 and welcome to Inside Hawaii Real Estate, a community real estate show dedicated to providing up-to-date information and news to Hawaii home buyers, sellers, and investors. I'm Wotanaka, with my co-host, business partner, and wife, Leonie Lam, a realtor with over 20 years of experience in various leadership roles in the Hawaii real estate industry. Thanks, Will. Will is a full-time realtor, sharing his talents as a lawyer, a law school professor, and the former head of a Hawaii title and escrow company. Together as full-time realtors, we work as a team to bring you the latest in Hawaii real estate. And so the nonprofit Housing Hawaii's Future describes itself as a movement led by young local residents who are going to create opportunities for Hawaii's next generation by ending the workforce housing shortage. We're so fortunate to have Sterling Figa with us today. Sterling is making a huge difference, and he made the choice to pivot his own career and co-found this nonprofit focused on solving the housing crisis in our state. So Sterling, I've seen you on TV, in the newspaper, online, and I mean, you're super passionate. And of course, you know, your local boy, graduate at Roosevelt, you went to UH, majoring in speech, and you're a very humble guy. So I'm going to just tell the viewers, you know, for you, you also went to Harvard, got your master's degree in education, very impressive. And I remember in one of the articles, you had mentioned that one fourth of your classmates had actually moved out of state. I mean, that's a concerning figure, you know, for the local residents and family, and you know, we have young kids as well. So definitely want to dig more into that. And really appreciate you for joining our show all the way from Maui, living with his wife and four young kids. You are the executive director of Housing Hawaii's Future. You've been writing for Civil Beat, Hawaii Business Magazine, and you're also a debate coach at Hawaii Pacific University. So welcome, Sterling. Welcome. Thank you both for having me on. Thanks Sterling. So we understand that you folks started this much needed non-profit back in 2021, and that was just a few years ago. So we're wondering, what are the initiatives for Housing Hawaii's Future here in 2024? At Housing Hawaii's Future, our primary focus is on educating the public about housing solutions and helping people understand how they can get city clay engaged. For example, this year we've been focusing on missing middle housing, mixed use development, adaptive reuse as ways that we can make housing affordable by design. As an organization, we want to design housing and communities that are environmentally and economically sustainable. And we focus a lot on millennials and Gen Z because they're the next generation. Millennials or they've started their careers, their families, and Gen Z now are entering the workforce. And we believe that these generations should get civically engaged and advocate for the housing that they need. So like Will mentioned, you know, we have a bunch of these kids that are they're up and coming. They're not quite in the workforce yet, although my son did get a part-time job recently, but you know, they're kind of up and coming. So how do you promote the education? Like what is it that they can kind of, you know, how do they get involved if they were interested or if they wanted to make an impact? The primary way people get involved is by joining the staying movement. So the staying movement pledge we've had more than 2,100 people sign it so far. And, you know, for me, me and my wife, we live on Maui with our four kids. And if you look at the trend of housing affordability, our oldest kid is 13 and our youngest is 10 months old. If you fast forward to when they're adults, will they be able to afford to stay on Maui? Probably not at the current rate. And so we believe at Housing Hawaii's future that true sustainability means that our children and grandchildren can afford to stay. So the staying movement is a pledge to stay informed and to stay active to make sure that that's possible. So pledge signers receive regular email updates with information about housing solutions and also with ways that they can get civically engaged. Okay, great. So that's like a great first step, like an entree to get involved. Exactly. It's not, you know, we don't say, okay, you're going to dedicate your whole life to fighting for affordable housing. But if you can sign a pledge, start to get informed, then that's the first rung on the ladder of engagement. And earlier, you know, you had just kind of mentioned mixed use housing and also, was it adaptive? Is that the word you use? Adaptive reuse. Yeah. Adaptive reuse. So maybe we could take it in two parts. Can you just kind of dig a little bit deeper into the mixed use affordable housing and, you know, what that entails and what that looks like? Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that I noticed three years ago when starting this organization is there are all of these words that get thrown around. And a lot of people are intimidated to participate in the conversation because they may not know what mixed use is or what adaptive reuse is. But these things are a lot simpler than they appear. So mixed use just means a community where people have houses, residential uses, businesses, commercial uses, and these things are all accessible to each other. What we did in the United States and in Hawaii for decades after we adopted the automobile was we made single use communities where all of your businesses and commercial uses would be over here and your homes would be over here and you'd have to drive back and forth between the two. But if you go to all of the great cities of the world, think of London, think of Paris, think of Tokyo, they have mixed use communities and small towns all around in the world do too. So on Maui where I am now, if you go to Makawa or Paella, Wailuku, if you go to Lahaina prior to the fire, Lanetti City, these all have mixed uses where commercial uses and residential uses are together which makes the community more accessible but also more vibrant for people that live there. So when you're saying mixed