Case Studies on Regulatory Responses to Climate Change-Related Disasters.

How Parking Mandates Drive Up Housing Costs.

The 2025 legislative session convened under twin existential threats: Hawaiʻi’s worsening affordability crisis, and an impending fiscal tsunami of federal budget cuts.

In Hawaiʻi, two-fifths (38 percent) of households rent the homes in which they live, yet too often the needs of renters are sidelined at the Hawaiʻi State Legislature.

Looking forward from the 2024 state legislative session.

Exploring an Empty Homes Tax for Honolulu.

How the State Conveyance Tax Can Re-Invest Nonresident Wealth Into Our Island Communities.

Looking forward from the 2023 state legislative session.

Reducing the high costs of eviction through a combination of rent relief, eviction mediation and tenant protections.

The 2022 Hawaiʻi legislative session included extraordinary examples of the types of actions policymakers can take to rewrite the economic rulebook.

An analysis of Hawaiʻi’s pandemic-era rent relief and pre-litigation mediation program created through Act 57 (2021).

Part three of the Good Health Depends on Decent Housing series highlights the disconnect between the state’s housing market and the needs of its residents.

Part two in the Good Health Depends on Decent Housing series shows how helping people who are currently experiencing homelessness with housing and other needs is not only life-changing, but also saves money.

Part 1 of a Good Health Depends on Decent Housing series of policy briefs shows how chronic stress from insecure housing produces cumulative effects that result in mental and physical health problems.

Policymakers have shaped an economy that relies far too much on extractive tourism that provides little to residents in return. To reverse these trends, we need a dramatic shift in our public policy. 

Despite the heavy toll that eviction takes on households and communities, tenants facing eviction in Hawaiʻi have relatively little support to ensure they are not improperly removed from their homes.

Hawaiʻi counties have an opportunity to model vacation rental unit regulations off successful ordinances from around the world. The stakes are high: our housing crisis is among the worst in the nation.

The adverse consequences of housing stock lost to vacation rentals far outweighs the benefits they might provide to local families and our community.

How Hawaiʻi’s low-income residents are faring post-recovery.

Survey results show half of Hawaiʻi's households are living "paycheck to paycheck."