2005-12-08 TLava Kuakini - Laserfiche WebLink

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Rapoza is to conduct a affordable housing forum, a symposium just prior to going into final design. And what we think, because right now we dont know for those people who are income qualified what size of family they are you know what do they want. Theres no sense us building the 3 bedroom 2 bath house for the family of 4 if thats not the people that are out there. There are also opportunities for the affordable housing people to come in on family sizes of 1 or 2. And those types of sales prices for, lets say for 2 people, itd probably be a one bedroom or studio but at 6 percent at the 120, 6 percent at the 120 percent of median sale price would be $206,500. So thats probably 50 percent at least of what you got on market sales now. So I think a lot of the you know how many units at what rate and at what product type are still unknown. But thats you know our intent is to try to get as many affordables out there as possible. I think you know weve had informal discussions about hey why dont we do just 100 percent affordable. I think its our goal to try get to as many affordable as we can on the market. But I think that the reality for us is that the affordable housing game and I call it a game because it somewhat is depends upon the interest rate. The higher the interest rate and you know that thatsclimbingupthelowerthesalesprice,theaffordablesalesprice.Anditgetstoapoint when it gets up in the 8-1/2 percent interest rate that the developers because of the high land cost and construction cost were seeing now just cant build it. So, while it is our goal to go over that 50 percent I think 50 percent is what we can commit to safely and that is our commitment to the commission and to the County. The issues obviously of traffic and water that are raised in this application are also challenges that we have to meet. The Water Department initially gave us a water commitment for 100 units and that was because the application was for a land area that straddled 2 TMK parcels. I think youre probably familiar with the Department of Water Supplys policy that they will at least current policy that they will that they will allocate 50 water commitments to each parcel of record if you come in for a rezoning. So when we came in for the rezoning and filed it we were, because we were straddling the 2 TMKs we got the 100 water commitments. Since then the subdivision has completed and thats why were dealing with only 50 water commitments. About I guess earlier this year the Office of Housing and Community Development and the Mayor and Mr. Yuen conducted a symposium with all the various West Hawaii Developers primarily and made a commitment along with the Department of Water Supply that although we dont fall directly within that water commitment guidelines that theyre currently using that they would be assisting all affordable housing projects that committed to do at least 50 percent of the units as affordable housing sales. So that is our intent and that would address we hope the water commitments. We expect that the project of lets say 212 units is supposed to be at least its planned out on the diagram that you see in front of me, four-plex units in townhome design. And what that means is that you wont be living on the bottom and another family living on the top. Itll be top and bottom in one corner, top and bottom in another corner etc. etc. So, depending upon that housing symposium and our market study it may change that we will do studios, one bedrooms or six or eight plex buildings just to match the market because I think that thats-. When youre, when were dealing with the, the affordable level buyers that its very, very product sensitive and its very, very price sensitive to keep them within the affordability guidelines. The, the Public Works comments weve taken that under consideration. Weve discussed that both with Mr. Emler and with Mr. Yuen. I think that the conditions that Mr. Yuen has proposed to you in his recommendation basically reflect what I think our agreement is. Weve got some technical comments and maybe one or two substantive issues but Ill discuss that at a later date, at a later time here. I think primarily once and you know Ive worked on a number of projects where the former State policy of 60 percent affordable, which EXHIBIT B 13