The recent bullying of a state employee at a public meeting and threats against her family on social media – is totally unacceptable. Given the passion, the spread of misinformation, and the tragedy unfolding in West Maui, the frustration and anger may be understandable – but the threats are 100% not ok.
Healthy public discourse is fundamental to the existence of a healthy democracy.
Suspending the Sunshine Law in the Governor’s Emergency Proclamation on Housing (EP) essentially kicks the public out of the discussion.
Our democracy needs more public involvement, not less.
Reducing the community’s ability to participate and saying to them “trust me we’ll do what’s best for you” – is not the answer.
Bypassing State and County legislative processes intended to manage development, and granting decision-making power to a single person, or even a handful of the hand-picked – just adds fuel to fire.
What big business likes to refer as “barriers to development,” exist to protect agricultural, cultural, and environmentally sensitive areas that are irreplaceable. The petitions, the lawsuits, and the concerned citizens filling the room lined up to testify, are there to protect and preserve that which sustains them.
Attempts to take away these protections, whether real or imagined, AND take away the process enshrined in law that protects the peoples voice – will unfortunately, inevitably, and unacceptably result in anger and harsh words.
Governor Green and his advisers are now in a position to learn from this and reset the process, or put it aside altogether.
If you believe as I do, that thousands of people living in cars, bushes, doorways, at the side of the road and under bridges, constitute a crisis and true emergency – then that should be the focus. If you believe also the fundamental lack of affordable housing is the core reason people are houseless, then emergency efforts on creating permanently affordable housing must be the clear and unambiguous priority.
Perhaps the place to start is the title. Instead of the EMERGENCY PROCLAMATION RELATING TO HOUSING, perhaps insert the words PERMANENTLY AFFORDABLE.
With this new clear unambiguous mission in mind, going back to stakeholders and the general public, for more not less input, would also be valuable. If a thorough conversation is conducted many strategies will emerge that don’t require cutting out public protections in order to motivate new large scale development.
According to research published in 2022 by Hawaii Business Magazine: Approximately 80,000 homes are likely now sitting empty across the islands. These are vacation homes, vacation rentals, second homes, third or forth homes in some cases, and often just empty apartments (so-called “investor units”). Amending tax policy at both the State and County levels could greatly influence and motivate these property owners to do the right thing and rent out their properties to local residents. We need to tax them until they scream, or until they leave (oh wait most don’t live here anyway), or hopefully they decide to convert to a long term rental.
Similarly there are thousands of “undeveloped single family residential lots” sitting vacant on every island. Tax policy can be used to incentivize these owners to promptly build a rental or sell their lot to someone who will. In addition, there are other thousands of potential “Additional Dwelling/Rental Units” (ARU’s and ADU’s) all located in areas with infrastructure in place. Tax incentives and/or grants to pay for septic systems or other needs, could motivate many homeowners to build an affordable rental and keep it affordable for X years – ensuring them retirement income or a place eventually for mom and dad to live.
There are many strategies that could be used to tackle and solve this problem. Each needs to be explored.
The answer does not have to include sacrificing important public, environmental and cultural safeguards in order to ensure developer profits.
Gary Hooser
first published on 09/13/23 in The Garden Island newspaper
GaryHooser's Blog 
The market for multi million dollar homes is limited. Like any product, the more homes there are the cheaper they have to be sold for. This whole idea of zoning is a modern invention to protect the value pf the property of the well connected under the guise of protecting you from your neighbor’s intentions. (And what right do you have to tell your neighbor what they can do with their property anyway?)
The solution to the problem is actually to allow anyone to build anything they want wherever they want. Residential areas, businesses, and industry will naturally form in the most logical aggregations just as they did for thousands of years before the concept of zoning came into being. Adequate affordable shelter can be created once the government stops enforcing expensive unnecessary code requirements to protect the interests of lenders. Stores, workplaces, and entertainment mingled with residential creates walking neighborhoods and eliminates reliance on cars. Government can protect the vast areas of public land instead of expecting small landholders to shoulder the burden of environmental protection.
The idea of giving politicians control over what we can do on our land in order to entrench the prerogatives of the wealthy may be the most environmentally and socially destructive idea ever devised.
(And this is coming from someone who chooses to live off the land in a grass hale in the middle of nowhere, not a developer.)
While I disagree with much/most of what you are saying…in the interest of an open civic square…I am posting it. In my life experience of multi decades in the world of real estate – I definately don’t believe a “market solution” and unfettered capitalism is the answer. The real estate market in Hawaii is insatiable and the market is global. Space and time does not allow me to go point by point…and that is not my intent. I am posting this here out of respect from a contrary opinion but will not be letting that opinion or this conversation take over…#justsayin
Thank you for the respect of a contrary opinion; obviously I agree with most of what you have to say or I wouldn’t be here. I would enjoy a deeper discussion of these topics whether or not it changed either of our minds, but I also respect that this is your blog and you don’t want the conversation to get sidetracked from the immediate topic of the Governor’s EO – which, like you, I see as an attempt to bypass legal restrictions restraining big developers in a way that does not address the structural issues, be they the ones you raise or the ones I do.
Let’s try to circle back around in the weeks ahead and would be happy to dig in deeper with you Chris. I’m just returning from a few months of being more or less “off line” and am trying to catch up on a whole lot of stuff. I appreciate your professional and even tone…and am thinking we actually could have a solid conversation 😉