 everybody and thank you for joining us for another episode of condo insider my name is Jane Sugimura and I'm your host for today's show and I'm really pleased to have with as my guest today Tyler does Santos Tam and he's running for the city council seat for district number six because Carol Fukunaga who currently holds that seat is term limited and so it's going to be an open seat and you know this is part of a series of programs that I'm going to be doing for maybe the rest of this year I want to introduce condo insider viewers to candidates who are running for office and uh and ask them questions about you know how they you know how they're going to support the condo residents like you and me who live in their district and you know so this will hopefully give you some information that will lead to you know a really important decision it's in August isn't it the primary primary's in August but people are going to get their ballots in the mail in late July so even sooner well okay well okay Tyler thank you for being with me today why don't you uh why don't you tell us something about yourself I know you're the president of condo yes we'll get to that um so I'm Tyler dos Santos Tam and it's great pleasure to be here on condo insider um as Jane mentioned I'm the president of my condo association at 801 south street um we're at one of the newer buildings but we're one of the largest condo associations there's about 1040 units in this property it's both buildings a and b I grew up here in town I grew up right by not to know a tea house up in a leba heights and I was on the liliha neighborhood board for six years but the district that I'm running for city council district six goes from ward avenue to middle street so it's got half of the kakako condos all those condos up in newt wanu and downtown you know china town as well as some of those up on punch bowl up in the slopes of punch bowl so it is a big area and lots of associations and then of course you know some of the private subdivisions as well have their own associations up in the valley and so you know uh why are you why are you running for the city council seat while I was on the liliha neighborhood board for six years and I definitely saw how the city government affects people's lives from the time that you wake up and cook breakfast that's city water take a shower city water you go to you know work or school on a city road or a city sidewalk if you walk and then you know you curl up in bed and brush your teeth at night and you know you've dealt with a whole bunch of city issues all day long and for condo owners in particular you know the way that we interact with city government's a little bit different right we often have private trash pickup and things like that and we have to deal with our own sort of water distribution once it gets off you know the city lines and so you know there's a lot of things where I saw as a neighborhood board member and a resident of community where the city has to step up the city can be proactive and be a partner in helping people you know live the best life that they can here on this island and I'd like to step up and serve our community and be a leader who can get that done okay and you know um and I I've lived in you know I've been living in condos for many many years and in uh and you know one thing what I've learned and I've been advocating for condos for over 30 years of the state legislature and sitting counting what I find out that I spend more time educating people because people don't understand what it's like living in condominiums they think we have a ton of money uh you know so so so you know they they think they say oh well you know you live in a condominium so uh you should be paying more because there's more of you it's like excuse me you know and you know so you know we have issues like you mentioned with the city rubbish removal right single family homeowners they pay real property taxes and they get free rubbish removal but if you live in a condominium I mean you you pay real property taxes and you look at a condominium building with maybe 300 units and look at the property taxes if each unit pays a thousand dollars a year uh with 300 I mean that's what 300 thousand dollars that's a ton of money and we we have to pay for our own rubbish pickup and our rubbish pickup is you know it's not peanuts it's like five thousand six thousand a month and that comes out of our our homeowners pockets and you know so uh you know a lot of times you know we're in we're we're at the city council uh you know grumbling about how come you guys are discriminating against us I mean uh and with the bulky item pickup uh you know we have to think about the fines and it's like but you know and I live in a loop where we have a bunch of condos and this may sound silly like children but you know they the the with bulky item pickup you know you have to you can't put it out early you have to put it out like the night before right right and and the and the thing about it is is when you live in an area where there's a lot of condos right in the block and especially in a cul-de-sac and we have six condominium projects on the on the loop and so you somebody sees something being put out they know it's and all of a sudden other people start bringing stuff and it's like wait a minute it's not fair because that's our sidewalk you you people from across the street will walk over and put their stuff on our area and that means that if the bulky item people don't come and pick it up we have to remove it otherwise we get fined because we're the property owners and you know so it's like do we post guards out there to tell the neighbors to not put their stuff on our you know but you