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By CHRIS HAMILTON, Staff Writer

WAILUKU – Maui County Council members took a step Wednesday toward altering the county’s residential work force housing policy in an effort to coax more development of affordable housing – and any housing – in these troubled economic times.

And Public Services Committee Chairman Wayne Nishiki reiterated an earlier pledge that members will continue to rework the policy, which was authored in 2006 to ensure that when developers build luxury homes in Maui County, they will also provide homes affordable to residents with limited incomes.

In a life span marred by the deepest recession in memory, the ordinance has been applied to only three housing developments. Critics say that’s proof the ordinance doesn’t work, while supporters say practically no one is building or buying in this poor economy.

Either way, a change is needed on the government level to boost the floundering construction industry and provide home-buying opportunities for residents, council members said.

“We want to let the community know that this is just one small step of many steps needed to revise this ordinance,” said Council Member Mike Victorino.

The measure, which advances to the full council for first reading, reduces to at least 25 percent the number of affordable homes a developer would be required to build in a new subdivision (any with five or more homes).

That’s down from the 40 percent requirement in the current ordinance. If and when the new amendment passes the County Council in the coming weeks, it will only apply to projects in which the planned market-rate homes are estimated to fetch $600,000 or less on the open market.

The average single-family home on Maui sold for $719,993 last year. And, according to the existing law, when a developer builds a subdivision with market-rate homes starting at more than $600,000, half of the new properties must be affordable.

Developer and Maui Contractors Association President David Goode lobbied council members on Wednesday to lower the affordable housing threshold to 15 percent, saying the county needs to be doing whatever it can these days to get people back to work.

By contrast, Stan Franco of the nonprofit organization, Faith Action for Community Equity Maui, said members of his group would be more comfortable with lowering the rate to 30 percent.

Council Member and Public Services Committee Vice Chairman Joe Pontanilla called 25 percent a good compromise.

Franco also asked council members to take a stronger stand to ensure that developers don’t take advantage of legal language that allows them to create neighborhoods that do not have mixed-income levels of residents living within them.

Deputy Corporation Counsel Kimberly Sloper also clarified some of the work force housing ordinance’s previously fuzzy language when it comes to the percentages. She said, for instance under the new amendment, that when 100 homes are built “on site,” 75 homes would be sold at market rate and 25 as affordable homes.

Under the Maui County ordinance, a development company has the option to go the “off-site” route, where, for instance, 100 market-rate homes are built in one area, and 40 affordable homes are built somewhere in the same planning district. To help soothe some of the classism concerns by affordable housing advocates such as Franco and others, committee members on Wednesday increased the off-site affordable housing rate to 50 percent in an amendment.

“Today, in my heart, I look at affordable housing in a different light,” Pontanilla said. “If at all possible, we must not segregate by classes.”

He said he does not like the idea of “homogenous neighborhoods.”

All nine County Council members are part of the committee, although two are nonvoting members. The vote was 5-0 Wednesday, with voting members Jo Anne Johnson and Danny Mateo absent and excused.

In a letter to the committee, Mayor Charmaine Tavares expressed support for the proposed ordinance change.

Developers, real estate and construction representatives over the past year have provided committee members numerous proposed amendments to the county’s work force housing policy, such as lifting deed restrictions and eliminating a companion law that requires developers to provide their own water sources.

About 3,100 dwellings have been proposed since the ordinance went into effect, according to the county Department of Housing and Human Concerns. Some of those projects are still in the planning phase, while developers of other projects have either lost financing or are waiting for the housing market to improve.

In a sign of what other changes might be coming to the housing ordinance, Victorino suggested the county get back into the business of building affordable homes itself, but with conditions to prevent owners of affordable homes from reselling them at market rates.

Without affordable housing options available, “the American dream has become a nightmare,” Victorino said.

* Chris Hamilton can be reached at chamilton@mauinews.com.

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Click here to view FACE testimony.

