Blangiardi to ask for more rent, utility help for Oahu residents

Mayor Rick Blangiardi plans to ask the City Council for an additional $33 million through federal funding to help Oahu renters with financial help to cover their rent and utility costs in the first three months of 2023 to help keep them housed.

The request is one part of Blangiardi’s overall strategy to address Oahu’s housing shortage and piggybacks on the city’s efforts to help renters and their families from becoming homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic when the state’s tourism- based economy all but collapsed, sending Hawaii’s unemployment rate from the lowest in the country to the highest.

The city’s Rental and Utility Relief Program began in April 2021 and has distributed financial assistance to approximately 15,000 Oahu families through Catholic Charities Hawai‘i and the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, according to Amy Asselbaye, executive director of the Office of Economic Revitalization.

In all, the city expects to help renters, landlords and property managers with about $310 million in federal funds from two federal funding streams created in the COVID-19 era: the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds and the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which is managed by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

The deadline for the city to spend the current ERA funds is September 2025. The SLRF money has to be “obligated” by Dec. 30, 2024, and spent by Dec. 30, 2026.

In a recent wide-ranging interview with the Honolulu Star- Advertiser, Blangiardi and Craig Hirai, the city’s new chief of affordable-housing policy and strategy, discussed a mix of new and established strategies to increase Oahu’s housing inventory and keep residents housed.

More rent and utility aid will help in the short term but will not add badly needed inventory.

And some of the ideas — such as creating housing along the city’s rail line — won’t become reality soon.

Blangiardi repeatedly emphasized that more needs to be done immediately.

“We can’t build fast enough to satisfy the housing needs,” he said.

Hirai took his newly created position after serving as state Budget and Finance director, executive director of the Hawaii Housing Financing and Development Corp. and co-chair of the Interagency Council for Transit-Oriented Development. His background and expertise include maximizing federal and private funding and private activity bonds.

Asked whether his focus is aimed at low-income residents, the homeless, local families or young workers, Hirai said, “To a certain extent it’s everybody. … You’ve got to push forward on all fronts at the same time.”

Blangiardi called helping Oahu residents with housing “a moral obligation.” But there also is political pressure.

When he took office two years ago, Blangiardi faced a survey that said only 17% of Oahu residents had faith in city government.

“We’re trying to put hope back into communities,” Blangiardi said. “I want to hold us accountable. … We’re going to change the trajectory of the city.”

A key relationship to add housing on Oahu will mean working effectively with the new administration of Gov. Josh Green in many ways, including building new housing along the city’s rail line, known as transit- oriented development. Most of the land along the rail line from West Oahu into downtown is owned by the state, Hirai said, while the city is responsible for underground sewer and water.

The city’s housing strategy also includes:

>> Working with individual owners of dilapidated or vacant homes to refurbish them and get them onto the open rental market, Hirai said. The homes already are connected to sewer, water and power, and Blangiardi said the approach would be much faster than trying to develop on vacant land.

>> Going after absentee landlords suspected of owning illegal vacation rentals, and imposing additional taxes on vacant homes. Honolulu Hale is on the verge of hiring a collection agency to go after owners of illegal operations who face fines of $10,000 per day, Blangiardi said.

The city’s escalation of enforcement follows the City Council’s approval of new rules for short-term rentals that change the minimum stay to three months from 30 days in response to complaints across the island that vacation rentals are turning neighborhoods into illegal vacation spots that take up parking and increase noise, trash and traffic. Under the new rules, short-term rentals are mostly limited to resort-zoned areas in Ko Olina, the North Shore’s Kuilima, Makaha and parts of Waikiki.

Ultimately, Blangiardi hopes that the imposition of fines and collection convinces illegal vacation property owners to change their business strategy and make their units available to local residents for longer-term leases.

“We’re not looking to punish anyone,” he said. “We need to change behaviors. … There will be a tipping point.”

At the same time, Blangiardi’s vision is bigger than single properties, he said. “We’re not just going to do one at a time,” he said. “We want to do a lot.”

Blangiardi and his new director of the Department of Planning and Permitting, Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, continue to try to overhaul and streamline the building permit process to expedite renovations and construction.

DPP’s new strategies also include trying to hire seven new inspectors to crack down on illegal operations, which will free up the current inspectors to return to other DPP duties.

Increasing the stock of affordable housing across the islands was emphasized in the past legislative session — which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for various housing strategies — and by candidates running for nearly every political office this year.

Green made housing an early centerpiece of his administration even before he was sworn into office Dec. 5. Before that he vowed to work with Blangiardi to increase housing on Oahu for local residents.