03/14/2022
THE RECENT ARTICLE WITH A PROPOSED SOLUTION TO MAUI’S HOUSING CRISIS IS REVEALED!
The WMTA urges you to join with us in our ongoing campaign to increase the housing supply on Maui and bring down the costs!
The “Tokyo Model,” referenced in the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii’s letter below is remarkable!
We have to change the way we are operating and immediately begin corrective actions for change.
The Maui County Council majority recently passed an Amendment to the West Maui Community Plan which removes the ability for residential housing to be built here on hundreds of acres of land and G.
Ignored legal warnings of potential liability for taking that action.
When has taking away property rights resulted in more housing??
Seems obvious to most people that our governmental representatives are not moving in the right direction and certainly the needs of West Maui
Residents for more housing is being ignored as a result.
Remember, Power can be transferred by your Vote.
Please choose to support WMTA and our Political Action Committee .
Mahalo,
Joe Pluta, President
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friend,
When you’re a hammer, the saying goes, everything looks like a nail. And when you’re a fan of big government, regulation is the go-to solution to every problem.
That may be why so many of our policymakers try to address Hawaii’s housing crisis via big-government solutions — like taxes on empty homes, government-funded housing projects and regulations to limit or mandate certain kinds of development.
Extensive research, however, shows that big government is the reason for Hawaii's housing shortage to begin with. So can we please try something else?
The reality is that if we want to turn things around, we shouldn’t be trying to import policies from areas with high housing costs, like San Francisco, or countries that have vastly different social and government structures, like Singapore. Instead, we should be looking at places that have managed to keep housing affordable, like Tokyo, where housing prices have been relatively flat for two decades.
On my latest “Hawaii Together” program on the ThinkTech Hawaii network, I discussed the “Tokyo model” for housing and what it could mean for Hawaii with Edward Pinto, head of the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center. Pinto has spent decades studying housing and development, and he easily pinpointed the origin of Hawaii’s high housing prices.
According to Pinto, Hawaii, had robust housing construction up until about 1972 or 1973, but then it collapsed and it has never recovered.
Reasons for that, he said, include the state Land Use Commission, established in 1961, and Hawaii Environmental Policy Act of 1974, both of which are heavily involved in land-use management.
"It all comes down to land use and making things illegal," said Pinto. "Basically, … reasonable density — we call it light-touch density — has been made illegal [in Hawaii]. Having two units on a lot is illegal. And all of these things just drive up the land cost.”
As a result, Pinto said, Hawaii has one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, just behind San Francisco and just ahead of London.
In a guest appearance on Sen. Stanley Chang’s “Our Homes” podcast, Pinto said a growing body of research shows that “subsidized housing, inclusionary housing, rent control and land-use policies that constrain supply end up creating scarcity and raising costs. … The reason that these policies have failed is that they don’t tackle the root cause, but rather the symptom.”
Chang is a well-known advocate of the so-called Singapore model of housing, which is the basis for his ALOHA homes bill that he has introduced in the Hawaii Legislature for several years now. Pinto said that he doubts that model could be reproduced in Hawaii, for several important reasons.
“For example,” he said, “Singapore, after its independence, had really a clean slate. Singapore back in the 1960s consisted mostly of shanty towns, and the government today owns 90% of the land and it can acquire private land at low costs.
“Furthermore, Singapore also has a highly effective public leadership cadre and it really has only one form of government that is not as responsive to voters necessarily, which allows it to overcome many barriers to increasing supply.
“So the downsides for applying such a model to Hawaii,” he said, “could be that this Singapore model may not necessarily be scalable. And if you end up with a failure, it could come at a heavy cost, because you could end up with public housing, as is very common in the mainland, where you have basically increased racial and income segregation, you have also trapped many residents in housing and it has reduced social mobility."
Finally, he said, "generally, these projects, if the government gets involved, tend to be very expensive and they tend to exceed the budget.”