know it it creates some issues and you know so we I'm glad when you know they set that program up they asked our group you know to to kind of assist them and you know we we sent out emails to all the different associations asked them for feedback and what kind of issues are you know were they dealing with so that we could tell the department environment of services you know how to because it was a pilot program for a while but you know we have worked with the city on issues like that and you know and I can remember going to hearings for John DeSoto years ago he wanted to change the rates that that condominiums get charged for water and sewer and we we get charged a lower rate than single family homes but and he was saying that that's not fair we should be paying the same rate it's like no because you have you know maybe 300 people but there's only one pipe coming from the city yeah all of our buildings that were you know and and so it it was a long hard fight we had to fight with them with the city when you know so that we so it's it's you know there's this ongoing relationship with the city for day daily you know issues like like you said water sewer rubbish removal and it's all and property taxes property taxes we're always dealing with the city and so it is it's so you can you know if you're going to be sitting on the council you're going to be dealing with issues that you know affect people who live in condominiums in your district so you know it's it's important for for for people in your district to know that you're the go-to person when these things happen yep and again as a president of my condo association and as a condo you know resident myself um I can assure your viewers that you know they'll have a sympathetic year if I'm elected and somebody who you know is willing to dive into these issues and it's their ongoing issues um that that keep on coming up and of course there are there are some changes probably and some of the policies that are going to affect condos and that's going to spill over into the next term yes and you know one one thing I want to bring up because it was introduced there was a an ordinance introduced in 2017 and it was passed in 2018 the fire safety ordinance because of the marco polo fire in in july of 2017 and we all agree that was a horrific event it was just the most it was really really awful and um and but you know what happened uh and you know some of us including me think that you know the mayor at the time it was a knee jerk reaction he decided he wanted to mandate fire sprinklers and all high-rise residential buildings and we and there was a lot of pushback the that's why it you know the ordinance did not pass until 2018 and when it did eventually pass there was an alternative in other words it wasn't you shall everybody shall you know put in fire sprinklers and it wasn't because we were concerned about safety I mean I think most buildings in town thought that they were safe but and that they were being somehow penalized uh because of what happened at the marco polo but you know they want it it's expensive and nobody in town had money in their reserves to pay for a fire sprinkler system it's millions of dollars and even if they did have money they were already planning for you know maintenance to the elevator maintenance to you know the painting the outside of the building made a number of other things they've probably had planned for years and to have this dropped into their lap um is clearly a big burden that they never were prepared for and there's no way to be prepared for um in a short amount of time right and you know so what and our group was part of the task force we were appointed to the task force that came up with the alternative and the alternative was that if you didn't want to put in sprinklers you could do a life safety evaluation and that's where a licensed professional would come and inspect the building and tell you how to make it safer okay because these are all older buildings we all recognize that we could probably make things better to make it safer to address the concerns that were raised by you know the uh bill and so you know so that was and that was cheaper it was cheaper more economical you know for for the and you know because a lot of people didn't like it because they it was a method they had to spend money and so it wasn't like it was you know everybody was you know in favor of it but it was better than you know putting in sprinklers and so back in 2018 we agreed to that and here we are here we are four years later and the bill is in the process of being implemented and we're finding out that there are so many problems there are over 360 buildings that were originally on the list that were subject to the fire safety ordinance about 60 of them are exempt from sprinklers because they're under 10 stories or smaller or they have open exterior quarters and the fire department has deemed that that's safe they don't have to you know put in sprinklers so they're exempt from sprinklers and there are buildings in in Waikiki like the Waailana or the Waipuna Yacht Harbor Tower their open exterior quarters are big buildings but they have open exterior quarters they don't have to do sprinklers and and so um the life safety evaluation is you know I think out of 300 buildings the and and I get copies of the reports that the fire department submits to the city and the last report was April not April it was March of it was in fact there was a month ago and about 240 buildings have submitted their LSEs okay so almost all the buildings have submitted the LSE you know how many have passed have gotten passing scores right it's a very small number right 16 that's a tiny fraction 16 out of 247 