A new online tool meant to study and perhaps help solve Oahu’s shortage of affordable housing has been unveiled.
On Jan. 16 the city’s Office of Housing and the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, or UHERO, announced the launch of its subsidized housing explorer.
UHERO says this interactive tracker consolidates data on government-subsidized housing units across Honolulu County, identifying properties participating in federal, state and local housing programs. The projects are viewable as a table, map or spreadsheet.
Importantly, the web-based explorer can be a resource for policymakers, stakeholders and residents.
“The purpose of this project is to create a database of all properties on Oahu that benefit from some sort of government program that contributes to affordable housing,” Rachel Inafuku, a UHERO research economist, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “There are several government agencies and departments within the state that manage affordable housing programs, but surprisingly little collaboration between agencies to share data.”
Funded by the city for over $94,000, the project took more than a year “to collaborate with several government agencies, to consolidate their data, and to build a user-friendly interface to visualize it all together,” she said.
Prior to this project, she said, each government agency kept track of its own program data.
“Now, with the subsidized housing explorer, we can see which properties are benefiting from which programs. While some are just under one type of government program — for example, Hawaiian Homestead — others have multiple government programs attached to it,” she said. “Now we have a very user-friendly data visualization to see this overlap in government efforts.”
“Moreover, the subsidized housing explorer helps to geographically visualize the government efforts throughout Oahu,” she added. “We have overlaid City Council districts onto the map so we can see subsidized housing properties by district. This helps us to get a feel for whether the level of government-subsidized housing is meeting the needs by district.”
The city’s lead housing officer agreed.
“The subsidized housing explorer doesn’t directly make housing in Honolulu more affordable, but it plays a crucial role in supporting efforts to address housing affordability,” Office of Housing Executive Director Kevin Auger told the Star-Advertiser. “To our knowledge, this is the first time this information has ever been consolidated on one platform.”
“By consolidating data from various programs, the project aims to provide a clearer picture of where affordable housing exists, how it is distributed and where gaps remain,” he said.
For the purposes of this project, Inafuku clarified that “because there are so many different types of programs, we are using ‘subsidized housing’ as an umbrella term.”
“We very loosely define subsidized housing as any type of housing that results in under-market-rate prices due to some government-funded program,” she said. “This goes for everything from Hawaiian Homestead to Bill 7 affordable rentals to (the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp.’s) Hula Mae mortgage loan program.”
She said the “subsidized housing explorer does not act as a Zillow for affordable housing” — referring to the online real estate marketplace company.
“We do not know whether the units listed in the subsidized housing properties are vacant,” she added. “To this end, this tool is for those in government, researchers and anyone who may be interested in data on government-subsidized housing in a given area on Oahu.”
Meanwhile, the housing crisis continues to affect thousands of families here, according to UHERO. The median sales price of a single-family home exceeds $1.1 million, and median rents approach $2,000.
In the Honolulu metro area alone, there are nearly 20,000 cost-restricted units, while West Oahu contains approximately 9,000 units, UHERO states.
According to the Hawaii Housing Factbook, 58% of Oahu renters are rent-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
In comparison, 29% are severely rent-burdened, allocating over half their income to rent, the housing report states.
To combat this crisis, the city said it has implemented various programs, including Bill 7, which provides property tax exemptions, increases building density and relaxes building standards for affordable rental projects.
A Bill 7 project included an affordable rental development that held its grand opening in Makiki in November 2023.
Constructed in prefabricated concrete in under nine months, the three-story walk-up for low-income renters at 1427 Ernest St. was conceived to offer 24 studio apartments and two one-bedroom units on a more than 5,300-square-foot property.
Within the Ernest Street building, studio units are 260 square feet, while its one-bedroom units are 430 square feet. Monthly rents for studios were announced to start at around $1,500 — including all utilities like gas, water, trash and electricity — while one-bedroom units will lease for about $1,900, with all utilities included, the developers said.
At the time, developer partners Paul Lam, Greg Thielen and Evan Amakata said their 26-unit development was Honolulu’s second, but their first, affordable rental project constructed under the auspices of Bill 7.
That 2019 city measure relaxed private-development standards and provided incentives — namely, a property tax exemption for 10 years, and no fees for the city application process — for qualifying developers’ projects.
At the Makiki rental project’s opening ceremony, Gov. Josh Green said the new units would “go to our teachers, firefighters and nurses.”
To track similar projects, the city says the subsidized housing explorer’s centralized database features over 50 government programs and more than 35,000 cost-restricted units across 332 properties.
“I think this is the first step towards more collaboration between UHERO and the government to put forth efforts in alleviating Hawaii’s housing burden,” Inafuku said. “We now have this relationship with the mayor’s housing team, and that’s a great benefit.”
With this data, she said, UHERO and the city can answer questions such as:
w How many housing units in Hawaii are benefiting from a government-funded housing program?
w Which areas are seeing the most assistance? Which areas are seeing the least assistance?
w How does this project make housing in Honolulu more affordable? How will data benefit affordable housing?
To ensure the tool focuses on long-term housing solutions, the tracker excludes housing intended for victims of domestic violence. It also does not include:
w Housing that’s planned or currently under construction.
w Data that’s low-cost — or deemed affordable — but not price-restricted.
w Housing designed for temporary occupancy, such as homeless shelters.
w Housing inhabited by a tenant receiving housing assistance where that assistance is not linked to any specific unit or property — for example, the housing vouchers program also known as Section 8.
Inafuku asserts the subsidized-housing tracker was created in spite of complex government bureaucracy.
“I think that for a lot of people, gathering data and putting it together in a user-friendly format sounds like an easy task. However, people forget that government is huge,” she said. “There are so many departments with their own programs, ways of managing these programs, and varying levels of technology and data management. This is why tracking all these affordable housing programs on Oahu in one location has not been done before.”