For Hawaii, Pinto said a better option would be the sort of “light-touch density” zoning that has helped Tokyo produce adequate affordable housing.
The secret to Tokyo’s success? Property rights.
After World War II, Pinto explained, Japan’s new constitution provided for strong property rights. By the 1980s, this included the right to develop your property as you wished, so long as it wasn’t a nuisance.
“You could build duplexes, quadruplexes, triplexes, high-rise buildings. As a result,” Pinto said, “Tokyo has built more housing in a period than the entire state of California by a multiple."
This has enabled Tokyo to meet the needs of its population, in terms of keeping housing affordable for both renters and homeowners.
Pinto said light-touch density relies partly on "by-right" zoning, which allows projects that meet all zoning requirements to proceed without going through a discretionary approval process. This, in effect, legalizes small, fast, economical, adaptable and simple additions to housing supply while still accounting for health and safety.
Pinto estimated that if Hawaii were to adopt such policies, Oahu alone could add 26,000 homes over the next 10 years.
On Chang's "Our Homes" podcast, Pinto’s colleague at the Housing Center, Tobias Peter, said it also would be helpful for Hawaii to make more land available for residential use. Specifically, as the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii has noted, with only 5% of Hawaii land available for residential construction, an increase of only 1 or 2 percentage points would translate to a 20% or 40% increase, respectively, in the land available for housing.
I realize, of course, that there is no such thing as a quick fix to Hawaii’s housing crisis. It is a problem that has been decades in the making, and it is being made worse through fashionable policies like inclusionary zoning.
I also have no doubt that the people who want to use the government to solve the problem are well-meaning. But the data is clear: If we want our children and grandchildren to be able to find affordable homes in Hawaii, we need to liberalize our state and local land-use and zoning regulations.
E hana kākou! (Let's work together!)
THE RECENT ARTICLE WITH A PROPOSED SOLUTION TO MAUI’S HOUSING CRISIS IS REVEALED!
The WMTA urges you to join with us in our ongoing campaign to increase the housing supply on Maui and bring down the costs!
The “Tokyo Model,” referenced in the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii’s letter below is remarkable!
We have to change the way we are operating and immediately begin corrective actions for change.
The Maui County Council majority recently passed an Amendment to the West Maui Community Plan which removes the ability for residential housing to be built here on hundreds of acres of land and G.
Ignored legal warnings of potential liability for taking that action.
When has taking away property rights resulted in more housing??
Seems obvious to most people that our governmental representatives are not moving in the right direction and certainly the needs of West Maui
Residents for more housing is being ignored as a result.
Remember, Power can be transferred by your Vote.
Please choose to support WMTA and our Political Action Committee .
Mahalo,
Joe Pluta, President
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friend,
When you’re a hammer, the saying goes, everything looks like a nail. And when you’re a fan of big government, regulation is the go-to solution to every problem.
That may be why so many of our policymakers try to address Hawaii’s housing crisis via big-government solutions — like taxes on empty homes, government-funded housing projects and regulations to limit or mandate certain kinds of development.
Extensive research, however, shows that big government is the reason for Hawaii's housing shortage to begin with. So can we please try something else?
The reality is that if we want to turn things around, we shouldn’t be trying to import policies from areas with high housing costs, like San Francisco, or countries that have vastly different social and government structures, like Singapore. Instead, we should be looking at places that have managed to keep housing affordable, like Tokyo, where housing prices have been relatively flat for two decades.
On my latest “Hawaii Together” program on the ThinkTech Hawaii network, I discussed the “Tokyo model” for housing and what it could mean for Hawaii with Edward Pinto, head of the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center. Pinto has spent decades studying housing and development, and he easily pinpointed the origin of Hawaii’s high housing prices.
According to Pinto, Hawaii, had robust housing construction up until about 1972 or 1973, but then it collapsed and it has never recovered.