use, I'm thinking kakaako, I'm thinking like Ho'opili, like those kind of communities where I understand where you're going, yeah, okay. Exactly. And I continue on adaptive reuse too. Yeah, exactly. I was going to ask you about that. Yeah, adaptive reuse is just taking existing commercial space like an office building or even an old strip mall and converting that into residential use. And so in urban Honolulu, this has been happening a lot and the core concept there is exactly the same as mixed use, bringing people back into the city. Got it. And so adaptive use, I'm thinking like Maria is like the new one at the Davies Pacific Center where they're taking a certain amount of the floors and converting them into residential because I guess the commercial space is not, they're just doing that. And I think the benefit that they said was because it's a new project but then it's already existing sort of infrastructure. So it's going to be a quicker completion date for the homeowner who's going to purchase there. And then the pricing was pretty good, I thought. And so I guess it can be a win-win. And then I think in some of your past interviews, I thought I read something about even maybe potentially schools could be converted. Would that be an adaptive use? Yes, absolutely. And it's typically not adapting school buildings, but if you think about a school campus, many of our schools around the state have shrinking student populations. And they have these huge campuses that aren't being used. And at the same time, we have a teacher shortage and a big part of the teacher shortage is teachers can't afford housing. So what if you could take some of the land on these school sites that are either shrinking or have already closed and use that land to build workforce housing for teachers, healthcare workers, and for the other essential workers that we need? That is fantastic. Wow. I have not even heard of that before. So this is already, you know, opening my eyes. I mean, I'm learning so much already. And, you know, I think in one of the articles, they talked about close to over 35,000 Hawaii residents have left Hawaii or the last three years. So over 10,000 every year. And, you know, we talked about the high cost of living. And can you talk about any, so right now we're in the thick of the legislative session. And there's all these bills that's out there hard to keep up. But is there anything that kind of stands out to you? So the two bills that we're most interested in are HB 1 to 630, the missing middle housing bill and HB 2090, the mixed use and adaptive reuse bill. So 1630, the missing middle housing bill allows for more units to be built on residential lots, concentrating development where we already have development. And it also allows for building small units on small lots. And the key thing there is for decades, we've built a lot of single family detached homes. And we've built large homes on large lots. Because land is so expensive in Hawaii, this limits home ownership to people that cannot afford a 6,000 7000 square hood lot. If you're a young person starting out or you're a capuna living on a fixed income or retiring, that's not going to be within your affordability. So by creating duplexes, triplexes, one plexus small houses on small lots, you create a housing type that's affordable by design. And that's the missing middle housing. The second bill, HB 2090 would add residential use to commercial zones. So across the state, we have property that is zoned for commercial use. And it's already developed, right? Like so for example, and on Maui, there's the Queen Ka'atum Mountain Shopping Center, which is a mall that is half empty and has a huge parking lot. Nobody's ever there because the mall is kind of dying. Why not take these existing commercial spaces and rezone them to add residential uses so we can have some of that mixed use and adaptive reuse development. And those two bills will help us to make better use of the land that we've already developed our urban land so that we don't need to push out into agricultural land or conservation land. We can just continue to develop affordable housing where there already is development. So for those two bills, you know, as you're kind of tracking on those and, you know, advocating, are you seeing like that it's being received like those could possibly go through or what kind of the temperature that you're seeing for those? I think so. You know, we're at a very critical moment, I believe. We founded Housing Hawaii's Future nearly three years ago. And I've never seen such an enormous grounds for support, not only from legislators, but from members of the community in favor of these bills. For example, when House Bill 1630, the Missing Middle Housing Bill went through, I think there were 72 pages of supportive testimony and only one piece of testimony in opposition to it. Now, of course, there are not my backyard people, Nimbis, who sometimes come out to oppose these measures. But what I've seen is a remarkable show of support from legislators who understand that if we don't make radical changes in the way we do things, we're going to continue losing people. You know, well, your statistics are right. It's about 30,000, but the statistics only track the net outflow. So in actuality, it's closer to 30,000 people that leave every year. It's just a 20,000 people replace them, right? And that's happened for each of the last seven, I think eight years now. We've been losing, you know, millions of thousands of locals every year. And it's really changing the character of our community. And that's one thing, you know, a lot of times when people oppose new housing, they say this expression, they say it will change the character of our community. I always push back and say, well, what about the characters in our community? Because when we lose that tens of thousands of people every year, we're losing these people who are part of Hawaii, you know, who've grown up here, who love this place, but just can't afford to stay here anymore. And that's why we believe we need to build affordable housing so that those people can stay. Wow. And, you know, we've experienced that first time we've been able to help local