 My name is Ricky Cassidy. I am standing in for Dennis Isaki, as the host of Politics and Land in Hawaii. Dennis is a wonderful mentor, he's a surveyor, and he is attached to land. He's, I'm happy to say, slightly older than me with a plethora of experiences with a whole bunch of people. He's got a fine mind, he analyzes stuff and challenges people with ideas. And I've always admired that about Dennis. He brought me on the show maybe once and told me I talked too much and nothing will change, except now that I find myself wearing the shoes of him on the other side of the thing, I'm gonna try and shut up to the best of my ability. In this inaugural segment, Dennis said, hey, you know what, the world's your oyster, but why not try Luke? And I really like that because Luke just went from council into the legislature, and that is as good of you as I could think of, except on the federal level, of people, politics, and how it affects land. So on that, I'm gonna open it up to Luke, ask him what it's like, what he sees, what he learns, and what he hopes for. Welcome, Luke. Thank you, Ricky. How about it? I don't know, that was a big question, what I've seen, what I'm hoping, what I'm trying to do. Yeah, I mean, you were very active at the council level. I hesitate to use the word progressive, but you were activist. So on that deal, I give you full marks for getting in there and thinking through things, identifying problems, coming up with solutions, working the political process on the local level. And now you've gone to a very different one, where instead of a few people that you interact with, you interact with a ton of people with a different hierarchy and that sort of thing. My belief is home rule. I really think all politics is local and on Kauai, especially being a small community, local's important. So if you wanna teach me about local Kauai, and then share that abstract, push and pull it any way you want. Yeah, there's kind of a lot there in that question. I can start with a little bit of my perspective of why I first ran for the county council, and then why I ended up going for the state legislature. Like you and certainly like Dennis, I am most interested in land use policy. And I first got, I served on the Citizens Advisory Committee for the Kauai General Plan update. And I have, you know, everybody always asks, how did you get into politics? And I feel like I have the least inspiring story for how I got into it. But I was really serving on that CSE for the general plan and becoming extremely passionate about really land use policy through that process, both because I think we have a great general plan. And through that process, I saw that oftentimes, or sometimes at least, our decisions around land use have made our housing problem worse. And so clearly how well-intentioned public policy can make these problems worse, but also through the general plan, which has a really clear vision for the future and how to solve our housing crisis, how well-intentioned public policy can make our housing problems hopefully better. And so I wanted to hopefully help you on the better side of that spectrum. And the Kauai County Council and essentially every county council statewide are the land use bodies for the district, right? Planning commission and then council. So I saw that to really make change. I had to try and run for the county council and I served on the council for four years and it really was a great lesson in land use and also in the difficulty of making change. I think we did a lot of really good and exciting things at a county level. And then for me, part of the recognition through that process was realizing that our housing crisis statewide is this issue of statewide concern, right? So while the councils are making legislation that's impacting each individual island, if you look at the housing index, the Federal Reserve has a housing index where they're tracking cost of housing statewide and that's, you can see each island essentially just mirrors each other identically, right? So there's only so much that any individual island can do to try and solve this crisis. So for me, it was trying to looking at the state where the state gives lots of power over land use authority to the counties, but in my opinion, the state should start pushing those counties to reform zoning and permitting in a way that can incentivize home construction in the areas that we need it statewide, right? And then no island can solve this crisis on their own. So that was kind of my journey in a quick nutshell there. That's a good one, starting with the general plan because everything starts there. It may not sound exciting, but it is your blueprint. And then where you ended up was what the state can do to help the county. And you mentioned costs. If you, and I do see that the state has levers that can contribute to lowering the cost of affordable housing, which basically is unprofitable and sits us up with the nexus that, you know, you have to build market in order to get affordable. Anything you can reduce the cost by and usually that's financing and financing at the state level and the bed level really makes, you know, everything same. So, you know, I track you really well on that and I'll salute you for thinking that through. You came up with an idea that I initially disagreed with that I told you. You said put EV plugs into all the affordable condos on the island. And being a grumpy old man, I went, you know, it's gonna add costs. And I came up with all the reasons why logically you may not do that, but you forced me into then looking at it from the other point of view, which was yours. I give you the floor. Tell me, you know, what led you to go there? So, yeah, in and much of the policy we were pushing, which ended up passing was to require that around 15% of stalls and any new parking lots have to be EV ready, which means infrastructure in the ground ready to go for EV chargers to plug in. So it doesn't mean 15% have to have an actual, physically installed EV charger. It just needs the receptacle for a future EV charger. And the reason to do that, in my strong opinion, which we went back and forth on for a while and I appreciate the dialogue Ricky, but was that it's extremely expensive to come in after the fact and rip up a parking lot