Early this week, Grassroot Institute executive director Keli’i Akina interviewed the Antiplanner about affordable housing, why it costs more than regular housing, and why the Hawaii Housing Finance & Development agency refuses to release records that would help the public understand where their money is going. The interview was posted on YouTube late Wednesday evening.
Affordable housing is a nationwide scam and Hawaii is far from the worst offender. As the state with the second-least-affordable housing in the nation, however, local politicians are prone to promoting affordable housing subsidies as the solution to housing affordability problems, which doesn’t work as they are two different issues. The Antiplanner suggests that affordable housing subsidies should solely be in the form of vouchers directly to low-income people, not subsidies to developers who build costly projects at taxpayers’ expense.
Hawaii is an ISLAND. Thus it’s expansion is finalized by the ocean or it’s highest peak.
Land use laws place restrictions on availability of builder confidence. Because they artificially inflate price of land before anything is ever conceived, as such all it takes is a waiting game of speculation and construction guys suddenly slow down or raise labor prices. Speculators and investors use this artificial inflation. Building a market rate home on land that may double in value doesn’t commodisize the price of the house. As such a LARGER house may be built or have to be sold at higher price , with land prices come variable property taxes.
Hawaii covers 10,932 square miles (6.995 Million acres) However like Hong Kong it is very mountainous……..and several other islands have minimal water table. Making providing extra housing difficult without expensive desalination and sewage treatment. Numerous small island nations and principalities suffer this issue of water and sewage and environmental laws.
With a population of 1.44 million, has a population density of 131 people a square mile.
Build a 1/4 acre yard/house, divide by average household of 4, Hawaii need 360000 homes 1/4 acre lot covers 90,000 acres. Or 1% of the states land.
Not including Niihau which is privately owned.
Point being Hawaii few states that may benefit from abandoning auto-centric domination. In sunbelt cities, parking and car infrastructure cover Half the landscape. Oahu is roughly 20×30 miles, so hypothetically, there’s No where you cant go non-automotive means in an hour and a half.
EV bikes and EV scooters may sound inferior but they are and will be a critical aspect of pollution reduction strategies. More importantly Mopeds, Scooters, and other such systems. With a population of 750,000 Oahu has 792,000 registered vehicles. Theres one vehicle for every person in the state, and 1.05 cars for every Oahu resident. No amount of road construction can keep pace with that.
The problem with Affordable housing, especially apartments is anything higher than 3 stories usually needs an elevator, thous solution to that is build a elevator tower and connect two apartment sets. Another challenge is higher buildings usually have to be made concrete/steel instead of wood for fire/safety codes.
Glued/Cross laminated timber may offer some advantage in avoiding expensive material game.
As for building material, shit from mainland is expensive.
Local materials in Pacific, maybe not so much.
Pacific green international is an Australian Furniture manufacturer, using recycled palm wood stock to make very high quality furniture. Palm wood can also be used dimension lumber or boards/beams. n the South Pacific, they discover vast abandoned plantations of coconut palm trees, which were commercially planted in the early-1900s and had reached the end of their productive fruiting
Initial testing shows the palm stems are exceptionally hard and durable, yet flexible enough to withstand cyclones. The world’s first factory dedicated to the coconut palm, is set up in the South Pacific.
https://inhabitat.com/casa-numa-is-built-out-of-50-year-old-coconut-palm-wood/
Affordable housing crisis isn’t fixable, because it’s not a crisis of lack of housing. there’s PLENTY of housing.
New York and San Francisco are compensating hotel chains to the tune of millions of dollars for damage to their hotels… after thousands of homeless and MIgrants
fought, vandalized, terrorized, and messed up rooms and used for drugs and sex.
Maybe it’s not a homeless crisis, but a fuqing behavior and cultural problem hmmm?
Housing get’s expensive, because anything above 3 stories must be designed with an Elevator…………
Frank Lloyd Wright: Hold my pencil
https://www.azcentral.com/gcdn/-mm-/1188b81b0dfcb3bdfcfab35a5aeba541b9b461a9/c=7-0-3393-1913/local/-/media/2015/05/01/Phoenix/Phoenix/635660948639481428-PNI-0425-Wright-House-Thursday-b.jpg?width=3200&height=1808&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp
“… affordable housing subsidies should solely be in the form of vouchers directly to low-income people, not subsidies to developers who build costly projects at taxpayers’ expense.”