people come back to Hawaii, which is always such a great feeling. But it's tough, you know, I mean, the cost of living here is, you know, different from in other places on the mainland. And of course, the affordability. So, so thanks for all the work that you're doing. Yeah, if I can chime in, you know, it's not work that I'm doing. The truth is, there are amazing organizations like Hawaii Zoning Atlas, Hawaii IMB, Hulungua Collaborative, the Hawaii Housing Affordability Coalition, AARP, various organizations across the state that are coming together and realizing that these housing policies are moving us in the right direction. And in addition to these organizations, they're sort of grass tops. What we've seen at Housing Hawaii's future is grassroots support from young people who they're looking forward five and ten years and realizing if they don't take action now, there may not be a future for them here. And what we believe is when everyone is coming together, both our community and our legislative leaders, then we can push for a change that will make things better. Thanks for clarifying that. I mean, it's kind of opening our eyes and hopefully everyone else's tuning in about all the different organizations. And that's great to hear that that things are coming together, you know, organizations are coming together to affect the change that's needed. Absolutely. Yeah. No, this is, yeah, I'm learning so much. And I think one of the most impressive things about, you know, what you're promoting and through your organization and just with, you know, through a collaboration with other organizations is that, you know, when we talk about affordable housing, there's always focus on building, building, you know, there's our low inventory we need to build. But another focus of yours is regulating the low income or affordable rental aspect of it, you know, across the state. So I thought, wow, yeah, I don't think personally, I haven't really heard too much about focus on affordable rentals. Of course, there are affordable rental buildings, but in terms of the regulation, that's a whole new perspective. So could you kind of talk about that? Yeah, there are two key issues. The first thing in terms of building is we have to build the kind of housing that's actually affordable for working families. And the truth is, at this point, a 2000 square foot home on an 8000 square foot lot is just not going to be affordable for most families. If you're talking about new construction, because the land cost is so high and the construction costs are so high. So when we build, we want to be building smaller, more modest units that are appropriate for aging Krapuna or for young families. And that's important because the average household size has shrunk considerably. You know, my grandfather was one of nine children. I don't have nine children. You know, household sizes are smaller. More people are living independently. They're divorced or they've never married or they only have one child. And so we need a lot of smaller household sizes. The second thing you mentioned was the regulations of affordable housing. And the key there is our state and county governments have to ensure that affordable housing is remaining affordable. Oftentimes, affordable housing is only affordable for a set period of time. It could be 50 or 60 years. And then there comes a point where investments need to be made in the property to rehabilitate it and make it up to standard. And at that point, the state and counties have to commit their resources to ensure that that housing can be affordable for another 50 and other 60 years. So there's a real key there, not only to build affordable housing, but a commitment on our government to ensure that it remains affordable. Right. And I know that the governor had made the emergency proclamation about meeting affordable housing and you're part of the work group called Build Beyond Barriers. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how is it going? Yeah. Well, you know, it's an interesting saga that ended with the working group being dissolved. Oh, the governor took what I perceive as extremely bold action. Housing was the number one issue in the gubernatorial race. And Governor Green made it his top priority. And he put his money where his mouth was by creating this working group, the Building Beyond Barriers working group. That group brought together county and state officials who deal with housing. And it also brought nonprofit leaders like the Sierra Club and also Housing Hawaii's future to try and cut through the barriers to affordable housing. Unfortunately, there was a lot of controversy. There were lawsuits. B.J. Penn showed up to one of the meetings and started yelling at the director, Nani Maderos. And so there was a lot of controversy. And the controversy actually masked some of the positive things that came out of the working group. For example, I believe that this legislative session, legislators feel some pressure to actually take action because the governor tried and couldn't get as much accomplished as he would have liked to. But in the process of using the working group, it really shined a light on some of the issues that place. For example, there's a law about school impact fees. So new housing developments have to pay a few thousand dollars per unit in search and districts into a school fund that's used to build new schools. What came out during the working year meetings was this money has been collected for more than a decade and none of it has been spent, which means that all of these affordable housing units were being built and thousands of dollars were being added to the cost of each unit and none of the money was ever spent on schools. And so this legislative session, there's actually bills to eliminate the school impact fee for affordable housing. And I don't think that would have happened if not for the governors working or shining a light on some of these very specific problems that have plagued housing development. As some people have pointed out, we're one of the most regulated states in the country in terms of new housing development. And that regulation adds costs. And so it's not like one regulation adds