buildings that means that you got over 200 buildings in Honolulu who don't have passing scores who technically have to put in fire sprinklers or do something else okay and here we are in 2022 but on top of that we had a pandemic that happened in 2020 that kind of shut everybody down which delayed the life safety evaluations from being done so we got an extension because our deadline for completing the life safety was last year okay and this was extended to May 3rd of this year and Kara Fukunaga submitted another bill recently that was signed by the mayor I think he signed it last week bill 37 and so the deadline for completing your LSE is now August of this year so it's what May June July four more months for about 60 buildings right but our but in order to get a passing score I mean what are the next deadline for us because my building has we we did our LSE in January of 2021 and our deadline for compliance is May 3rd 2025 that's three years away we couldn't put in fire sprinklers even if we wanted to because that's we don't have enough time we are one of what over 200 buildings in Honolulu that have to get building permits right building permits and and we we testified before the city council weeks a couple of weeks ago and we basically said what are you guys going to do here we are there's over 200 of us and and you know all of us have to get you know if we have to do fire sprinklers we have to get building permits how are we going to do this and how are we going to get it all done by May 3rd 2025 right well as you know my background is actually in the construction industry and of course the permit backlog at DPP is one of the the biggest frustrations I think for the industry and so we share that not only with condos but the contractors who are doing this work it holds up their ability to get things done too and so having that background and running for the council if I do get in on the council you know we're gonna DPP is going to be one of my big focuses because there's so many things that DPP you know could be be very proactive and and help people with getting things like this done helping people you know we talk about getting to solar clean energy I mean this is something that also is being held up sometimes in permitting and of course just people wanting to do renovations whether it's in a unit or whether it's you know in their single family home I mean there's all of these things that are being backed up and it it sometimes is a difference between you know life for death and it is the difference between paying you know a certain amount now or who knows how much it's going to be in 2025 if we have to wait and wait and wait for a permit and so it really is you know something that we need to fix and you know I'm willing to roll up my sleeves and get really acquainted with the folks down at DPP and say you know what can we do better and how can we get this done because it is so important to so many people who live in condos here on the silent right and you know oh another thing too you know what we're finding out because back in 2018 when we were working on this ordinance to begin with no like I said nobody knew we were going to have a pandemic right so then now we have the pandemic and the pandemic has resulted in what they call supply chain shortages right so even and a lot of us who have completed our LSE's you have to do little repairs you know fixing our doors you know you know getting getting and we have to wait longer to get right products into Hawaii plus it costs us more money and and and so this is all you know and and two things happened in 2022 that were nobody knew about it we found out early in I think January this year that insurance premiums for high-rise buildings with no fire sprinklers were going to go up and it's not because of anything that happened in Hawaii it wasn't because of the Marco Polo fire it was because the local insurance carriers have to you know when when they have to pay our claims they borrow from a re-insurance and they're offshore you know companies and those companies also give money to pay for the wildfires that are happening on the mainland for the condo collapse that happened in Florida for the the storms that are happening in Europe and damaging buildings and we understand that the the industry has suffered a loss of over a hundred billion dollars and because of that the insurance industry has to recoup their money so they're going to start increasing premiums the my insurance my insurance premium in 2022 we found out in January this year went up 30% it went up $44,000. Yep and in our building it did as well we paid in 2020 about 300 just shy of 300,000 to ensure both of the buildings in this year this past year it went up to 600,000 and and that is a huge amount and we of course have to explain to our you know owners that this is sort of out of our control and we have to unfortunately raise the fees and of course nobody likes that and it's again out of our control here so you know going back to some of the things we can control in the city you know how can we think about this in a logical way that's practical and isn't going to be a burden that just falls out of the sky and then hits everyone out of out of nowhere you know. Right and and and see for for buildings who have done their LSE and have to comply with fire safety ordinance now they have less money less money because now their insurance premiums went up and even the buildings that have the open exterior corridors like the Wailana and the Yathar their insurance went up and so we're trying to set up a meeting with the insurance commissioner to say you know there's this ordinance and it's expressly says that open exterior corridors and small