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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN PCPLUD 2023/03/07 (2022-2024) Policy Committee on Planning, Land Use, and Development 3`'d Session Hawaii County Building 25 Aupuni Street Hilo, Hawaii March 7, 2023 CALL TO The regular meeting of the Policy Committee on Planning, Land Use, and ORDER: Development was called to order at 11:55 a.m., in the Council Chambers, Hilo, by Ms. Ashley L. Kierkiewicz, Chair. ROLL CALL: Present: Ms. Ashley L. Kierkiewicz, Chair Mr. Holeka Goro Inaba, Vice Chair Ms. Cindy Evans, Member Ms. Michelle M. Galimba, Member Ms. Jenn Kagiwada, Member Mr. Matt Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Member Ms. Heather L. Kimball, Member Ms. Susan L. K. Lee Loy, Member Ms. Rebecca Villegas, Member (via videoconference from Kona) STATEMENTS The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, FROM THE Statements from the Public on Agenda Items. PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS: The following individuals registered to speak and came forward when called by the Chair: Hannah Hartmann: Bill 18, (Comm. 77), in support. Jeffrey Byron Werle: Bill 18, (Comm. 77), comment. (representing Kona Alano Club) CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you so much. Mr. Clerk, if we could go to Bills for Ordinances? PCPLUD-4 March 7,2023 BILLS FOR The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, ORDINANCES: Bills for Ordinances. Bill 18: AMENDS CHAPTER 11 ARTICLE 1, SECTIONS 11-3 AND 11-13 OF THE HAWAII COUNTY CODE 1983 (2016 EDITION, AS AMENDED), RELATING TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING Adds definitions for"Qualified Resident", "Qualified Returning Student", and "Qualified Worker", and establishes affordable housing eligibility preferences for applicants who qualify under these new definitions and who are seeking to rent or own County-funded affordable housing. Reference: Comm. 77 Intr. by: Ms. Kimball and Mr. Inaba Postponed: February 7, 2023 (Note: There is a motion by Ms. Kimball, seconded by Mr. Inaba, to recommend passage of Bill 18 on first reading.) ; and Comm. 77.1: From Council Members Heather L. Kimball and Holeka Goro Inaba, dated January 26, 2023, transmitting Appendix G of the 2021 Maui County Comprehensive Affordable Housing Plan. ; and Comm. 77.6: From Council Member Heather L. Kimball, dated February 24, 2023, transmitting a proposed amendment to Bill 18. ; and Comm. 77.7: From Council Member Heather L. Kimball, dated February 24, 2023, transmitting a proposed amendment to Bill 18. CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you, Mr. Clerk. We're continuing a discussion that we kicked off about a month ago. I think a lot of members including leadership from the Office of Housing and Community Development and Corporation Counsel had flagged some potential problematic and legal issues stemming from who qualifies; potentially preferential treatment; what housing we are talking about specifically. So, going to turn it over to the introducers of this legislation to walk us through next steps and potential amendments. Thank you. Council Member Kimball. MS. KIMBALL: Thank you, Chair. Yeah, you know, as I mentioned the first time that we discussed this piece of legislation, it is a what I called "kitchen sink" bill at the time where I just kind of threw everything out there for the purposes of getting some feedback and discussion. Page 2 PCPLUD-4 March 7,2023 For me and Council Member Inaba to kind of get a sense of what the appetite is both here on the board and also within the community for some of these recommendations. Having had additional conversations with Administrator Kunz and then Corporation Counsel Sylvia Wan, there are some parts of this that have constitutional issues based on further reflection. Particularly, the item (c)(2) with respect to having a preference based on the time somebody has resided within the County. So, that is probably going to have to be struck. As you probably sensed from the written testimony received, there's not a lot of public appetite for this idea. This concept of preferential funding civil service or, you know, County or State employees. This one also, Corporation Counsel Wan had some concerns from the constitutional standpoint. There would be precedence possibly if we had some sort of study or report that indicated that housing was a direct issue with respect to recruitment and retention. There was recently an article, and I want to say it was in Civil Beat, but I could be wrong, about housing and the teacher shortage, and the relationship between that. But you know, if there wasn't appetite on the Council to have something like this, we would need to get that study or report created first, but I sense from the community feedback on that particular one, it didn't land well. The other thing that I think we need to look at is this "Qualified returning student," and I'd like if we could just briefly have a discussion today if folks want to focus on folks that have they just left, they went to school, they maybe went to Grad School, and now they're coming back, and they're going to be eligible as a qualified student. Or if they go; they go to school, they work for a few