Hawaii fast-tracks affordable rentals with new five-year housing pilot

Hawaii lawmakers gave a state agency new power to accelerate affordable rental housing development under a five-year pilot. Gov. Josh Green signed the measure into law on July 8.

On Hawaii Island, the pressure points are already clear. The $81 million Honuaula affordable rental project in Kona was cleared by a court on July 6 after years of delay, while the Kaloko Heights Affordable Housing Project in Kailua-Kona was already in the state housing pipeline in 2022, when the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation approved an extension to its Rental Housing Revolving Fund project letter of intent. Nā Hale Makoa in Waikoloa Village is now leasing 140 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartment homes and still taking waitlist applications.

The new pilot targets permitting delays, fragmented review, financing holdups and local approvals that can stretch a project timeline far beyond what developers or renters can wait out.

Hawaii’s housing crisis is a state of emergency. State housing materials put the median single-family home price at about $850,000 and the median condo price at about $600,000, with housing costs running about 2.7 times the national average statewide and 3.4 times the national average on Oahu. A 2024 housing report put 28% of Hawaii residents spending more than half their income on rent, and only 1 in 5 households able to afford a median-priced home mortgage.

For Hawaii County, the county’s Office of Housing and Community Development runs an Affordable Housing Production Program, and state policymakers have spent the past several years layering on other tools, including Act 305, which created a YIMBY Working Group on affordable housing, and Act 121, which expanded the Ninety-Nine Year Leasehold Program for affordable condominium homes on state and county land.