buildings under 10 stories are safe they are exempt from fire sprinklers so so you know why are you allowing the insurance companies to raise their insurance rates I mean you can't be doing this across the board type of thing it's not fair and you know so you know and and and for implementing and you know this increase in the insurance is creating problems with complying with life safety I mean you have you know over 200 buildings including mine we're trying to figure out how we comply with life safety I mean the fire ordinance now we have less money because we had to pay an insurance increase and we found out the second unintended consequence is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac they're the federal agencies who loan who buy loans from local lenders and they came out with a directive Fannie Mae's directive I think is effective in January of 2022 and Freddie Mac was effective in February and what that says is that you know if you have these problems and if you have a report a detrimental report having to do with your structure and it's filed with a regulatory agency and the minute I saw that I figured oh my god that's the life safety evaluation that's filed with the fire department and how there's over 200 buildings in Honolulu that are that way that means that even now if you want to do a fire sprinkler and you and and typically because we don't have money in our reserves you go out and you borrow money we can't even get a loan and and you know because we're not eligible because now we have a detrimental structural report filed with a regulatory agency and and you know some people say well and you know how are they going to know and are they going to put things into effect I'm the board president of my condominium I'm getting calls from realtors representing prospective buyers and I got a call from a financial institution you know saying we are too and we're building and we're still getting this and what after asking about reserves asking me about raising maintenance fees that are we going to do that and what about you know the fire safety ordinance are we in compliance and you know I don't want to say well we're not and we're you know we still have time we still have until 2025 and so it's not yeah we're trying we're not quite in compliance but we're trying to get there and it's just really difficult and you know Carol Fukunaka set up a permitted interaction group and I was part of that group and we we testified before the city council I wasn't the only one there was the Jonathan Billings from touchstone properties and we had some somebody from Hawaii and we had some Savio you know for the insurance industry and we had a lot and basically the bottom line is is these unintended consequences are making it very difficult for condominiums to comply with this fire safety ordinance and so it should be suspended repealed but something has to happen because if you know the deadlines don't change I mean you're you're going to have 200 buildings you know and it's going to be an awful mess and you know a lot of these lending requirements you know a lot of these older buildings are kind of where people you know young couples maybe are getting their first department they're their first place that they can buy and if you're getting caught up in this this fanny may requirement and you can't buy into or can't get a loan for a unit in somewhere with a black mark whereas a cash fire can simply just come in and take it I mean this really is detrimental to the sort of affordable housing issue that we have here of getting people into their first place that that they you know can raise a family in or you know downsize into whatever the case may be so there there's that connection too between housing affordability and everything that's going on in this industry right now and you know so I mean how would you feel about you know suspending the fire safety ordinance until until we can figure out what's going to happen we know with the insurance issue as soon as the insurance industry can recoup you know those increases should stop but I've been told it's going to go on for at least another two or three years until and and you know with this directive I mean we've already reached out to our congress people I know CAI international has reached out to their national lobbyist to you know talk to people in congress to try to get fanny may and Freddie Mac to uh suspend you know implementation of their directors I mean because I mean it's going to create a really a horrible mess especially with the housing situation and you're absolutely right this is going to be an all hands on deck issue from the federal government to the state side which regulates insurance you know within the state of Hawaii but on the county side you know the fact that there's still there are still over 100 maybe 160 buildings that still need to get their LSE completed haven't done that yet are in the process even if they complete it then they have to implement things I mean this is really a tight maybe an impossibly tight deadline and so we're going to have to look at that but you know I think if you're taking steps and many of them are going to to take steps to implement the other LSE things besides the fire school first the alarms you know other things I'm happy to see that they're doing that and hopefully that satisfies you know those people who are very very concerned about safety it's not just the sprinklers there's other things that we can do to improve safety and like let's get there first those things we can do it'll promote safety without being overly burdensome right you know what we need to do too is if you know we don't suspend enforcement we've got to extend the deadlines