years, ten years, then they come back. I mean, as it's written right now, they would be eligible as a qualified student under this as well. So, there needs to be some wordsmithing there, but I want people to give me some feedback about that. We also just have a sort of logistical thing where Items (A) and(B) need to be flipped. So, (B) needs to become (A) and vice versa because couple of the eligibility things here with the Administrator allowing households with incomes up to 120 percent, and then the other one about establishing additional eligibility criteria. Since they fall under(A), we've actually limited the times that those can apply in Chapter 11. So, those actually need to be first, the other way around. So, my intention is to pull this bill. There's so many edits that need to be made. To do amendments piecemeal, I think would be difficult for all to digest. But again, the purpose of putting this out there was to get some feedback from you all in the way that we have to do it. So, if you have any additional feedback, we'd appreciate it now so that I can bring back a fairly complete bill that takes into Page 3 PCPLUD-4 March 7,2023 account your recommendations as another vehicle. So, I will be pulling this today, but I do want to get the feedback first. Chair, thank you, I yield. CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. Council Member Evans. MS. EVANS: Thank you for pulling the bill because there's a lot of work. But, for Susan Kunz, I have a quick question on—is there a need for language that would address, you know, there's a lot of financing that probably comes into these affordable housing projects and doesn't the people that finance it, kind of, give us some guidelines to kind of guardrails what you can and can't do? Should that be also included when you're talking about qualifying, should there be something in there like, unless the person that's funding it—yeah, I mean that's something that really addresses the fact that maybe you have some restrictions? (Note: At this time, Office of Housing and Community Development Administrator Susan Kunz came forward to address the members of the Committee.) MS. KUNZ: Right. My name is Susan Kunz. I'm the Housing Administrator for the Office of Housing. So, thank you for asking that question. I think this bill has evolved a bit to try and address exactly that issue, and I think I believe that's the reason why language was included to say, "County Funded." Because if there are State or Federal funds in a housing project, it would have to follow those requirements or guardrails, as you put it, and this couldn't apply. So, usually, like the Federal grant programs would trump whatever we did on the County level. Does that make sense? MS. EVANS: It does. And County-funded, do we 100 percent—because I'm new, do we 100 percent fund projects? MS. KUNZ: There are some County projects that are in the pipeline that we have not applied any State or Federal funds to currently. An example would be Kamakoa Nui. So, if a project like that, which is on County land and it's a County project, continues to not receive any Federal or State funding, it could qualify under something like this where the language is saying County-funded projects. I think that was the effort to try and be very specific about the types of projects. Because if it did receive—one of the concerns earlier was, if a project had project-based vouchers, for example. I know you heard a bill earlier about rewarding project-based. Something like this could not apply to a project that had project-based vouchers. MS. EVAN: Alright, thank you. I yield. CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. Council Member Kimball. Page 4 PCPLUD-4 March 7,2023 MS. KIMBALL: I just wanted to call attention for Council Member Evans, to the—it's going to be the second line on Page 2 where there's just basically a catchall provision where it—unless it's otherwise prohibited. So, this preference system, it's a catchall for that scenario where, if we can't do it then we don't do it, based on the grantors. Then additionally, you know, there was some discussion, and this was what the amendments that were coming through today were intended to do. Distinguishing between County-funded and County-funded for which the Office of Housing is actually responsible for determining the eligibility and the allocation of those units. Because there are projects that have a County-funded component that the Office of Housing actually doesn't do that component of it. So, it's even narrower than just County-funded. It's the ones that we actually have responsibility for assigning those units. Thank you, Chair. CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Council Member Kagiwada. MS. KAGIWADA: Thank you, Chair. I'm actually concerned that we're getting almost too narrow. It sounds to me like this will be a very limited type of bill here. Say, you know, we may have one project coming up that may meet these right criteria. So, I'm hoping that we can figure out a way, as you take this back and look at it, to broaden it a little bit, because that seems hardly worth the effort. Then, I just wanted to say, thank you for including the amendment, 77.6, which addressed some of my concerns I brought up last time about affordable housing projects which the person is 75 percent—I'm sorry, being close that their work is close to the affordable housing, so that we are encouraging people to live closely to where they work and all the environmental concerns and community concerns that that entails. So, thank you for including that, and I hope that piece will stay in with whatever comes up next. Thank you. I yield, Chair. CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. Anyone else? Council Member Kaneali`i- Kleinfelder. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Chair. Quick question for Susan or the makers. Whose responsibility is it to follow the requirements that we're putting forward in this bill? Will it be the entity operating the affordable housing or the County, and how would that be overseen? MS. KUNZ: I would assume that it would be the Office of Housing. We would run the waitlist. We would do eligibility checks, and make sure that the people that are applying or being considered for the units are eligible. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay, and you did use the word, "assume." Is it because that is not clear in this bill? Page 5 PCPLUD-4 March 7,2023 MS. KUNZ: Well, because I wasn't the author of the bill. So, but based on what I'm reading, I'm taking it that way, yeah. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay, but good to ask. You know, if you don't know, that's a good point. Back to the makers of—is it outlined in this bill? Did I miss that? MS. KIMBALL: It is within the context of the chapter, because this lives in Chapter 11 for, you know, OHCD (Office of Housing and Community Development), and Administrator Kunz has authority over the implementation of that chapter. So, there's the reference to the Administrator in here, which is in that chapter indicated to be Office of Housing Administrator. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay. Thank you, Chair. I yield. CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. Council Member Galimba. MS. GALIMBA: Thanks, Chair. I'm sort of just following-up on Council Member Kagiwada's comment about it getting very narrow, and that mentioned about constitutionality. Just kind of wondering if this notion of"Qualified residents" and "Qualified returning students." Is that something that potentially, would be sort of unconstitutional for a State-funded project or a Federal-funded project? I'm assuming you can do it here for County. (Note: At this time, Deputy Corporation Counsel Sylvia Wan came forward to address the members of the Committee.) MS. WAN: Deputy Corporation Counsel Sylvia Wan. I guess I'll take that question as it is a legal question. I represent the Office of Housing and Community Development. "Qualified residents" is not in—if you want to do a preference for residents of a state or of a county, it is not in and of itself, unconstitutional. It's depending on how you apply it and how you define it. So, this particular bill, there are some instances that kind of skirt and flirt with unconstitutionality. There is the one line that is, in my opinion, based off of my research, is unconstitutional, is the preference based on the length of time a resident has resided within the County of Hawaii. So, that has been rather clear. There are other aspects that could also flirt with that in that it might inherently require that just by some other factor. But, there is a way to define qualified resident to give preference to people who live here and identify as residents. There is a way to do that, but I do think that there needs to be a little bit of more wordsmithing to get us there than what's present in the bill. MS. GALIMBA: Thank you. So, I guess, is there a different sort of standard for the different kind of funding? If it was like State funding, would there be any differences as far as that constitutionality? Page 6 PCPLUD-4 March 7,2023 MS. WAN: No, it's the same. It's a U.S. Constitutional issue. So, it would apply, Federal, State, County, City throughout. So, that particular question is a Federal Constitutional question. It specifically goes to the 14th Amendment of equal protection as well as the freedom to travel. MS. GALIMBA: Okay, thank you. I yield. MS. WAN: You're welcome. CHR. KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. Anyone else? Council Members Kimball, Inaba? Withdraw Bill 18: Ms. Kimball announced the withdrawal of Bill 18. MS. KIMBALL: Mr. Clerk? MR. BROWN: Sounds good. The record reflected you have withdrawn your motion. CHR. KIERKIEWICZ: Okay, there is no motion that's necessary. Let the record reflect that Bill 18 has been withdrawn by Council Member Kimball. Thank you. ADJOURN- There being no further business, at 12:17 p.m., Mr. Inaba moved to adjourn the MENT: meeting. Seconded by Ms. Lee Loy, and carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Evans, Galimba, Inaba, Kagiwada, Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Kimball, Lee Loy, Villegas, and Chair Kierkiewicz— 9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. CHR. KIERKIEWICZ: Motion carries. We are adjourned at 12:17 p.m. Th' nk you. Approved} Ms. Ashley. Kierkiewicz, Chair (D te) Policy Committee on Planning, Land Use, and Development AK/dt Page 7