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Maui Housing

By | | Housing
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The Antiplanner is in Maui today talking to the Grassroot Institute about housing costs. The Institute may also release a new report on this subject, and if so I’ll update this post or post a link to it tomorrow.

According to Zillow, the median home in Maui costs $519 a square foot (download the file called “Median Home Value Per Square Foot” for Metro & U.S. under “Home Values”). Honolulu is $545. A few metro areas in California are the only ones in the United States that are more expensive.

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Growth Management Violates Fair Housing Act

By | | Housing, Regional planning
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A new report from Hawaii’s Grassroot Institute argues that Hawaii’s land-use laws must be repealed because they discriminate against low-income minorities. Hawaii was the first state to pass a land-use law in 1961, and not coincidentally it has the least affordable housing in the nation.

The 2014 American Community Survey found that median home prices in Hawaii were 6.7 times median family incomes, compared with the national average of 2.7. These high prices had pushed low-income minorities to leave the state: while urban Honolulu had grown by 12 percent between 2000 and 2010, the urban area’s black population declined by 4 percent.

Hawaii’s 1961 land-use law divided lands in the state into urban, agriculture, and conservation (later a fourth category, rural, was added). While the supposed purpose was to protect Hawaii’s agricultural sector, in fact it destroyed it because high housing prices increased labor costs and plantations and canneries can’t compete with those in places like Fiji and Costa Rica.

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The Jones Act: Another Form of Economic Repression

By | | Transportation
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As a transportation expert, the Antiplanner was invited to join a radio show about the effects of the Jones Act on Hawaii. I’m not an expert on the Jones Act but was able to do some quick research.

The Jones Act gives Matson, which has regular service between the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii, and Horizon an oligopoly in shipping to and from Hawaii. Wikipedia photo by Aykleinman.

For those who don’t know, the Jones Act, officially known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires that any waterborne shipments between two U.S. ports must be done on ships built in the United States and at least 75 percent owned and crewed by U.S. citizens. The law’s goal of protecting the U.S. merchant marine fleet has largely failed: when the act was passed, the United States had thousands of large cargo vessels plying the seas; today it has less than 200.

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Living in the Fourth-Most Economically Repressive State

By | | Regional planning
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According to the index of economic freedom, only California (of course), New Jersey, and New York are more repressive than Hawaii. Much of Hawaii’s (and California’s) repression comes from the land-use regulation, which makes building a home or starting or expanding a business very expensive.

The Antiplanner has told this story before, but briefly, most of Hawaii’s land is controlled by a few corporations and families. For the first half of the 20th century, these landowners argued that they could not sell their land for homes or other uses because it was too valuable as farms. They sometimes leased land to people who built houses on it, but people could lose their right to use the land at any time.

In 1954, the Democrats took control of the state legislature promising land reform, such as by taking land from the large landowners by eminent domain and selling to more people or at least forcing the landowners to sell land to leaseholders. Instead of keeping that promise, when they took office, the Democrats joined with the large landowners so that anyone who wanted to develop land had to make key members of the legislature one of their partners.

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The Antiplanner’s Library: Visiting Paradise

By | | Book reviews, Planning Disasters, Regional planning
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One of the Antiplanner’s co-speakers during a couple of events in Honolulu is David Callies, a law professor and author of two books on Hawaii land-use law: Regulating Paradise and Preserving Paradise. Hawaii passed the first statewide growth-management law in 1961, and still has about the strictest land-use laws in the nation. Not coincidentally, it also competes with California in having the nation’s least-affordable housing.

Regulating Paradise, a 1984 book that Callies is currently updating, shows that the 1961 law (sometimes called Act 187) is only one of several laws that have limited development of the state. Landowners in some parts of the state have to comply with as many as 30 different sets of regulations, from historic preservation to coastal zone management.

The original purpose of the 1961 law was to protect farmland. But Callies points out that this backfired. By limited urban development to about 5 percent of the Hawaiian Islands, the law made housing so expensive that farmers could not pay workers a living wage and compete with other tropical countries that grew similar crops. As a result, Hawaiian agriculture is in decline, and the only justification for the land-use law is to provide scenic views for upper-middle class urbanites.

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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
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The Antiplanner is spending the next week in Hawaii to talk with people about both transportation and land-use planning. On Friday from 9:30 am to 11:00 am, I’ll speak about transportation issues at the University of Hawaii, Holmes Hall 353, Honolulu.

On Tuesday, June 29, I’ll speak on land-use issues at a luncheon at 1132 Bishop Street, #306, Honolulu. Also on the agenda will be land-use law Professor David Callies and planning Professor Tom Dinell. The lunch is $25; if you would like to attend, call 808-285-8591 or email Linda by June 25.
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Posting may be light for the next few days. I plan on bringing my BikeFriday and cycling around during my free time, including a three-day visit to the Big Island. Let me know if you are in Oahu or Hawaii and would like to join me for a ride.