to install the conduit necessary for EV charger, right? And it's why often if you're trying to retrofit and install, it can be like 30 grand a charger. And it's why we don't see a whole lot coming online in existing parking lots. But if the infrastructure's already in the ground, coming in after the fact and just plugging that EV charger on top is not that expensive. And there's a whole lot of rebates that can help cover that cost. So I felt like it was really important going forward that we ensure that new parking lots have that infrastructure in the ground ready to go. And there is a real conversation around affordable housing and the fact that obviously we have, on Kauai we need 9,000 new homes by 2035. That's in our general plan. Some segment of that will be filled by subsidized affordable workforce housing market. And clearly we're not getting enough market housing or affordable housing, we're not getting any of it. And cost is gonna be a youth partner. If it can't pencil out, it's not gonna get built. And part of the reason it's not cancelling out, I think as, or it's not penciling out is as you alluded to all these extra costs that we have added on in multiple ways, mainly I think time, permitting time, it's gonna take you years to get anything through, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so anytime we add additional costs onto that, we're making these things less likely to get built, which I think was the root of your argument. And in my opinion though, when we are building affordable housing without access to EV charges, we are then locking essentially lower income folks out of the EV market, right? If you can't charge from home, you can't have an electric vehicle. And we're at a place where essentially already EV cars over the life are cheaper than fossil fuel cars, that price is gonna continue to decline rapidly. And so by not building affordable housing with EV infrastructure, you're locking those people out of the low cost alternative and not only the low cost alternative, but the alternative that we need to get to to avoid catastrophic climate future. So in my mind, it was important to ensure that we were including EV infrastructure in affordable housing. And it's also important in my mind to ensure that we are subsidizing that, right? That we need to do everything we can to make sure that these affordable housing developments pencil out, if the additional cost of the EV infrastructure is a barrier, then the government should be helping subsidize those costs. Yeah, I like my joke, some of my opinions are bad. I researched it, I saw that you subsidized it. My original position was don't add a single cent of cost to the thing because that could translate into one unit not being built. And as you and I know in the supermarket line, we see people and we want to help everybody, especially those most in need of shelter. So, but what really changed my mind was the Economist magazine did a special on housing, on cars yesterday, I listened to it. And the rate of increase of electronic vehicles are supersedes the useful life of a 30 year building or a 50 year building. So I stand in front of you, convince it's a little bit upset that, you know, most of the EV makers are in China and may have a chokehold on some of the essential battery materials. But the thing about the present is that it always changes. And if you get your hands on a problem, you can make it better over time. Besides that, any other problem? I'm just disappointed that I'm not the one to have convinced you. I think we spent, we went back and forth by 10 times via email and I wrote you. We both in response to the writing novels back and forth, but yet it was the Economist that finally convinced you. But as long as you're convinced, then it's okay with. And I just want to acknowledge too, you're right. And there's a whole lot of unfortunate things about the EV industry. There's also clearly issues around lithium and battery sourcing and environmental issues with mining. I think that those issues are still dwarfed by the magnitude of climate change. And I'm not somebody who is saying that we should just replace our current, you know, all vehicle infrastructure with the EV infrastructure. We also need to make big strides towards reducing the need to drive, right? We built our communities in a way that you have to drive to do anything, to get to work, to get to the store, to get to school, to get to the park. You got to get in your car and drive. And I think that's been a monumental failure and it's putting huge costs on all of us from the cost of road infrastructure to time spent in traffic, to health. I live next to a highway and I got black suit all over my house, right? To health impacts from driving. And so we do need to, as we're going forward, try and transform our community. So we are not so entirely dependent on automobiles. But I do feel strongly that hopefully by 2035, 2045, we're looking at a future of 100% electrification of our vehicle transportation. No, it's a biggie. And I give you full credit. And the thing of policy that's always interested me is getting your facts. And then it's kind of like watching a game. And Wayne Gretzi once said, you know, I'm good because I look at where the puck is going, not where it is. And it's for that reason that, you know, people should talk to one another and try and read as much as possible. So again, I mean, you hit it on that. Are there any other things in your, rattling around your head that you'd like to address? No, I'll still leave it to you to direct your direction of our conversation here. Happy to talk more about housing and housing needs. I'm happy to do that. My background basically was I worked or I came back to Hawaii kind of late. Gentry was the only one that would hire. And the reason for this, it was about 86, 87, is that that was the heyday of housing production. I worked at the company where the goal one year was a thousand homes. And that year, 3,000 homes were built on Oahu. You look at it ever since then and hardly anything got built. There at that time, there was a successful nexus between I'll build the same house, 60% will go market, 40% will go affordable. That ratio changes a lot. That was then and now is now. I mean, the cost of land and the cost of construction