 and welcome back to Politics in Hawaii with Dennis Isaki on Think Tech Hawaii. Today we'll be speaking with Edina Kamura, a representative in the state house from Kauai and the chair of the housing committee. She is also on the Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee and the Transportation Committee, all very important committees in this legislature. She grew up on Oahu and studied public affairs and urban planning at USC and the University of Hawaii. She was a planner for a county council person managing director and is a state representative. Nadine, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. And please tell us a little bit about yourself and why you're in politics. Thanks, Dennis. Thanks for the invitation to be on your show. Wanted to get involved in politics. I worked for the city and county of Honolulu on their transportation, doing rapid transit, a long time ago, working in Department of Land Utilization for the city. I also worked for a non-profit housing developer. So when I moved to Kauai in 92, I worked actually for you in your office because we didn't have electricity in Hawaii where I live. And that's where I got my start in private consulting on Kauai. And I did that for over 20 years. And I decided that after working on the general plan update, working on environmental assessments and developing the Hawaii Home Ownership Center, the Kauai Planning and Action Alliance, I decided I wanted to contribute to in a different way. So I ran for the Kauai County Council. I took a two-thirds cut in my pay and I ran for office in 2010 and then in 2012. I enjoyed the experience and Mayor Carvalho asked me to be his managing director in 2013. And I really loved that job. I learned so much about the county and I think we did some great things. And when this opening came up, when Rep Kawakami stepped down to serve on the Kauai County Council, I ran for this open seat, serving East and North Shores of Kauai and it got elected. So this is my third term in office and I plan to run again next year. Thanks. Ms. Benson, you're on the chair of the housing committee, which is a very important committee. So what are you working on in the legislature and your passion? Yeah. Yeah, housing is top of mind for so many families in Hawaii who are struggling because the cost of housing and how much people make in their annual salary, they're such a huge disparity. So we know that there's housing needs all across the continuum from those with extremely low incomes, very low incomes, moderate incomes, even workforce housing. So we have to have strategies for every category of needs and so we are working hard to address the needs across the board. We know what has been successful is the use of the low-income housing tax credits coupled with the rental housing revolving fund and the hula-may multi-family bonds. We also know that the federal programs like housing vouchers section eight, then we have our own rent subsidy really helps to keep people into homes and prevent people from being homeless. We also have a whole number of homeless programs that we funded, including Ohana zones that help every county to develop emergency shelters, transitional housing and the social services and wraparound services that are needed for many of the groups at the extremely low-income category. Yeah, and then we appreciate that low-income, low end of the spectrum. You mentioned moderate and workforce housing. I think we need a lot of work on that. You mentioned the low-income housing tax credit. I think stuff like the revolving funds would do good on an old spectrum, right? Like HFDC had a lot of money in there before, at about 1990, they had about a billion dollars in assets and it started coupling and all that with our friends, Janice Takashi and those people at HFDC. The sense she's retiring. So I hope we could continue to work over there. That's gonna be a big loss for the state. Yeah, it is. In a way, what do you see us working to help with the workforce housing and in that category or level? Yeah, I think what we need to do is to work with the counties and work with the private developers to help bring down the cost of developing these homes and a big chunk of it is the infrastructure costs. So we have this amazing opportunity with the Biden Infrastructure and Jobs Act that Congress passed last month that gives us a lot of funding for highways, for water infrastructure and wastewater infrastructure through the existing revolving loan funds. So what we are doing is working through the Hawaii Business Roundtable together with the private sector, working with the counties involving the mayors on each county and you need to have the whole team involved, the housing agency, public works departments or environmental services and the planning departments to prioritize the affordable housing projects in each county and then see what the infrastructure needs are and then try and target the infrastructure funds around these projects. So we're working hand in hand to deliver housing across the spectrum. It includes workforce housing and we all know that the higher you go it's actually the easier to develop because with many of the counties have now waiver programs, they have additional dwelling unit programs that help to increase density and we should be promoting more of that. And then with the waiver programs that substantially cuts down the cost of development and then it makes workforce housing possible and we need to continue the use of exempting general excise taxes from all of these developments across the board that also brings down the cost of housing. So I think it's all of these combined strategies that we need to work on to partner with the private sector and counties to make housing affordable. Yeah, yeah, I've always said, we gotta work with the government agencies and they're gonna not so many restrictions you know, like sometimes, you know, you all want, you know, all rectangular shaped blocks they regulate the size and shape you know, that kind of cuts down on that. One thing that might be good is when a developer has to put a project and they gotta put in thousands of feet of water line infrastructure if they have some kind of proportionate share refund if somebody hook up, you know, they're waiting for the next guy to come in and put it in or the county or the state not gonna put it in if they get some kind of proportionate share refund then guy would hook up to that. They have such a thing at the county water department before I don't know why they got rid of it. I think the current policies have discouraged