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