In Our View for Wednesday — August 25, 2004

• Kalepa Village rental apartments

Kalepa Village rental apartments

The opening of 40 more, new, affordable rental apartments at Kalepa Village in Hanama‘ulu is providing housing for the new occupants and, in some cases, opening up other rental housing by those moving into the Kalepa units. This county project demonstrates forward thinking in its use of solar-water heating and other environment-friendly items, and should provide low-cost housing for years, if not decades.

This is phase two of the project, which is located below the landmark Kalepa Ridge. The first phase opened during the nadir of Kaua‘i’s economy in the mid-1990s, a time when the flow of cash for rebuilding the island following Hurricane ‘Iniki was running dry, and a time when our tourism-based economy was slow. There were units available for the asking at the beginning, and the decision to build the project was questioned then. Today, the county needed a lottery system to determine who among the 190-some applicants would win the right to rent one of the 40 new units. This high demand across Kaua‘i for low-income-type housing is driving other public and private building projects, and hopefully more units will be online in the next few years. If the high demand for affordable housing isn’t met, Kaua‘i will pay one way or another for social programs to cure the ills of overcrowded, working-class towns.

The price tags of homes and land are now mostly out of the range of working people on Kaua‘i in most towns, and this trend will continue unless another hurricane or major global economic downturn occurs.

The somewhat rapid turn-around of the Hawai‘i economy over the past few years could take another turn, perhaps continuing to rise, perhaps flattening out, and — most unlikely — going back to the downturn stage seen in the mid-1990s.

Gambling on the future of the economy is no way to plan for housing. Support for affordable housing projects like Kalepa is needed from both government and the private sector, and both groups should be encouraged to move ahead with already announced projects. In addition, county, state and federal government agencies need, too, to come up with innovative ways to build the infrastructure of roads, water and sewer lines needed for these projects to happen.