Reasons for that, he said, include the state Land Use Commission, established in 1961, and Hawaii Environmental Policy Act of 1974, both of which are heavily involved in land-use management.
"It all comes down to land use and making things illegal," said Pinto. "Basically, … reasonable density — we call it light-touch density — has been made illegal [in Hawaii]. Having two units on a lot is illegal. And all of these things just drive up the land cost.”
As a result, Pinto said, Hawaii has one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, just behind San Francisco and just ahead of London.
In a guest appearance on Sen. Stanley Chang’s “Our Homes” podcast, Pinto said a growing body of research shows that “subsidized housing, inclusionary housing, rent control and land-use policies that constrain supply end up creating scarcity and raising costs. … The reason that these policies have failed is that they don’t tackle the root cause, but rather the symptom.”
Chang is a well-known advocate of the so-called Singapore model of housing, which is the basis for his ALOHA homes bill that he has introduced in the Hawaii Legislature for several years now. Pinto said that he doubts that model could be reproduced in Hawaii, for several important reasons.
“For example,” he said, “Singapore, after its independence, had really a clean slate. Singapore back in the 1960s consisted mostly of shanty towns, and the government today owns 90% of the land and it can acquire private land at low costs.
“Furthermore, Singapore also has a highly effective public leadership cadre and it really has only one form of government that is not as responsive to voters necessarily, which allows it to overcome many barriers to increasing supply.
“So the downsides for applying such a model to Hawaii,” he said, “could be that this Singapore model may not necessarily be scalable. And if you end up with a failure, it could come at a heavy cost, because you could end up with public housing, as is very common in the mainland, where you have basically increased racial and income segregation, you have also trapped many residents in housing and it has reduced social mobility."
Finally, he said, "generally, these projects, if the government gets involved, tend to be very expensive and they tend to exceed the budget.”
For Hawaii, Pinto said a better option would be the sort of “light-touch density” zoning that has helped Tokyo produce adequate affordable housing.
The secret to Tokyo’s success? Property rights.
After World War II, Pinto explained, Japan’s new constitution provided for strong property rights. By the 1980s, this included the right to develop your property as you wished, so long as it wasn’t a nuisance.
“You could build duplexes, quadruplexes, triplexes, high-rise buildings. As a result,” Pinto said, “Tokyo has built more housing in a period than the entire state of California by a multiple."
This has enabled Tokyo to meet the needs of its population, in terms of keeping housing affordable for both renters and homeowners.
Pinto said light-touch density relies partly on "by-right" zoning, which allows projects that meet all zoning requirements to proceed without going through a discretionary approval process. This, in effect, legalizes small, fast, economical, adaptable and simple additions to housing supply while still accounting for health and safety.
Pinto estimated that if Hawaii were to adopt such policies, Oahu alone could add 26,000 homes over the next 10 years.
On Chang's "Our Homes" podcast, Pinto’s colleague at the Housing Center, Tobias Peter, said it also would be helpful for Hawaii to make more land available for residential use. Specifically, as the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii has noted, with only 5% of Hawaii land available for residential construction, an increase of only 1 or 2 percentage points would translate to a 20% or 40% increase, respectively, in the land available for housing.
I realize, of course, that there is no such thing as a quick fix to Hawaii’s housing crisis. It is a problem that has been decades in the making, and it is being made worse through fashionable policies like inclusionary zoning.
I also have no doubt that the people who want to use the government to solve the problem are well-meaning. But the data is clear: If we want our children and grandchildren to be able to find affordable homes in Hawaii, we need to liberalize our state and local land-use and zoning regulations.
E hana kākou! (Let's work together!)
Keli'i Akina, Ph.D.
President / CEO
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
President / CEO
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
West Maui Affordable Housing Survey
“WMTA - AFFORDABLE HOUSING SURVEY RESULTS ARE AVAILABLE-NOW! “
WMTA HAS BEEN ADVOCATING FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN WEST MAUI FOR OVER 40 YEARS!
