 Aloha and welcome to Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kili Ikeena, the president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. You know, we all love living in Hawaii. Who could beat it? The beautiful weather, the scenery, the people, it's one of the most perfect places on the planet. And yet, something's happening that very few of us realize. We are losing our population. Hawaii has one of the highest per capita rates of residents who are moving out and moving out for good. Well, that would be a good thing if they were just sightseeing. But the fact is they're leaving the islands for good. We're going to talk a little bit today about why that's the case. But I have a remarkable young man with me today who has been researching this issue and learning the stories of so many people who've gone, who would love to come back to Hawaii, but can't do that right now. His name is Josh Mason. He's the director of communication at the Grassroot Institute. And I want to welcome him to the program. Josh, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me on, Kili. So glad you're doing such great work. And one of your research projects is to dig in and find out why people are leaving Hawaii. Why don't you get into that? Sure. Well, at the Grassroot Institute, we're really concerned with making sure that people have the economic freedom to be able to prosper. And I thought in a funny way, we're a nonprofit. And usually when I think of a nonprofit, I think of a charity. And so I thought, who's our sick kid that we're trying to help? Why do we care about this so much? And I realized it's these people who are leaving the islands there, especially those who were born and raised here, who have multiple generations of family here and are leaving because they can't afford it. So I thought, what if we went and found these people's stories? We see in the news a lot these statistics about how many people are leaving. But I thought, well, who are these people? What are their reasons? Let's ask them. Well, I like it when you're talking about stories, because one of the things that we want to do is help people understand that statistics have a deep meaning, that although we have a high number of people leaving our population in the state, there's a face behind each person who leaves. Tell me a little bit about the first story that you came across. Sure. So when I first got the idea, I reached out to some people online. And I talked with a woman named Katie Young. She lives in Beaverton, Oregon. She had grown up in Hawaii. She had graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She had even worked at the legislature. And we chatted on the phone for about 45 minutes as she told me about how she's always met people on the mainland who used to live in Hawaii and talk about how they wished they could go back to Hawaii, which is funny, because there aren't really many places like that. I grew up in Oklahoma. You don't really hear people saying, I wish I could go back to Oklahoma, right? With her. With all due respect to Oklahoma, so we're out there. Sorry. And I love to play Oklahoma. Right. Well, as we started talking, she said she noticed this issue with a lot of her friends who were graduating with graduate degrees from the UH. And they were still working at their cashier job they were doing as an undergrad. And now they had a master's or PhD. And she thought, why is this happening? So she got a job at the legislature. She was very interested in marine biology, wanted to get involved in environmental law. And she observed something really funny. I want to read the quote. She said, I was thinking of trying to influence policy that way through the legislature or doing a nonprofit. Even the legislators in their 30s were living at home. Because I got this insight look at the legislative process, it made me see there are a lot of policy decisions being made that are affecting us people on the ground. So I feel like the high cost of living, education, and health care can be attributed back to really bad policy. Well, that's something. It really is. You know, high cost of living, even for people who are legislators. It's kind of ironic because the legislature is supposed to help us with our cost of living. Exactly. But the fact is, studies have shown that that is one of the major reasons people are leaving the islands. In fact, a recent survey said that 45% of all people who've left cite the fact that the cost of living is too high. What are some other reasons that are given in that survey? Sure. Well, if I may amend that cost of living, one other issue is housing. And there's two aspects. It's a big factor, yes. Right. There's two aspects to housing, though. One is being able to afford a house. You know, Maui and Oahu are actually the two main islands where this population issue is happening. They're the only two where Honolulu County and Maui County, where the population is declining. And they're also the only two islands where the housing costs are seven times the average income. And where the housing costs are about, it's more than $500 per square foot for a house in Maui or in Oahu. Now, let me back up with you for a minute. You said that the cost of housing is more than seven times the average income of people who work and live on the island of Maui and the island of Oahu. That's right. The average cost of a house. How in the world would