Ever since my first introduction into social justice and politics in the eviction struggle at Waiahole Waikane in the 1970s, to the struggle at Kukui Gardens last year, I have seen the needs of our people pushed aside. My life has taught me that if we are to have a moral society on our islands, we will have to make it for ourselves. Currently, Honolulu is facing one of its toughest economic downturns where we are seeing families being forced into homelessness. The time is ripe for leadership from our city government to recreate an office of housing to address this crisis.

FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Faith Action for Community Equity held a prayer vigil at Honolulu Hale Thursday calling on Mayor Mufi Hannemann to tackle the problem of homelessness on Oahu. The Rev. Samuel Domingo, watched by the Rev. Robert Nakata, FACE Oahu president, presented Rae Gee, the mayor's executive assistant, with a symbolic broom urging the mayor to not sweep the problem under the rug.

Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE) is urging Mayor Mufi Hannemann to reestablish the city’s Housing Department. Upon serious reflection of the city’s proposed River Street Transitional Shelter for the homeless, we believe that the project is emblematic of the deeper problem in our city, namely that housing policy is adrift at the time it is needed most. This problem is at the root of many of the symptoms of inequity on Oahu today. We believe that the problem transcends the visible social ills of homelessness and the failure to create new affordable housing. At the most basic level there is no coordinated housing policy for the City & County of Honolulu. While this would be a serious problem at any time in the county’s history, it is particularly glaring now during several consecutive years of the worst housing crisis that Oahu has ever faced.

We see the increasing population of homeless people, the scarcity of affordable rentals, the failure to act to preserve the existing affordable housing stock, the struggles of families facing foreclosure as all traceable to the stark fact that Honolulu has no housing department, and thus no way of crafting strategies to address these problems or to make long range plans to deal with the reality of our current situation. In addition, the lack of a housing department negatively impacts the business of real estate development on Oahu by creating a needlessly complex bureaucracy that is widely criticized for its lack of transparency and coherence.

The River Street project, while it has considerable merit on its own, is not a housing policy. Instead, it is another series of disconnected decisions that undermine each other. This is not the fault of the staff of the various departments — many of whom have performed admirably within their silos; rather it points to the overarching failure of the county to have a single planning body for housing. As we look ahead to the ways that the rail will transform our metropolitan area we are convinced that the county can no longer afford to function without a professional Cabinet-level staff to advise the mayor, and serve both the developers and consumers of housing, affordable and market rate.

The mayor’s strong opposition to city involvement in addressing the issues of affordable housing and homelessness is clear. He has said that those are state, not city, issues. He has backed up that position by 1) trying to sell the city’s stock of affordable housing and using the proceeds for other purposes; 2) not maintaining these housing projects; 3) not lifting a finger to help the Kukui Gardens residents; 4) refusing to develop and getting in the way of developing coherent affordable housing policies; and 5) systemically evicting the homeless from city parks without seeking alternative shelter for them, resulting in the homeless congregating in Waikiki and Chinatown, where they are a problem for business and industry. This is a large part of the genesis of the River Street Project, which FACE conceptually supports but fears the project will be neglected by the city once it is built.

We therefore call on the mayor to act immediately to initiate the creation of a Cabinet-level housing department — either through the City Council or by direct charter amendment. We suggest that this department administer mortgage assistance, neighborhood stabilization, manage federal pass-through funds, and be given bonding authority.

We further suggest that it be urgently tasked to create a comprehensive strategy in three areas: addressing and reducing homelessness, maximizing the affordable housing opportunity presented by the creation of a rail system; and combating and preventing the spread of foreclosures.

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The Rev. Robert Nakata is Oahu president of Faith Action for Community Equity, a grass-roots group of church and community groups.

A faith-based community group marched on Honolulu Hale yesterday, calling for the mayor to create a policy and a department to deal with a widespread housing crisis on Oahu.

About 75 people, clapping blocks of wood together to emphasize their chant, joined the demonstration sponsored by Faith Action for Community Equity, a grass-roots group of several local church and community organizations.

Speeches in the City Hall courtyard were addressed to Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who is away on a trip to Asia. The mayor’s executive assistant on housing, Rae Gee, accepted their presentation of an old-fashioned yardman’s straw broom and their plea that housing problems not be swept under the rug.

FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Dennis Brouillette, right, reacted to speakers inside Honolulu Hale yesterday during a prayer vigil put on by Faith Action for Community Equity.

FACE Executive Director Drew Astolfi said Honolulu is the only American city of its size that does not have a housing department.

“We have no policy, no department, no go-to person,” he said.

Astolfi said the shrinking amount of affordable housing on the island, the increasing homeless population, foreclosures — which totaled 1,186 in the third quarter of 2009 — and development of a transit system are interwoven but are treated as separate issues by the city administration.

“Forty percent of the homeless are families; 25 percent are children. There are thousands of homeless children out there,” said the Rev. John Heidel. “There is a growing number of families who are squeezed out of the housing market, working people on the street. We call ourselves the land of aloha.”

Reslin Pinano described her family life, sleeping nights in their parked car. She works at two part-time cashier jobs. Her husband is looking for work. Their daughter is 3 years old.

“This is not the life we want,” she said.

The Rev. Bob Nakata, Oahu president of FACE, said, “This is not a tolerable situation. We are here to speak for people who cannot speak for themselves.”

A city department of housing is not likely soon.

“We don’t have budget for it now,” Gee told the group as it crowded into the mayor’s reception room. “Thank you for your clear message. The mayor doesn’t want to make anyone homeless. I have shared your message with him.”

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Advocates pressing mayor for agency on affordable homes

By Mary Vorsino
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer

Affordable housing advocates and low-income residents gathered at City Hall yesterday to call for the re-establishment of a city housing office to tackle a growing homeless problem and the dearth of affordable housing.

“We are homeless!” shouted Reslin Pinano, 38, who lives in a car with her husband and 3-year-old daughter, during the gathering on the first floor of Honolulu Hale. After speeches and a prayer vigil, some 75 people who gathered for the event walked up to the mayor’s office to sing and present a broom so the issue is not left “under the rug.”

The Rev. Bob Nakata, O'ahu chapter president of Faith Action for Community Equity, led his group to a prayer vigil at Honolulu Hale to advocate for an affordable housing agency. Photos by NORMAN SHAPIRO | The Honolulu Advertiser

Rae Gee, city executive assistant on housing, told the group that she would relay their concerns to the mayor.

The city has said there isn’t enough money to re-establish the housing office.

Before the event, Gee said the mayor “still feels that there’s no need for a housing office.”

The gathering was organized by Faith Action for Community Equity, which is pushing for the city to do more to address the lack of affordable housing. The Rev. Bob Nakata, the O’ahu FACE president, said there is no better time for the city to start looking more closely at ways to address affordable housing. “The city needs coherent housing policy, he said.

He said Honolulu is the only city in the nation with more than 200,000 people that does not have a housing office.

And, he pointed out, the other three Hawai’i counties all have housing offices.

“It doesn’t do to say housing and homelessness are not county issues, he said.

The city housing department was dismantled after the ‘Ewa Villages scam in 1998. Mayor Mufi Hannemann has disagreed that a special office needs to be set up to help create affordable housing.

“The people of Honolulu voted overwhelmingly to abolish city’s housing department more than a decade ago, believing the city should not be in the business of developing and maintaining affordable-housing projects, and realizing that the private and nonprofit sectors could develop and manage affordable housing more economically and efficiently,” city spokesman Bill Brennan said yesterday, in an e-mailed statement.

“That being said, the Hannemann administration stands ready to work closely with those who would develop and maintain affordable housing for our community.”

But affordable housing advocates say the office needs to be part of a bigger solution to help tackle a growing homelessness issue. “We need to restart this thing,” said FACE advocate Jun Yang. “There’s no place to go (for help).”

The gathering came as the city is in the midst of selling its 12 affordable housing properties.

The properties will remain affordable, and the first is expected to go on the market early next year, city officials said.

Reach Mary Vorsino at mvorsino@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Photo gallery: Prayer vigil for affordable housing 

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The Hawai’i Public Housing Authority is the state’s largest affordable housing landlord.
The agency oversees 5,238 federally funded public housing units statewide, and 864 state-funded units. It also manages a Section 8 rent voucher program, and its homelessness programs branch handles millions of dollars in federal grants annually.
The agency’s total budget is $120 million — about $100 million of which comes from the federal government.

