Posted on: Monday, July 19, 2004
EDITORIAL
Affordable housing plan makes sense
Gov. Linda Lingle made the right call last week with her decision to free up hundreds of acres of state-owned land for affordable housing.
The need is obviously there. As Lingle pointed out, the state will require at least 17,000 more "affordable" rental units over the next five years.
As promising as Lingle's plan is, it comes with some serious hurdles to get over.
One, which the governor mentioned, is county reluctance to approve rental projects for fear of congestion, traffic problems and even "not-in-my-backyard" pressures.
Lingle is correct in noting that turning down an affordable rental project does not in any way make the problem, or the people who need the housing, go away.
A second hurdle is finding the right private partners to develop and market the projects. This is more than finding developers who have the right skills and interest; it is also a matter of finding the manpower to do the job.
These rental units would be going up at the same time the military launches a massive program of revitalizing and building its own housing stock.
Will there be enough tradespeople to handle the work? This requires a close level of cooperation between the state and the military on the timing of projects.
The final obstacle is making sure that the state lands identified for housing are relatively close to where the demand is. It will do little good to build affordable rentals in an area so remote that few would want to live there.
Still, for all of these potential headaches, this is a plan that the counties, the Legislature and the affected housing agencies should support.