anyone ever save up in order to buy a home, let alone get a rent down payment? Well, they live together. We see lots of multi-generational homes. They work multiple jobs. Luckily, we already live in Hawaii, so we don't need to take a vacation, right? You can just walk outside. Well, we say, lucky you live in Hawaii, as you said right there. But there is another venerable saying. It's called the price of paradise. Absolutely. Now, when we take a look at that housing cost, it's not just for those who seek to purchase homes who may have given up that dream. It's also for those who are just looking for places to live while they're still working, places to rent. How is that factoring in? Well, interestingly enough, what we've seen is this trend of the average rent going down, in Honolulu at least. I'm not aware of the other county's data. And so that's really interesting because we hear about how prices are increasing. But what it really factors into is, I mentioned there are two issues with housing. It's not just the cost. It's being able to find housing. There's such a limited supply in Hawaii. We can only develop on 5% of the land for residential homes. And so as a result, we've created this artificial scarcity of housing for our people. So we'll talk about that a little later on. But you've mentioned the cost of living is being a big factor in why people leave housing, the cost of housing as to why people are leaving Hawaii. There's also the opportunity for jobs. Yeah, absolutely. Are a good number of people leaving just because they can't find jobs in the professions they want, or jobs that pay the salary that they desire? Absolutely. That same woman, Katie, her husband, was a software engineer. This is a very lucrative career, so to speak, on the mainland. And yet, when they were living here, he was working for a company on the mainland remotely. He couldn't find a job as a software engineer in Hawaii. There are jobs, just not a lot. One of the issues we have is our economy isn't that diverse. We lie heavily on tourism and a few other industries. Whereas people can move to, say, Oregon or even California, which are both also expensive, but there are diverse amounts of jobs. So that's someone like Katie Young, who was a marine biologist, can find a plethora of opportunities. That's something. Tell us another story of a person or a family that has moved away. Absolutely. So I have one from Leanne Jackson. She actually lives in Vancouver, Washington now. And one of my favorite lines that she said was, we loved the Hanabata days that we were not able to give to our cakey. She and her husband worked at UH. They both had undergraduate degrees, but they were working as a secretary. And he was working, I believe, in the post office. Do we have a photo of them? We do, yeah. If they want to bring up the photo. Let's call that up. You can see, this is actually a different story. Here we go. Leanne Jackson and her husband here, they have two little girls, and they just wanted to be able to provide for them. Give them the kind of life they had growing up in the 70s. And they realized they couldn't do that. And part of the reason they couldn't is they weren't able to get good quality jobs to pay for that kind of lifestyle. Well, there's been a significant shift here. There had been a significant trend of those leaving due to what we call the brain drain. And largely, those were young people going off to college and not coming back. Those were people who are entering their careers. What we're starting to see now, Josh, is in it the case that people in mid-career, people who look at their living situation and say, by now I should have a home. By now I should be able to have the capacity to raise my family the way I want to. We're seeing them leave. But also, isn't it the case that retirees are now leaving Hawaii? We have people leaving in every single one of these age categories. Absolutely. They used to be, well, the University of Hawaii's family center mentioned that it's mostly young people that are leaving. But there are also older people leaving. And they're leaving because they have these retirement benefits. And why would you want to pay to live here and lose so much of your money that way when you can afford a much cheaper place on the mainland? It's the same reason why people in their mid-careers are leaving. If you're earning $60,000 a year on the mainland, you can absolutely buy a house here. The average Hawaii resident has to save up for something like 40 years to be able to make a down payment. One of the interesting things that I discover when I travel to cities across the country, whether on the West Coast or even on the East Coast in Washington, DC, is that there have been little communities forming around ex-patriots from Hawaii. And they have all of the features of a Hawaii community, a hula-halau, for example, a Hawaiian cultural club. And they get together and share food and so forth. It's almost as if we have these colonies of ex-Hawaii residents they're forming in San Francisco, Las Vegas, all over the United States. What do you think about that? You know, funny you mentioned Las Vegas as we call it the ninth Hawaiian island, right? It's funny that you say that too, because that's how I found so many of these people is I noticed on Facebook there were all these groups of, they said Hawaiians, but they met Hawaii residents. Hawaiians in