2016 Hawaii Housing Planning Study

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L building affordable homes. Many regulations are B. HOUSING DEMAND IN HAWAII in place to ensure health and safety and to protect natural resources. However, all 1. Historic Demand regulation has some direct or indirect effect on the supply and cost of housing.19 The task force identified fourteen regulatory barriers including a. Population and Growth Rates the duplicative and lengthy land use entitlement process, lack of consistency and synergy in state Demand for housing units begins with population and county agency reviews, impact fees and growth. Population grows when natural increase exactions, fiscal policy, and administrative (the excess of births over deaths) and net in- processes. migration combine and when new households are formed from older ones. When the number Hawai'i's land use system has not changed of households grows, new housing units are much since it was enacted over 50 years required to house them.21 ago. There is a shared sense that the State has an important role to play in land use in Hawaii Table 6 shows population change since 1990. and that the current land use review process During the nineties, Hawai'i's population growth offers a check on development. There are, rate of 8.8 percent was lower than in the however, deficiencies and system-wide previous decade. Between 2000 and 2010 weaknesses in how land use is managed. "In population growth increased, led principally by 2014, the State Office of Planning (OP), initiated net in-migration, to 10.1 percent for the decade, a review of the State's land use system in about one percent per year. response to concerns expressed over the years about the State Land Use District Boundary In the last five years, population growth has been Amendment process in Hawaii Revised Statutes 7.4 percent or approximately 1.5 percent per Chapter 205 and the State land use system as a year. It appears that the rate of growth is whole." OP's efforts in this review culminated accelerating slightly as the decade proceeds, with the preparation of the State Land Use and that the major component of change is still System Review Draft Report, which explores net in-migration. different ways to increase the effectiveness of the land use system without compromising the Population growth is consistent with economic original intent of the Land Use Law."20 Public recovery. In the process of household formation, comments on the draft report reflected a broad population growth is translated into household range of perspectives and preferences about the growth and then to increased housing demand. structure of the land use system. Following consultation with the Land Use Commission, OP Table 6 also shows that population growth has determined that additional research and data taken very different paths for each county. For gathering was needed to validate issues raised the County of Hawaii, the period from 1990 to in the draft report. 2000 evidenced significant growth of roughly 2.2 percent per year. Similar levels of population growth occurred in the following decade. ' Population growth has slowed significantly in the present decade, to 8.9 percent in the first five years. That is still over 1.7 percent per year and higher than the State as a whole. 19 State of Hawaii , Office of Governor Linda Lingle, 21 Standard demographic texts cover the topic in detail "Report of the Governor's Affordable Housing Imhoff et al. (see Appendix H) cover the impact on Regulatory Barriers Task Force," December 2008 housing modeling.The Hawaii Department of Business, 2° Office of Planning, State land use system review, Economic Development and Tourism reports figures on http://planning.hawau qov/state-land-use-system-review, the components of population growth See Hawaii Data ' paragraph 1. Book, annual. Hawaii Housing Planning Study,2016 Page 13 ©SMS, Inc. December,2016 t