and the regulation has grown up immensely in that time. But then about four, five years ago at the ledge, I was seeing the dialogue change a little bit, but what really changed it were the numbers, the absolute numbers of those in need. This is our community. This is us. Sitting in a public place like you, thank you for your service. You know, Eurocoli is suffering, I know sometimes. Don Chang went to sleep at the end of a 12 hour session on DLNR, BLNR the other day and I, you know, I can't say enough for people who serve. Okay, then I'll give you another thing I think that could really improve and it's counter cyclical. I think it's fair to pay public servant, elected and appointed or come up through the ranks, more money. And the reason for that is especially at the frontline, those guys, they're working and they're doing it for the best of us and the better those guys are, the better we are. So anything you could speak to that, you know. Yeah, I guess I wasn't expecting this to go to talk about salaries. It's on the Kauai County Council, we had to every year essentially approve, every other year approve our own salaries increases, right? Salary commission would come up with recommended changes that come to the council for approval and it was always by far the worst vote we would ever take, right? We would just get in and this was just adopting salary commissions increases, which were generally cost of living, you know, inflation based increases. And, you know, or what is, you know, the most part should be a full-time job. And if you are a young person on Kauai who is trying to pay rent or a mortgage at current rates, you can't live on 60,000, right? It's extremely difficult. And so like everybody, you know, my generation that I know, we got two and three jobs just to make it, right? Whereas if you're older and you're retired and you have a mortgage that's 1500 bucks a month or whatever, then yeah, you can do it and that's fine. But I think by keeping public sector wages artificially low for elected officials, we are sort of self-selecting for retired folks or a lot of ways, you know, pushing young people out of it or if young people do come in, their time is limited because they're forced to work another job. So yeah, in a lot of ways I would agree that I want to make sure that we are, you know, paying a living wage at least to elected officials and a wage that is gonna attract really good people to come into the profession and that it is really important. You know, we're making decisions that impact tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. And yeah, so that is important, you know, but I do want to address the housing issue a bit. You had mentioned, you know, I think you said it's City and County needing 3,000 homes a year and building 1,000 or what is even worse than that, right? We need 9,000 by 2035 and we're building somewhere around 100 and something new homes per year. It might be more in the last two years, but essentially from 2010 to 2020, it was averaging about 100 homes per year. And we have even more homes than that turning into vacation rentals every year, right? So I think we don't have super good data on our occupied housing stock, but from everything that I've seen, it looks like we're going backwards, right? For the new homes that we're building are often gonna be second homes for people. And then we have existing owner occupied homes or long-term rentals that are becoming vacation rentals. So every year we essentially have less supply. And so I strongly believe that we need to be doing everything that we can to reach that 9,000 figure by 2035, you know, which is disincentivizing vacation rentals, right? Part of supply is gonna come from that. Trying to incentivize owner occupied housing, certainly trying to figure out ways that we can build more housing, more subsidized affordable housing, but also more market rate housing, right? And that's, you know, the major challenge of our time. And I feel like every alarm bell there is should be ringing that we are essentially failing on that year after year after year. I hear you very loudly. Your numbers are pretty good. The challenges are there. The way to increase housing, there's a number of ways vacation rentals have, one of the things I've noticed, and I'll jump right into it, it's vacation rentals have grown up. Obviously we have the highest quality of living, you know, I'd say the Pacific Rim and we cannot help but attract people. The key to having a safe and a healthy community though is to balance the visitor local in a way that the locals feel and appreciate what they're giving up in terms of traffic and crowdedness with a higher quality of life. And that feeds back into the visitors with the spirit of Aloha. Kawhi's pretty awesome about that spirit, but you just can't, so anything you can do to cut the cost. You mentioned a long time ago, I went through subsidy and I said the biggest subsidy goes to the poorest people, the biggest amount. If you take that amount and instead of doing it at the 30% or the 60% of IAMI, which is legalese for poor, pretty poor, somewhat poor than normal workforce people, you get a bigger bang for the buck at the workforce level because you're only giving a little. And the politics, forgive me for being political, has always been, well, let's help the poorest. And that's honorable and good, but how do you gotta try and set up a model of cost benefit and ask yourself, and I throw this out, you can explore it or not, but if you create more housing at the workforce, those guys move into it and it creates empty housing right enough and the housing ladder idea. So I mean. Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I'm not even just creating housing at the workforce level, but if you're creating market rate housing, somebody's moving into that and that ladder goes all the way down. And I always, I feel like people often wanna corner me or others into the sort of maximalist position, right? When you start talking about TVRs and then people say, well, it's not all TVRs. Yes, clearly it's not all TVRs. They're part of the problem. But when you say, you know, lots of people owning second homes or buying up housing here as second homes, remote work, right? Clearly that's not all the problem either, but that's some of the problem. And yes, clearly like just only building market rate housing isn't gonna fix this problem either, but it's certainly a component of it, right? So for me, I've always just said, it's all of the above, right? Lots more money for subsidized housing policies in place to ensure we are building workforce housing and all the way down to the 30% AMI, right? And we do need all of that and you're right. The bigger break for the buck is gonna be the less subsidized, but we do need support all the way down to transitional housing. And we need to make it easier for people to build and we need to do sensitive and incentivized TVRs and we need the infrastructure in place to build a build more multifamily units and we need to give homeowners as many options to convert their existing home to rental units. The only way me as a legislator salary to live on Kauai is to rent out my downstairs that pays half of our mortgage and it provides housing to a couple moved into it, each of them moved out of an existing place, right? That opens up two other houses on the market for them to move into. We could only permit that as a legal rental unit because the County of Kauai before I got on the council passed legislation allowing ARUs to be permitted, right? So these policy changes have real world impacts, allows me to own a home, allows two people to live in my downstairs, opens up two units down the line, right? So it's that kind of thing as much as possible. So, and I always try to sort of explain it in a nutshell, it's there is no nutshell here, just do everything we can essentially. And the one thing I do often push back on though is do everything we can except avoid converting large swaths of agricultural land to housing, right? I think that we do need to focus our housing development and in my personal opinion within our existing towns in and around where the infrastructure exists. And partly because we don't want to be consuming agricultural land, right? That land we should as much as possible keep it as, maybe it's not being used for ag right now but as least an insurance policy to get it used for ag at some point and also just the infrastructure costs of trying to build single family home neighborhoods on agricultural land that are disconnected from communities. Again, forcing people to cars, but road networks are incredibly expensive, right? Water and sewer infrastructure just in places is incredibly expensive. And we just cannot afford to develop in that manner. So, and again, this is all like our COE general plan is an incredible document because it's so clearly lays out the problem, lack of homes and the solution, build lots more homes within our existing town cores, especially Lihui town. Now that exercise of the general plan I personally didn't participate in as much as you did but I'd show up every now and then and try and get the balance between tourism and community. And I was really happy to see the number of experts and then the number of heartfelt community guys. And I got to get you to say to people, if you wanna change, you wanna be meaningful and make a meaningful change, look at that, just participate in that, make your voice heard. That revolutionized a bunch of things. And the transition from sugar to tourism. And now what? Post-tourism, second homes, vacation rentals, I mean, how do we deal with our high quality of life that's declining in sense to many visitors but accommodate the future. To many visitors, not enough locals. Now that's a simple thumbnail and all of that. And just to answer that kind of briefly, the question is how do we transition away from an over-dependence on tourism? In my opinion, it's charged tourists more, right? If you have a business and, right, Disneyland, if Disneyland's overcrowded, what does Disneyland do? They increase the prices to get into Disneyland. And so we are not Disneyland and I do not ever wanna compare Disneyland but we have a similar problem, right? And we have some solutions there and increase the cost of visiting here. We have no real control over airline prices but we have lots of control over the price of visitor accommodations through property taxes and through the TAT, right? And there was a big effort at the legislature this year, the green fee, the idea of charging people to visit our parks and natural resources. That didn't pass because it wasn't clear exactly how it's gonna be implemented. I think it will pass in the future. But in the meantime, I've pushed every year to try and increase our property taxes for vacation rentals. In my mind, it's insane that every year we lose owner-occupied homes to vacation rentals and yet the County of Kauai charges vacation rentals less property taxes than for hotels, at least per assess value. And we're the only island that doesn't charge them at similar to the hotel rate. So as long as if you own a home in a visitor destination area and you have the legal right to vacation rent at home, you're kind of crazy not to, right? Your opportunity cost is not vacation renting that house because you can make so much money off it. It doesn't even make sense for you to live in there, right? Rent the house out and live somewhere else and that should it be, right? County, that's like in my mind a market failure. The County of Kauai should make that less attractive by increasing property taxes on those vacation rentals. We got no minutes left. I totally subscribed to that. And yeah, I'm renting myself. And thank you for thinking this through. I mean, we stopped far too short of what can be said. I wish you great success, you know, and I wish you longevity and please communicate you're a good teacher and you got complex subject but also a big heart. So I'm stoked about that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ricky for taking the time and thanks for arguing about me about EV policy all those months ago. And thanks for coming around finally. Well, the best thing about living along is getting smart and you're gonna live a long time if I have anything to do with it. Me, I'm trying to lobby with God to see what happens in the next step. But thanks again, cheers. All right, thank you, Ricky. 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 and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.