Arizona, Hawaiians in Nevada, Hawaiians in California. And it really shows you the heart that people have who have lived here. As I mentioned, you don't really have that same feeling towards say, Oklahoma, sorry, fellow Oklahomans. But people have a heart for Hawaii. They really miss it. They want to come back. That's a common theme that I've found as I've talked with people. What seems to be the most common factor that stretches over all the stories that you've come in touch with? It really is just the high prices. You know, going to the store and having to pay $5.40 for a gallon of milk and on the mainland I can get it for a buck 80, you know? Tell us another story. Well, there's a great story by a man named Michael Cheney. He's a young father. And he was actually from my side of the island in Kahuku in Hau'ula. We have a photo of him, yeah, of him and his wife with three beautiful children. And he gave some really interesting insight. He said, I would have stayed in my family's place, but it already had three families living in it. My thinking was, if I want to live in Hawaii, I need to leave Hawaii. I bet 99% of locals main struggle is money. So my plan was to leave Hawaii, be successful and have a career that earns enough to live in Hawaii comfortably. It's a great example of this idea of people who leave because of the job opportunities thinking, I can't grow in Hawaii. I can't develop my career here. I need to leave somewhere else and then come back. We're going to take a break in just a few moments. And when we do it, we'll come back and hear a little more from you and talk in particular about the causes and what we can do to fix this problem. So that people who want to stay in Hawaii and live in Hawaii can. But first, tell our audience a little bit about the website project that you've established that has collected so many of these stories. Sure thing. So you can find all of the stories at our website, www.grasteredinstitute.org. And if you want to find the stories specifically, just add a slash, why we left Hawaii. And all of them are collected there. They have photos of the families and the individuals who have left. You can also follow us on Facebook. We post them on there frequently as well as Instagram. And I would encourage everyone to take a look at those stories. At first, it's interesting. And then after a while, you go through a different emotion. I mean, one of the emotions that I went through was just basic heartbreak. When you read some of the stories of people who can't be together with their families and their relatives and can't be in the land in which they had grown up and so forth who desperately want to return. And then an interesting thing happens. You start to listen to what they're saying so that they show a picture, for example, of a two-bedroom home for only $350,000. Tell the story of the fact that they can work one job from eight to four and come home and play with the family. And then you start thinking, hmm, maybe I should go to the mainland. We're not trying to encourage that necessarily, but we're gonna be back after a very brief break with Josh Mason and a little more on why people are leaving Hawaii. I'm Kili Akeena on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network and we want you to stay tuned and learn more about this great issue. Don't go away. Aloha, I'm Gwen Harris, the host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of the supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks, so much. Aloha, I'm Daelyn Yonagita, a host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thank you so much. Welcome back to Hawaii Together with Kaylee Iakina on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm glad you stuck around because there's more that's very interesting. Josh Mason, director of communications at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is gonna tell us a little more about this project that is tracking people from all over the world who originated or spent some time in Hawaii, have left and would like to come back. Josh, tell us a little bit about what you have learned in your research about the reasons that people are leaving Hawaii. Sure, one trend we're seeing nationally is there are very few states where they are experiencing what we are, which is a negative net migration rate and all of them are increasing taxes or already have high taxes. People are fleeing these high tax states and here in Hawaii, we're trying to pass more taxes. We were fortunate enough to dodge an increase in our GET, our general excise tax, but there are still more proposals whether it's on our properties, on our sales, anything. That's one of the main common themes both nationally and locally that I've seen as I've talked to people who've left. And we're looking at a couple of things in our research. One is a national trend where people actually leave places that increase their taxes and they flock to places that have lower tax rates. And a lot of times it's for very personal reasons. For example, if you're in a certain category, income-wise and your estate taxes are going up as they are in Hawaii, you might choose to live in Florida where they're going down or are very minimal. And so taxes play a factor in that. Would you say that the tax rates in Hawaii are amongst the highest in the country? Absolutely. We frequently rank in the top 10, top five for tax burdens, whether it's our