Housing Hawaii is a broad coalition of public, private, and nonprofit
organizations dedicated to creating, preserving and supporting affordable
housing through education and development. It is our intention to
provide a unified voice throughout our Hawaiian Islands that will
result in the creation of housing that is affordable for all Hawai’i
residents.
Our goal is to attract members throughout the State who are interested
in the preservation and development of accessible affordable housing
and who represent nonprofit and for profit organizations, financial
institutions, trade associations, and our State and County governments.
Since the concept of creating Housing Hawaii was formulated in November
2005 at a conference in Waikiki called, “Affordable Housing
in High Cost Areas”, we have been working hard to make the
general public, legislators and county governments more informed
about our housing issues and providing solutions for moving forward.
In February 2007 Housing Hawaii sponsored, in conjunction with the
Urban Land Institute, its first conference called, “Solving
Hawaii’s Affordable and Workforce Housing Crisis”. This
was followed in October 2007 by another conference entitled, “Developing
Affordable Housing: Avoiding Roadblocks and Clearing Hurdles”.
We are proud of the fact that Governor Linda Lingle choose to use
this conference to announce that the State of Hawaii would be one
of the first States to participate in HUD’s National Call to
Action for Affordable Housing through Regulatory Reform. Linda Smith,
the Governor’s senior policy advisor, announced the formulation
of an Affordable Housing Regulatory Barriers Task Force to identify
regulatory barriers that add to the cost of developing housing in
Hawaii.
We are headed in the right direction but there is still a lot of
work to be done to make both ownership and rental housing more affordable
for our residents. If housing is of concern to you then we invite
you to join us and become part of the solution.
Mahalo,
Kevin Carney, President
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