SEE www.westmaui.org/survey2021results.html FOR SURVEY RESULTS.
As a founding board member of WMTA in 1979, I know that we advocated for governmental intervention to address the need for More affordable housing in West Maui including Workforce housing. The net result of good intentions over the years to meet local housing demands for West Maui has enjoyed some successes, but in the long run; seems to have made things worse.
The unintended consequences are that we are literally thousands of dwelling units behind where we should be today.
The reality is that now it is literally impossible to catch up with our communities needs for housing and any progress needs relief from some of today’s onerous requirements.
Politicians have stated it’s time for action and not talk and we agree. The actions should be to facilitate not to make it even more difficult.
We respectfully suggest that taking away areas where housing was planned to be allowable is not the kind of action that is needed.
All new homes in all price ranges will be generating substantial property tax income to the County and it seems clear that mixed unit developments with market priced components are essential to off-set affordable categories.
“Affordable Only” development projects are not making a dent in what our needs are.
It’s time to incentivize home building and not further restrict areas where housing was allowed in the Maui Island plan.
Please consider joining our effort in making that point clear to our elected government officials who are currently considering the updating of the West Maui Community plan.
WMTA HAS BEEN ADVOCATING FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN WEST MAUI FOR OVER 40 YEARS!
SEE www.westmaui.org/survey2021results.html FOR SURVEY RESULTS.
As a founding board member of WMTA in 1979, I know that we advocated for governmental intervention to address the need for More affordable housing in West Maui including Workforce housing. The net result of good intentions over the years to meet local housing demands for West Maui has enjoyed some successes, but in the long run; seems to have made things worse.
The unintended consequences are that we are literally thousands of dwelling units behind where we should be today.
The reality is that now it is literally impossible to catch up with our communities needs for housing and any progress needs relief from some of today’s onerous requirements.
Politicians have stated it’s time for action and not talk and we agree. The actions should be to facilitate not to make it even more difficult.
We respectfully suggest that taking away areas where housing was planned to be allowable is not the kind of action that is needed.
All new homes in all price ranges will be generating substantial property tax income to the County and it seems clear that mixed unit developments with market priced components are essential to off-set affordable categories.
“Affordable Only” development projects are not making a dent in what our needs are.
It’s time to incentivize home building and not further restrict areas where housing was allowed in the Maui Island plan.
Please consider joining our effort in making that point clear to our elected government officials who are currently considering the updating of the West Maui Community plan.
View Results: http://www.westmaui.org/survey2021results
February 24, 2021 Press Release - announcement & invitation of survey
The WMTA is conducting a survey to understand where people who currently live or work in West Maui would like to see housing built for you and your family. It’s already been proven that affordable housing is needed.
The mission of this survey is to “…have the West Maui Community Plan, WMCP, reflect the opinions and direction the West Maui residents and employees believe are important which will encourage affordable mixed use development in West Maui areas of Olowalu and Launiupoko”.
The West Maui Affordable Housing Survey, is brought to you by the West Maui Taxpayers Association (WMTA), a non-profit community association that has been advocating for West Maui for over 40 years, to gather the voices of the community on affordable housing in West Maui. We are seeking the input of parents, neighbors, small business owners, visitor industry staff, and more to help us collectively inform decision makers of what the residents need for a safe and healthy community (part of the WMTA mission since the beginning).
Take the Survey
The West Maui Affordable Housing Survey will end on Friday, April 2, 2021.
Click here to Take Survey Now.
Participation in this survey is voluntary and anonymous. Questions can be sent to [email protected]
The mission of this survey is to “…have the West Maui Community Plan, WMCP, reflect the opinions and direction the West Maui residents and employees believe are important which will encourage affordable mixed use development in West Maui areas of Olowalu and Launiupoko”.