sales tax, our income tax, all kinds of them. That's one of the main reasons too that we have so limited career opportunities because businesses have such a hard time starting up here and being able to afford to operate and pay their employees so they're not able to provide a good wage and meaningful careers. You've also found that the cost of living is boosted by housing. Did you want to say any more about that in terms of your research? Sure, well, once again, I know here in Hawaii, we're on an island. So there's very limited landscapes, so to speak. But even in the states where there's so much more land, there are high housing costs in areas where they have really strict land use and zoning laws. We here in Hawaii have some of the strictest in the nation as well. And we have the oldest laws that goes back to the 60s and 70s. And this makes it so that we can't build new homes for our residents. And so we see in places like San Francisco and even in Portland that they're experiencing the same problem, unaffordable housing costs. And so the solution is to allow for more residential development. We're not necessarily saying we want to see skyscrapers everywhere, right? But even just opening up 1% more of the land so that our residents can live here. Well, I think that's worth talking about because a lot of times there's a misconception when we talk about opening up a little more land that we can increase the housing supply. We don't have to develop on most of the island. Right now we develop only on 5% of all the land mass in the state. And if you just took 1% as you mentioned and went from 5% to 6% to your math that increases the supply by 20% or if you went to 5% to 7% it would increase it by 40%. And if somehow we could make sure that the housing that is provided on that land goes to local residents then we could easily bring the cost down. It's a very simple supply and demand formula. But unfortunately our political structure hasn't allowed that to happen so we need people to get up in arms. So to speak, do you think your project has the capacity to get people moving and get people calling their legislators and their city council persons and saying we've got to do something about providing more housing? Absolutely. One of the key things I've tried to do with my project is when I share these stories I don't make them into an article. I don't say here's what this person said and this is why they left and this is the policy affecting it. I just shared their quote. I didn't add my own commentary. It's pure, unadulterated what they said. I think that's touching people because they realize these are raw, real stories and they're being affected by the bad policies that we're passing here. Some policies that have good intentions but as we know the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? Tell us again what that website is where people can take a look at lots of stories of people leaving Hawaii and maybe relate to them. Absolutely. So it's www.grassardinstitute.org slash why we left Hawaii. You have another example? Of a story? Absolutely. I've shown a bunch of families but a great example of a young person leaving if they want to put up the third slide that I brought is Christopher Peralta. He left Honolulu in 2009. His story is very short but it's very powerful, he said. Let's leave Christopher's photo up there because I think people can relate a lot to Christopher what he has to say. I know when I first heard his story, I thought it was a story that could be told by any number of tens of thousands of people here in Hawaii. Absolutely. He said, I left Honolulu in 2009 because I was working three jobs and had nothing much to show for it. My home was a cinder block apartment with jealousies and my ride was a moped. I was working just to pay off the essentials. Rent, bills, groceries, and gas. Any savings I earned were easily swept away. I had time for friends and surf, which I missed the most but even that couldn't keep me in the city. My move to Oregon was simply a financial one. Simply a financial one. And yet it has so many implications. People leave from cost of living but it affects the very fabric of society. It takes families and tears them apart. It deprives Hawaii from some of the most talented people there are and it just breaks the heart of people who have fallen in love with Hawaii. One of the things I like about your stories is they span the spectrum of all people groups in our state, regardless of ethnic background, religious background, political background. The phenomenon of people not being able to afford to live in the place that's on their heart is something that is universal, sad to say. Absolutely, yeah. We have everyone from people who came here in the military and decide to stay to born and raised, fifth generation, native Hawaiians, you know? Now, I hope people don't get us wrong here. We're not saying at all that people should pull up in Hawaii and never leave. In fact, we often speak to young people at the Grassroot Institute and encourage them to pursue their education and career paths anywhere in the world that will allow them to become the best that they can be, achieve the most that they can achieve and if it's their desire to return to Hawaii to do so. The problem is that when it is their desire to return to Hawaii, the conditions aren't such that it makes it very easy or very possible. But certainly, there is