country Town’s public-private partnership, the front page of the Maui News read: “Median sales price reaches $1.16 million.”

“We have a crisis,” Atherton said. “How can a local family afford $1.16 million?”