Similarly, affordable transportation subsidies should solely be in the form of vouchers directly to low-income people, not subsidies to transit agencies who build costly transit projects at taxpayers’ expense.
Vouchers are great, I agree .
The problem is, that Like Food stamps, fraud.
Harder because we don’t EAT the house.
Problem with affordable housing since its not owned by specific entity except a landlord who may be uninterested in such…. invites risk of inevitable decay.
We had section 8 and affordable housing programs in my neighborhood……..they were evicted in matter of months. Left behind a measure of trash when house emptied.
Best practice for voucher is directly to the renter, cant give it directly to the landlord, because then he has No incentive to keep good tenant or upkeep the house.
How do we know?
Government bulldozed and blew up for decades what they heralded as the SOLUTION to poverty, they paid for directly to building contractors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBFXEzu8Vns
Without thinking much about it, most people prefer traditional architecture and traditional housing stock.
It’s no surprise in New Orleans epicenter of bad public housing and affordable housing projects.
In the middle city lie Iberville housing projects, build in 40’s, The Iberville Project consisted of seventy-five brick buildings with 858 apartments. It was designed to blend in with the old neighborhood’s housing in terms of proportionality, size, and style, resembling rowhouses of the 19th century. Unlike other projects, there is far less crime and vandalism. Because it resembles the housing stock people would pay millions to buy as a townhouse.
Sprawl advocates use density as an argument for more segregated housing types which many have used for decades to keep out social riff raff. Suburbs are prone to same urban decay as city big brothers…don’t believe me…. See Memphis and Detroit.
A wonderful comparison between a “Texas donut” (also called a Dallas donut) where a single building/network of development wrapped around a parking deck
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53765fd8e4b0c4a5e910ed43/1444320818628-LQ4QTHC1WAJ3XSOIY2E5/Cover+Image_B.jpg
as it is not permeable, there’s nothing for users to access. No gardens, All parking.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53765fd8e4b0c4a5e910ed43/1444320818628-LQ4QTHC1WAJ3XSOIY2E5/Cover+Image_B.jpg
and “Charleston’s style” traditional architecture. It comes from design consultants Bevan and Liberatos.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53765fd8e4b0c4a5e910ed43/1444320818835-14MRUNSIP02CV8Z82YAE/Cover+Image_A.jpg
The Charleston system has 13 gardens, vs. none in the donut. There are 68 porches in the Charleston block, zero in the donut.
The donut does have more parking spaces, although the Charleston block has plenty for urban living.
Small Buildings are Highly Adaptable….Small buildings are more adaptable for reuse as requirements change over time. Flexible building stock is essential for encouraging small businesses, local start-ups. Big buildings have almost no adaptive re-use…once built is destined to a 30-40 year shelf life…..
The advantage of the Charleston plan is modularity.
Charleston neighborhood can grow to host an eclectic mix of owners and residents. Some might occupy their own homes; some might rent them out. Some might maintain their property better than others. Some might make additions or modifications. Some will plant gardens; some will have lawns; some paved patios. All this eclecticism will result in a bunch of natural experiments in what makesca place great. Incremental, traditional development, and it’s worth contemplating the advantages of the traditional approach.
Texas Donut apartment building has one owner, although it has many tenants. This may work fine when it’s shiny and new, little to no maintenance is necessary, and rents are profitably high. But what happens over time in a neighborhood that has a bunch of these? What if the property management is shoddy, or maintenance is deferred, or the owner goes bankrupt, or the neighborhood takes a downturn? The scale of the resulting blight ruin a neighborhood for a generation.
on the flip side, the sale of a large building like this to a new owner who jacks up the rent, or evicts the tenants and redevelops the property, creates an instant displacement crisis. In contrast, the whole block in Charleston, with its dispersed ownership, is never going to change hands all at one time—there is greater stability in that respect.
It costs more and more to overcome the effects of The Fair Housing Act. Vouchers, though better than affordable housing scams, would also have a negative effect. Would you want to live next door to someone who receives housing vouchers?
When I hear of a city or state that has attractive home prices, most of the time a quick look on Zillow will show you that you don’t want to live in the areas that are skewing the average price.
You pay a premium to live where crime is low and the schools aren’t a complete mess.