Affordable housing advocates and legislators are puzzled at the Hawai’i Public Housing Authority board’s decision this week to start a search for a new executive director, saying the agency’s current head has made significant strides in the past two years toward turning around an agency that’s been awash in problems for decades.

When Chad Taniguchi was hired in 2007, he became the HPHA’s seventh executive director in nearly 10 years.

He took over a troubled agency with a staggering maintenance backlog, a high number of vacancies and lagging rent collections.

During his tenure he has been praised for balancing the agency’s budget — bouncing back from a projected $4 million deficit last fiscal year — increasing rent collection to 95 percent, cutting the number of vacant units and addressing tenants’ concerns.

Onlookers worry that bringing on a new director would slow that progress and trip up a planned $316 million redevelopment of Kuhio Park Terrace and Kuhio Homes.

The HPHA board voted Wednesday to start an executive director search.

It has given Taniguchi the option of reapplying for his job, and Taniguchi said yesterday that he will.

The board placed Taniguchi, who has headed up HPHA since May 2007, on probation five months ago, after raising concerns about his job performance.

Board members would not go into details on those concerns because they were discussed in executive session, but said generally that improvements were not being made as quickly as they’d liked and there were concerns about Taniguchi’s ability to handle the planned redevelopment of Kuhio Park Terrace and Kuhio Homes — a decadelong project that some hope could become a model for revamping Hawai’i public housing projects that are in the worst shape.

“Chad’s done a great job,” said board chairman Travis Thompson. “But there were some weaknesses. We don’t see that we’re moving as fast as we should be.

“Our board just felt we needed to find out if there is some people with additional experience and depth of management.”

Taniguchi said yesterday that he wants to stick with the job. “I love working with tenants and I love working with staff,” he said. “I’d like to continue.”

Thompson said he hopes to have the search for an executive director completed in three months.

The HPHA board has the authority to hire and fire the executive director of the agency. Taniguchi does not have a contract, so he can be terminated at any time.

As the head of HPHA, Taniguchi makes about $90,000 a year. Thompson could not say yesterday whether the board would offer more than that.

CONCERNS VOICED

Affordable housing advocates said the decision to start a director search came as a surprise, given Taniguchi’s apparent popularity among tenants and the improvements he has made in turning around vacant units and cracking down on delinquent rents.

“We’re shocked and we’re really upset,” said Rev. Alan Mark, president of Faith Action for Community Equity, which has been working with Kuhio Park Terrace residents.

Mark said Taniguchi has gotten support among affordable housing advocates because of his willingness to listen to concerns from tenants. Mark also said he’s worried that bringing in a new director would slow improvements and potentially stall the redevelopment of Kuhio Park Terrace and Kuhio Homes.

“We’re really concerned that it would jeopardize the development they have in the works there,” he said.

State Sen. Norman Sakamoto, chairman of the Senate Education and House Committee, said a new director might take nine to 18 months to get acclimated to the job. “Unless there’s major reasons why he’s not accomplished” his job duties, Sakamoto said, he shouldn’t be replaced.

“From my perspective, you keep trying to work with who you have,” said Sakamoto, D-15th (Waimalu, Airport, Salt Lake).

Taniguchi’s predecessor, Stephanie Aveiro, held the position for three years, retiring in December 2006. Before she stepped in, none of the executive directors of the housing authority from 1998 to 2002 held the position for more than a year.

FEWER UNITS TO FIX

Part of Taniguchi’s focus has been on reducing the number of vacant units in need of repairs. In July, there were about 419 vacant public housing units statewide — about 57 of which were rent-ready. The rest needed repairs before people could move in. That’s a decrease from upward of 500 vacant units in need of repairs last year, and more than 700 at any one time in previous years.

But not everyone has supported Taniguchi’s leadership style. Some have criticized his push to crack down on delinquent renters, saying the program has penalized working households that have fallen on tough times.

Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit by tenants of Kuhio Park Terrace and Kuhio Homes, filed against the state over what they say are substandard conditions at the projects, is ongoing. The suit was filed in December 2008.

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