Chairs of both legislative housing committees are considering bills to reserve housing for Hawaiʻi residents.
“I have never heard anyone in Hawaiʻi say what we really need to do is to build tons and tons of housing so we can welcome an explosion of in-migration from the other 49 states and from overseas,” said Senate Housing Committee Chair Stanley Chang during a presentation on Friday.
“I think we have to clearly understand that the private sector housing market that is obligated to sell to the highest bidder cannot play the role of primarily housing our local people. And that's why the state and the public sector needs to step up in a big way because the state and the public sector can restrict any units that are being sold or rented to local people exclusively.”
Currently, only affordable housing projects can qualify for 201H, which grants exemptions from many planning, zoning and land use requirements. However, those affordable housing income restrictions are often not permanent.
But Rep. Luke Evslin, who chairs the House Housing Committee, plans to introduce a bill that would allow projects to qualify for the 201H process if at least 80% of the units are restricted to being occupied by a local resident in perpetuity.
Evslin will also be reintroducing his Kamaʻāina Homes bill from last year that would allow homeowners to sell a deed restriction on their property to a county, provided they only allow occupants who work at least 30 hours in that county.
The legislative session starts Wednesday.
