Aloha and Welcome to Housing Hawaii

Housing Hawaii is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation that was created to advocate for affordable rental and for sale housing in Hawaii. We are a broad coalition of public, private, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to creating, preserving, and supporting the development of homes our workers can afford through education, advocacy, and development. Through our public and private sector relationships, we highlight the housing crisis affecting our state, provide research, data, and analysis, ultimately advocating for an overall healthy housing policy environment in Hawaii. We provide a unified voice that aims to result in the creation and preservation of homes that we can all afford. Membership includes representatives from the non-profit development community, private developers, government officials, housing and homeless service providers, self-help housing developers, labor, and business leaders.

Mission

Focusing on advocacy, education and facilitating housing development, our coalition is dedicated to creating and preserving affordable housing by:

• Educating the public and our elected officials.
• Working to increase the number of affordable housing and workforce housing units, including special needs housing.
• Identifying the barriers to affordable housing and working to address them (regulatory reform).
• Supporting economic development that promotes healthy and sustainable communities.
• Empowering the housing goals of our members.
• Coordinating the exchange of information to promote advocacy for affordable and workforce housing.

Goals

There are three goals Housing Hawaii aims to achieve:

1. To increase and preserve the number of affordable homes in Hawaii.
2. To increase the number of affordable home owners in Hawaii.
3. To increase the number of affordable rental homes and renters in Hawaii.

History

Housing Hawaii was formulated in November 2005 at a conference in Waikiki called, “Affordable Housing in High Cost Areas.” Since then, we have been working hard to make the general public, legislators, state and county governments, developers, and business sector 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 at the urging of Housing Hawaii, Governor Linda Lingle chose 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, at our October 2007 conference, to identify regulatory barriers that add to the cost of developing housing in Hawaii. Housing Hawaii provided technical assistance to the task force through their work in 2007-2009.