like $200,000 cost, right? But it's one adds $5,000, another adds $2,000, another adds $7,000. And all of a sudden, you've added hundreds of thousands of dollars. So this legislative session, I see bills like the school impact fee waiver starting to cut back on some of that regulation so that we can build truly affordable housing. How about in terms of just kind of going back to the rental regulation, has there been any discussions or any bills regarding rent control? Would that ever be on the table for Hawaii? There have in the past. I don't think any have ever made it too far in the legislative process. It tends to be fairly controversial. There are some advocates and there are some places where rent control seems to have worked at keeping housing costs down. But there are other places like say, San Francisco or New York City where it seems like in some cases, rent control has made the problem worse. And I think in Hawaii, there's a justifiable hesitancy to adopt a policy like rent control because it might not produce the results that people intend. That makes sense. That's a good point. Yeah. The unintended consequences, right? Of certain regulations. Exactly. Exactly. And it's good that our legislators are cautious when they adopt the policy and consider those unintended consequences. You know, when you talked about the bill, I'm sorry, segwaying back, but I was just thinking about the work group that you were in, you know, with the governor's emergency proclamation that got disbanded and you're talking about the issues that kind of came up. And I'm just wondering, do you have a sense of like, what was behind that? Like, because it all sounds good. I mean, you're working towards making housing more affordable. Everyone knows the issue. So I don't understand why there was such discordance and an issue with it. So I don't know if there's a, I'm not sure. I'm just trying to understand that a little bit. You know, part of the concern came from environmental groups, like Sierra Club and Earth Justice, who were concerned that the working group would allow developers to bypass environmental protections as a completely reasonable concern. Another part of it was just on timing, which was the working group started meeting just around the time of the fires in Lahaina. And everyone was upset and distressed about the fires, really worried about housing. And I think because the legislature was out of session, a lot of that energy was channeled into this working group. And it attracted the attention of some celebrities like BJ Penn, who brought a lot of attention to the working group. And because of how I strung the community was, I think the working group ended up taking the brunt of that with Nani Madeiros, the leader of that working group, receiving death threats and personal harassment that's completely unacceptable. And so I think the governor should be saluted and commended for making the effort and pushing the conversation forward. And now it falls to the legislature to continue that work and pass the policy that will result in durable change. Wow, that is, that's really deep insights. And you really know your stuff. I mean, this is, I mean, you're definitely younger than us. But just to see, I don't think I fall into that category of Gen Z or millennials, unfortunately. But it's just making me more passionate. And then just really made me think about our kids and their future. You know, in terms of, so there's all these bills, I mean, I just learned about this missing middle housing and adaptive reuse. And in terms of like your vision for the future, is there something that maybe that's not in the current legislative session that you might want to bring forth or any future visions that that you have personally, you know, for the low income or I'm sorry, the affordable housing crisis? You know, the vision fundamentally are cities and communities that are truly accessible for Kupuna, who may have limited mobility for disabled people, for young people who don't want to have to own a car. But more than just the vision of cities at Housing Hawaii's feature, our goal is when we have planning commission meetings or county council meetings or legislative hearings, we want young people to be part of that conversation. Oftentimes, it's only people over the age of 50 who show up. And we believe that change will only come when younger people like ourselves, like our children, learn about the issues, get engaged and advocate for their interests. And so to solve all of these problems, and housing is all one of men, we're going to need many more people to get civically engaged to learn about the issues and take leadership. Yeah, and you know, we talked about as a first step, if someone was interested, they should join the same movement, and then they'll be connected basically. And then they'll be getting updates, and they'll be able to kind of understand. But are there any other ways that you would recommend for someone, an average citizen, whatever generation they might be, you know, that's catching this and is like feeling inspired, and they just want to, you know, get more involved and get more connected, any other suggestions for them? That's a great first step to assign the Stay Movement pledge at Hawaii'sfuture.org slash stay. We provide information about housing solutions and ways to get civically engaged. Second, you can follow us on social media at Hawaii's future. And third, if people are interested in supporting the work we do at Housing Hawaii's Future, we always accept donations at Hawaii'sfuture.org slash donate, or you can feel free to email me, I'm at sterling at Hawaii'sfuture.org. That is awesome. Wow, this was, I mean, I feel like there could be a part two after the legislative, you know, session is over, maybe later this year, but you are fantastic. I mean, like, I want to follow you, you know, let's follow your lease sterling and your organization, you know, your collab with other organizations, but this is like eye opening for me personally. So thank you so much for being on our show and sharing your vision. Thank you both for having me and for elevating the work that we're doing. Thank you, Sterling. Thank you so much. Aloha.