2011 Housing Planning Study - Inventory Report

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INTRODUCTION The objective of the Housing Inventory component of the Housing Planning Study (HHPS) is to establish the total number of housing units in the State of Hawai i. Based on that number of units, we then develop an estimate of the number of housing units available to the housing market. This information, when compared to the total number of households statewide, allows us to quantify unmet housing demand. When the HHPS was first conducted in 1992, the primary source of data on Hawaii's housing stock was the U.S. Census Bureau's Decennial Census. The Census provided insufficient data to describe the Hawaii housing stock as we would have liked, and the data were not available for intercensal years. The initial HHPS was therefore designed to begin with an inventory intended to provide intercensal estimates of the number and types of units in the State's housing stock. Data were drawn primarily from tax records and later augmented by additional information provided by Hawaii Information Service. The housing counts were used in developing a housing model to project housing need. A narrative was included to describe housing unit type, tenure, ownership, age, number of bedrooms, interior area, land area, assessed value, and out-of-state ownership. In recent years, the number of sources of housing data and the level of detail available on housing have increased dramatically. The 2000 Decennial Census captured housing data in significantly greater detail and the American Community Survey (ACS) now provides information on housing stock for states and counties on an annual basis. In this iteration of the Study, we integrate the Tax Map Key (TMK) based inventory data of the past and the ACS data of the last eight years. In the future, we intend to rely more heavily on the Census data, thus increasing utility and accuracy while decreasing project cost. The 2011 study marks a transition from the special-purpose housing inventory used since 1992, to the more comprehensive and comparable U.S. Census data as the standard upon which this and future studies will be based. Using the new inventory data, we are able to estimate directly the number of housing units available to the residential housing market in Hawaii. In past studies, we have relied on the number of occupied units as our best estimate of the number of units available. The ability to estimate available units directly will support more detailed and effective analysis of housing data and housing planning decisions. The remainder of the report presents data extracted from the inventory process. We begin with a brief description of the current housing stock, its characteristics, and changes that occurred since 2006. We then move to a section on housing trends, in which we review the long-term changes in housing stock since 1990, with an emphasis on the new data available from ACS since 2002. We close with a short piece on "Next Steps', in which we cover the plans for inventory data in the remaining phases of HHPS 2011, and the implications for planning in Hawaii. Several charts and tables appear in the text of this report. Other data are presented in the appendix. As noted, these data will also be included in subsequent sections of the final report and are the foundation of the housing model used to estimate needed units. A more detailed description of methods used to prepare the inventory data will be included in the Technical Report. Hawaii Housing Planning Study,2011 —Inventory Report Page 2 0 SMS, Inc. November,2011