like I said you know it's only three years before you know the the compliance deadline you know is in place and even you know like we have done all of our little repairs and so the issue right now is whether we do the fire alarm system which means that it might cost us a little under a million dollars which is still a chunk of change or put in sprinklers and for our building it's going to cost about three and a half million and you know so I have you know and when we have these we had two meetings on this I mean we had a we had a you know substantial amount of owners who usually don't ever show up but they showed up for that because they you know they said if you you know we were we told them you don't show up we're going to install fire sprinklers but naturally you know you know they they kind of all showed up and um but you know for the fire alarm systems we still need the building permits right exactly so we need to have we need to have a fast track method if you know if the city in other words if the city wants us wants to help us comply they got to give us the means and they control the permitting process and like I said there's now over 200 buildings out there that are going to need permits if they're going to do fire alarms or fire sprinklers and right now there's not you know none of us can see a way how the city can do that right and this brings me I think so something that's going on right now the council which is bill 44 which creates a fund you know to help condos with this which I think you know it's great and clearly you know support but in addition to simply the funding is all the mechanics behind that right so you know we could create a fund but if everyone's going to sit in line to get a building permit and everyone's still waiting to complete their LSE and everybody's waiting for all the parts to arrive from you know China or Japan or Korea or wherever it's coming from right and the fund itself is not simply going to be the solution so we need an all you know all of the above approach which includes you know the fund from bill 44 and then of course the question is how do we get money into there and of course get it out to you know the these associations that are trying to do good for the residents right and you know what's really you know kind of strange in the pig in the permitted interaction group discussion we found out that there are some buildings the reason why they have another LSE they really think that the bill is going to be repealed and we keep telling them that you can't rely on that because it I mean that may happen who knows but you cannot wait until the last minute because you're going to get dinged and you know right now you have most of the buildings in Honolulu you know have done their LSE like I said there's over 200 who have not gotten passing scores but you know mostly pride right made a good faith effort that's you know at least we've got we've got the report we know what's got to get fixed right so you know we're halfway there and the problem is now we're dealing with enforcement how do we how do we get our permits how do we get our supplies and materials and how do we get the money to pay for all of this besides paying for our insurance increases you know because of the you know the insurance market and paying for everything else that goes with you know trying to maintain an aging building that's that's what we're all dealing with definitely a lot to work on in the next city council especially those represent areas like district six with a lot of condos are going to have their hands full working on it but I'm ready to roll my sleeves and work with all the stakeholders to try to get something done that's practical that's you know reasonable and isn't going to be a huge burden that's a total surprise you know to everybody involved right because like I said you know when we started this process we negotiated in good faith with the city we came up with the alternative of a of an LSE as an alternative to installing sprinklers and if we didn't have a pandemic if we didn't have the insurance increase and the the lenders you know directives the Fannie Mae Frey then maybe we wouldn't be grumbling we may probably but not as much but right now it's gotten to the point where you you see a lot of frustration out there in the association saying how are we going to do this and you know I'm glad to hear that you're willing to you know roll up your sleeves and work with us and try to figure out how to do this yeah happy to and thanks for the opportunity to be on the show yeah well thanks Tyler for being here and we've run out of time so I want to thank the listeners and viewers for joining us on this episode of condo insider where I'm interviewing candidates who are running for elected office in 2022 it's going to be an exciting year we're going to get a whole lot of new elected officials and but for condo people I urge you to learn get to know your candidates invite them into your buildings and do coffee hours ask some questions hard questions because these elected officials are going to be making decisions that affect your day to day living so you better get to know them bet get you know you got to be their best friends and and hopefully you know that will be the case with you Tyler and we can come and rumble to you and you can be our knight in shining armor and the city council my door is also open but thank you very much for being with us Tyler and thank you to our viewers for joining us for this episode of condo insider please join us next week for another episode it will be Rayleen Tenno who will be your host for the show thank you and mahalo thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii.com mahalo