Posted on: Tuesday, July 17, 2001

Island Voices
Kaka'ako should get green light to develop

By Ricky Cassiday
Director of research at Prudential Locations Research & Consulting

In the July 8 issue, you editorialized that "unless and until someone can convincingly demonstrate that there is no need for additional moderately priced housing in the urban core, the requirement (that developers transfer resources to affordable housing) must not be abandoned."

More than most, I study the real estate market in terms of affordable housing. I've done demand studies for an affordable elderly rental and an affordable rental housing project — and found them adequate.

Yet I testified before the Hawai'i Community Development Agency (HCDA), the state agency responsible for development in Kaka'ako, that it should let the current moratorium run for another couple of years to see if it does what it wanted it to do in the first place: get something going. I know we need affordable housing, so how could I say that?

The first reason has to do with HCDA being a responsible steward of the land — and a responsible landowner tries to improve his lands; he does not let them lie fallow.

Over the same time period that Kaka'ako labored under these rules, Waikele went from zero housing to complete build-out (providing several hundred families with affordable homes). What's the difference? The developers, led by Schuler Homes, made a profit.

No profit, no development, which brings me to my second point: Development helps everyone. It brings in investment, which become wages, fees and payments for building new homes. New homes attract new residents, which broadens our tax base. Which grows the economy. Which can then take care of those who need caring for.

The state tells the HCDA to provide affordable housing by extracting money from housing development ... but that makes new housing investment more risky, less profitable. So, free will, investors and builders (Jack Meyers) go elsewhere, and Kaka'ako goes nowhere.

While your paper's profits are underwritten when we teach more kids to read, the community doesn't add an extra tax on selling papers in order to fight illiteracy.

Free HCDA. Balance the risk and reward. Make partners of investors and builders, and put the responsibility for caring for the needy on the broad shoulders of those who can and should bear that load.