• Answered Question from County Luncheon Regarding Affordable Housing

    June 21, 2018
    County of Hawai‘i Office of Housing and Community Development Housing Administrator Neil S. Gyotoku answered a follow-up question from the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce Focus Luncheon with Hawaii County Leadership, regarding affordable housing.
     
    Question: 
     
    Access to affordable housing is critical to ending homelessness in our community.  What are the County’s efforts in increasing affordable housing in our community?
     
     
    Answer:
     
    The Governor’s ten year plan mandates that approximately 22,000 affordable housing units be constructed by the year 2025 and that the County of Hawai’i build approximately 9,000 affordable housing units.
     
    Office of Housing is working with approximately 25 developers to develop housing projects and subdivisions to meet our affordable housing goals but high infrastructure costs have severely hindered these projects, such as:
     
    • Requirement to install sewer treatment plans for large subdivisions;
     
    • Restriction in some areas to utilize septic tanks;
     
    • High costs of building roads and drainage systems;
     
    • Obtaining water commitments from Department of Water.
     
     
    Please note that just building affordable housing will not end homelessness.  When the County closed the Old Kona airport encampment, there were 27 individuals placed in the emergency “Camp Kikaha”:
     
    • They were offered openings at the West Hawaii Emergency Shelter and other homeless shelter units, most of them refused to move from the camp;
     
    • When the rain and wind storm destroyed the canopy tents, there were 16 individuals that were temporarily housed in the WH Emergency Shelter.  The next day, there were 10 vacancies in the WH Shelter and Hale Kikaha Micro Units and they all refused to move into the vacant units.