The West Maui Affordable Housing Survey, is brought to you by the West Maui Taxpayers Association (WMTA), a non-profit community association that has been advocating for West Maui for over 40 years, to gather the voices of the community on affordable housing in West Maui. We are seeking the input of parents, neighbors, small business owners, visitor industry staff, and more to help us collectively inform decision makers of what the residents need for a safe and healthy community (part of the WMTA mission since the beginning).
Take the Survey
The West Maui Affordable Housing Survey will end on Friday, April 2, 2021.
Click here to Take Survey Now.
Participation in this survey is voluntary and anonymous. Questions can be sent to [email protected]
MARCH 5 PRESS RELEASE - SURVEY UPDATE
MARCH 5 PRESS RELEASE - SURVEY UPDATE
he response to our survey has been excellent so far and we want to convey our sincerest Mahalo to the first 270 individuals who have participated to date on the West Maui Affordable Housing Survey. The results of the survey will be sent to the Maui County Council who are currently in deliberations on the update of the West Maui Community Plan. Interestingly, 40% of the respondents to date have stated that they had never heard of the West Maui Community Plan. Seems our survey is reaching a wider audience. The survey contains mostly “check the box,” 13 questions and only takes a few minutes to complete.
The West Maui Taxpayers Association (WMTA) appreciates the great start to our efforts to gather the voice of the community of those who live or work in West Maui to meet our survey mission …. “To have the West Maui Community Plan, WMCP, reflect the opinions and direction the West Maui residents and employees believe are important which will encourage affordable mixed use development in West Maui areas of Olowalu and Launiopoko”.
The West Maui Affordable Housing Survey, is brought to you by the West Maui Taxpayers Association (WMTA), a non-profit community association that has been advocating for West Maui for over 40 years, to gather the voices of the community on affordable housing in West Maui. We are seeking the input of parents, neighbors, small business owners, visitor industry staff, and more to help us collectively inform decision makers of what the residents need for a safe and healthy community (part of the WMTA mission since the beginning).
Take the Survey-
Please participate and let us hear from you. The West Maui Affordable Housing Survey will end on April 2, 2021.
Click here to take the survey now.
Participation in this survey is voluntary and can be anonymous. Questions can be sent to [email protected] Contact WMTA President, Joseph D Pluta 808-661-7990 for additional information or questions.
he response to our survey has been excellent so far and we want to convey our sincerest Mahalo to the first 270 individuals who have participated to date on the West Maui Affordable Housing Survey. The results of the survey will be sent to the Maui County Council who are currently in deliberations on the update of the West Maui Community Plan. Interestingly, 40% of the respondents to date have stated that they had never heard of the West Maui Community Plan. Seems our survey is reaching a wider audience. The survey contains mostly “check the box,” 13 questions and only takes a few minutes to complete.
The West Maui Taxpayers Association (WMTA) appreciates the great start to our efforts to gather the voice of the community of those who live or work in West Maui to meet our survey mission …. “To have the West Maui Community Plan, WMCP, reflect the opinions and direction the West Maui residents and employees believe are important which will encourage affordable mixed use development in West Maui areas of Olowalu and Launiopoko”.
The West Maui Affordable Housing Survey, is brought to you by the West Maui Taxpayers Association (WMTA), a non-profit community association that has been advocating for West Maui for over 40 years, to gather the voices of the community on affordable housing in West Maui. We are seeking the input of parents, neighbors, small business owners, visitor industry staff, and more to help us collectively inform decision makers of what the residents need for a safe and healthy community (part of the WMTA mission since the beginning).
Take the Survey-
Please participate and let us hear from you. The West Maui Affordable Housing Survey will end on April 2, 2021.
Click here to take the survey now.
Participation in this survey is voluntary and can be anonymous. Questions can be sent to [email protected] Contact WMTA President, Joseph D Pluta 808-661-7990 for additional information or questions.
RESULTS: WEST MAUI AFFORDABLE HOUSING SURVEY 2021
Click here to view the results