Rep. Luke Evslin’s idea for the upcoming legislative session seems simple: The new House Housing Committee chair wants to keep the country country, as the slogan goes, but also citify the city.

That means steering new home building into urban areas while preserving lands zoned for conservation and agriculture. The hope is it to “make it easier to build housing in areas where housing is intended,” he said.

His overarching goal: “fulfilling the intent of the state land-use law.”

Ideas include bills letting property owners convert single-family homes into multi-family dwellings, adapt underused office buildings into apartments and build homes in areas now reserved for businesses.

Evslin outlined his thoughts in a wide-ranging interview ahead of a legislative session in which housing policy is likely to be a major issue. Hawaii residents increasingly feel pinched by high housing costs in an economy where salaries and wages lag those of other high-priced locales. 

The median single-family home price in October was $1.1 million in October while the median condo price was $515,000, according to the Honolulu Board of Realtors.

Rents are also expensive: according to the website Zumper.com, which analyzes apartment listings from across the U.S., Honolulu was the nation’s 17th most expensive rental market in 2023, ahead of cities like Seattle and Scottsdale, Arizona, with a median monthly price of $1,750 for a one-bedroom apartment. 

Combined with high costs for necessities like groceries, electricity and gasoline, housing costs have propelled an exodus of residents from the islands. Hawaii suffered a net loss of about 23,000 residents between 2018 and 2023, or an average of nine people a day, despite a flow of new arrivals from elsewhere. Population losses are expected to continue in 2024, as people who lost their homes in the Lahaina wildfires leave the state.

A former Kauai County Council member, Evslin declined to share any proposed bills until he has the chance to go over them with fellow lawmakers. But Evslin said he’s discussed his broad ideas with his colleagues and others. A goal, he said, is to encourage home building without reducing the power of the state Land Use Commission, which administers a state-level zoning regime unique to Hawaii.

“I share the concerns of people not wanting to water down the LUC process,” he said.

In 2022, Sen. Stanley Chang, Evslin’s counterpart as chairman of the Senate Housing Committee, introduced a bill that theoretically could have led to small apartment complexes being built in residential neighborhoods across the state. The measure would have required counties to allow “up to 10 residential dwelling units on any lot where a residential unit is permitted.”

The bill was more than a stretch in Hawaii, where home building has become a politically polarizing activity. But other states have moved away from the idea of the single-family home as a main way of sheltering people. Oregon, for example, banned single-family zoning in 2019. California followed suit with a law essentially allowing four homes per residential lot.

Although Chang’s measure died without a hearing, Evslin extolled the idea of such upzoning statutes. He wouldn’t say how many homes should be allowed on a single lot. He did say it shouldn’t be 10, as Chang proposed. 

Evslin said many county land-use ordinances could remain in place as a check on overbuilding. That includes things like height restrictions and setback, side-yard, and parking requirements, he said. 

The idea, he said, is to increase density but “ensure that we’re not building apartment complexes in single family” neighborhoods.

Will Upzoning Mean More Monster Homes?

Evslin’s ideas acknowledge a central fact: much land-use policy is established by counties, through zoning power granted by the state. The challenge is to create a statewide legal framework that lets each county address the details in ways that make the most sense for the county.

Esvlin said he’s conferred with various county officials about his ideas and that “the feedback so far has been really positive for the most part.”

Among those Evslin has spoken to is Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, a Honolulu City Council member and former construction industry lobbyist. He is also a member of HI Good Neighbor, a group opposed to large, multi-bedroom houses that skirt Honolulu land-use laws by using purported single-family homes as de facto apartments. Dos Santos-Tam has supported county bills to rein in so-called monster homes. 

He commended Evslin’s work to craft solutions for Hawaii’s housing shortage, saying, “This is motivated by a genuine desire to create more housing, which is great.”

But Dos Santos-Tam said following the approaches of California and Oregon might have little practical effect unless the counties coordinate changes to their land-use ordinances. Otherwise, he said, even if a county were required to let a property owner build a multi-unit dwelling on a parcel, other county land-use ordinances – governing things like the amount of living space allowed on the parcel – might prevent the dwelling from being built.

Dos Santos-Tam noted that Honolulu already allows people to build a small second home on their properties. But he said relatively few people have built such accessory dwelling units.

Still, he said, he hopes lawmakers at least hold hearings on Evslin’s bills. 

“A lot of these are meant to start a conversation,” Dos Santos-Tam said. “And this is a good conversation to be having.”

Chang notes that upzoning has been a nationwide trend for years.

“I think it’s time we had these discussions in Hawaii about that avenue,” he said.

One issue that Evslin and Dos Santos-Tam agree on involves converting underused downtown office buildings into apartment buildings and condominiums, an idea that has gained popularity since the Covid-19 pandemic emptied office space that’s never refilled.  

San Francisco and New York, for instance, are looking at adaptive reuse of office buildings to address housing crises. But making way for such projects on a large scale can mean zoning law changes to address requirements concerning things like bike parking, exposure to natural light and open common space.

Dos Santos-Tam has proposed Honolulu legislation making such projects easier to do. Evslin said he intends to introduce legislation on the state level, allowing such conversions if they meet international building code standards.

Evslin dismissed critics who say such projects would force people to live in unhealthy windowless boxes. Conversions he has seen “are beautiful,” Evslin said. 

“There are a lot of people who would like to have their own place even if their bedroom doesn’t have a window,” he said.

In fact, he said, adaptive reuse should extend beyond downtown office buildings to other commercial areas, where zoning codes often prohibit mixed-use development. The model of a walkable neighborhood with apartments above ground-floor businesses has in many places been outlawed by zoning laws that encouraged people to instead build strip malls. 

‘We Need To Stop The Bleeding’

Chang, meanwhile, wants to focus on the way the state finances affordable housing projects. In broad terms, under the current system, the state steers state and federal tax credits and low-interest loans to private developers who build and own the properties and agree to rent units at below market rates for a set number of years. 

After the affordability period ends, the developers can start charging market-rate rents for buildings that were essentially financed by the taxpayers. In actuality, Chang said, the state often buys the development to prevent masses of people from being forced out of their homes because of higher rents.

“The state is compelled to buy the projects back, so the developer gets a huge windfall,” Chang said.

He wants to makes sure that from now on low-income housing tax credit and gap loan money is steered toward projects that keep homes affordable in perpetuity.

“The concept is the projects should be affordable forever,” he said. 

The affordability period for some 15,000 homes is set to expire between now and 2100, Chang said. And there’s no plan to house the tenants or buy the properties to keep them affordable. The state needs to quit subsidizing such projects, he said.

“At the very least we need to stop the bleeding,” he said. 

“Hawaii’s Changing Economy” is supported by a grant from the Hawaii Community Foundation as part of its CHANGE Framework project.