HONOLULU (AP) - Mayor Kirk Caldwell has released his strategy to increase affordable housing on Oahu.
The Honolulu mayor made the strategy public on Wednesday, Hawaii News Now reported (https://bit.ly/2qg5ahd ).
The strategy is packed with new regulations and incentives for developers. More than 24,000 housing units are needed to address Oahu’s housing crisis, Caldwell said.
The majority of the demand is for people who make less than 80 percent of the Area Median Income, which is $58,600 for a single person and $83,700 for a family of four, he said.
“If we’re not going to become a gated community for local folks and exclude people that were born and raised here and force them to move to other places, we need to break the mold and break the model we’ve been operating for decades,” Caldwell said. “We will offer to developers properties at a $1 year lease and we’ll help build infrastructure if they help build affordable housing projects.”
The mayor’s proposal requires affordable units be built in new projects and subdivisions with 10 or more housing units, and increases the time units must remain on the market as affordable from 10 to 30 years.
“To date, I’m not convinced that this will help,” housing consultant Ricky Cassiday said. “Sometimes policy comes in and interferes with the marketplace in a way that doesn’t work.”
If passed, these rules will be rolled out first in Ala Moana, Downtown and Chinatown and then expanded island wide over a three-year period.
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