great value of being on the mainland and getting a great education and expanding one's cultural understanding. And we hope that many of them will be able to return to Hawaii and actually bring the benefit of that back to Hawaii. What do you want your legislators to do? What do you want your lawmakers to do of the handle the serious issue? Well, the first thing is to not continue to raise taxes. I think that's one that virtually everyone would agree with. And the second is to cut the current taxes to reduce them at least so that our burden is lightened there. You know, a lot of people, it's not just that the taxes are high, they see a lot of corruption. They see the rail project and issues and they say, well, I'd rather my taxes be going to maybe a government that I don't like over in Nevada or something like that, but not the corruption that I see here. And so we need to also be more transparent with our legislative process, have much more transparency in all of our state departments and counties. Well, you mentioned corruption in government. And you know, this is something that has factored in the news quite recently to a very large extent throughout the state, but largely in our largest county, Oahu Island, Honolulu, the city and county of Honolulu. We've seen corruption in areas that are supposed to be free of corruption, whether it's the police department or the prosecutor's office and so forth. It used to be idealic here, so to speak. People would think of the mainland or think of Chicago or think of New York City when you thought of corruption. But now Hawaii's name has been spread across the country as being not immune to this. Do you think this affects people's willingness to stay in Hawaii or does it disillusion some? Oh, absolutely. I think it's part of the reason they leave. And I think it's part of the reason they don't come back. Maybe like that story showed earlier from Michael Cheney where he says, I want to be able to make it on the mainland and come back where I've got full skills. But then they look at what's happening because our corruption is making national news. You know, our rail project was in the Wall Street Journal and they say, well, never mind. I don't want to go back because I don't want my money going to this. I know you like living here in Hawaii. You came to Hawaii, got your college education, live up on the North Shore, and you certainly work at a great organization at the Grassroot Institute. And we're encouraging you now, in your own plans, go on to some graduate training in terms of an MBA program that has a unique opportunity on the mainland for you. What are your feelings about Hawaii as home? You know, I came here when I was 18 and I've been here since 2011 on and off. I've only paid bills in Hawaii. I've only adulted, so to say, in Hawaii. And it's weird knowing that I'm heading back to the mainland when people ask me where I'm from. If I say Oklahoma, it's like, I don't know what it's like to be in Oklahoma or what it's like to be someone who pays bills and works in Oklahoma. And so it feels like Hawaii has just become this second home for me and my wife. How easy will it be for you to move back after you get your MBA? Well, hopefully, like Michael Cheney, I'm able to develop good skills to be able to secure a good career, come back here at the Grassroot Institute and be able to afford to live here. I think it's very likely. Well, you're very welcome. And we'll keep, in your absence, working on making Hawaii a more affordable place. Please do. For anyone who wants to return can do so. I'd like to pay $3 for a gallon of milk when I come back. There you go. Send us the price catalogs from the grocery store on the mainland. Thanks so much for the research you're doing and the work of communicating it to the rest of the state. It's a real service. There are a lot of people who've come to the website, who've commended it, who've said that it really helps to put a face on a problem that needs to be solved. And so we're moving in the right direction. Thanks, Josh, for being here. Thanks for having me again. Thank you so much. Well, my guest today has been Josh Mason, Director of Communication at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, working on a terrific project that I really want to encourage you to take a look at. So go to the Grassroot Institute website. We'll put it up on the screen again now. www.grassrootinstitute.org. Notice that after the word grassroot, there's no S. It's just grassrootinstitute.org. Go ahead and put that back up again, and we can see that. And when you go to the website, in addition to Josh's project in which there are dozens and dozens of stories of people who've left Hawaii, who are trying to communicate with you, you'll find all the information you need about policy in Hawaii, about the economy, about government, about society. We have a free newsletter that goes out every week, so please subscribe to it. And tell us what you think. Tell us how you think we can make Hawaii a greater place. We're here to help Hawaii live up to its full potential in terms of individual liberty for each and every person, free markets so that we can all trade with each other well and build a great economy and working together. Thank you so much for being on the program, watching us today. I'm Kilii Akina on Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. Until next time, much aloha.