the development of housing because developers cannot afford all of the upfront costs of infrastructure and always the last guy in has to pay for everything. So I agree with you Dennis, this needs to be addressed and that's why we have the Department of Health at the table, we have Department of Transportation at the table, sitting down with the counties to see, okay, with this influx of federal infrastructure funds, how can we work together to make sure the low hanging housing developments get built? We have this opportunity now to think strategically and I think we have a lot of agreement that this is the way to go. Thanks. We mentioned you're on the transportation committee tying that two together, there's the transit oriented development. You wanna talk a little bit about that? Right, so for Honolulu there's the rail line and stations and the idea is to do what every other major city with rail does is you develop densely around these stations. So you prevent urban sprawl. And so on the neighbor islands, that means building around the bus transit stations and making sure that people, if we can build more densely, build housing at all levels around these stations and around the bus transit stations, we can meet our affordable housing needs, but we have to target our resources and we need to create these mobility hubs so people can live and work where not have to have a car or not have to have the second car that most families have. We want to encourage the use of bicycling, walking, make, create these livable walkable communities to and reduce the reliance on single occupancy vehicles. So that's kind of the goal is to take advantage of rapid mass transportation to get people around and but to do it in a way that it's so frequent and convenient that people will want to use it. Yeah, it's on paper, you know, it's all good. If you have a clean sheet, you get a tangent and a hub there, slightly expand whatever build up, but then you got the wiki key, we got the ocean on one side and we cannot go out, you got the mountain on the other side and then which leads us to the rail coming in but in the way it's going to end up that like you mentioned that on the water it's mostly around the rail hubs, right? Well, the city and county is also looking, I think the new administration is also looking at other developments along urban areas that may have infrastructure capacity now. And so they're looking at both alternatives along the transit stations, but also in other areas but they're, you know, the whole idea is low hanging fruit where we can do development sooner than later because we know the need is so great. Yeah, we got the low hanging fruit but it kind of like killing itself. We talked about this before. We had the, was that park and ride parking lot which is supposed to do that, you park there, catch a bus and we took away that parking lot for low income housing. So it kind of goes against itself and against this and the hub thing where everybody parks and you don't have cars running all over. Yeah, and so I think that's what the county is looking at. From my understanding, they're looking at mobility hubs that make sense around the island and the need to do update current shuttle studies to look at where they make the most sense where it's very accessible to visitors and residents. And one of the ideas is to look at coconut market place where you've got a number of visitors who could potentially walk to a visitor center and a shuttle pickup area, get on to the shuttle and go see the island just to take different tours using a shuttle versus going around in a single occupancy vehicle and creating more congestion on our limited highways on Kauai. Yeah, you've seen the traffic red in front of the coconut market place, right? Right. And yeah, we got the county of Kauai wanted to do such a, I guess it's part of the transit and development concept at the county building, whatever they call it, but I don't think it went off the ground and there's no, nobody came in and said they want to partner with the county. Yeah, so I think there the county has decided to step back, work on their master plan and then reissue an RFP once the master plan is complete. And that's what we're doing on the grounds of Mahilona hospital and then the surrounding state owned lands. There's close to 35 to 40 acres of vacant lands and we're working on the master plan revisions right now to look at all the needs in the community, in the region. And we know there's a need for adult daycare center, assisted living, affordable housing. There's a lot of needs, even relocating the state library. So we're looking at the mobility hub concept there where this is where the bus stops and drops off people and we know the teachers and healthcare workers want to live where they work. So we're going to design it around those needs and hopefully reduce the number of vehicle trips on our, again, our limited roadways. So where does that stand right now that study on Mahilona area? So they're working on the master plan phase two. Last session, we were able to get funding for the water well and tanks at Kapahi so that they can serve additional capacity for both for the elementary school, the high school and the hospital campus and future development. So that is in the works. We're hoping to have the sewer capacity and then we will be working, once the master plan is done, we will be going into the EIS and county entitlements and subdivision. So there is a consultant already doing the master plan. Yes, a consultant on board. Yeah, they got, I'm sure we'll have a lot of public input on that. Yes, and they will be initiating community meetings early next year. The top of your head, you know which consultant is doing that? Yes, PBR, Hawaii. Okay, good, good. Yeah. See, you're on the Hawaiian Affairs Committee. Well, we got, you know, leaders to Hawaiian homes. Any progress of, you know, what are you guys doing on that? Yeah, I think last year it was unprecedented the amount of funding, capital improvement funds that DHL received from the state. It was close to $70 million to carry on their program of developing house lots for our homeless, excuse me, the DHL, the Native Hawaiian waiting lists. We are also interestingly working with OHA, DHL and how to prove counselors to figure out how can we get our Native Hawaiians ready for rental and home ownership opportunities over the next five years because of the funding that the legislature has put into affordable housing, there's going to be 8,000 units of affordable housing on the market. And we need to get our Native Hawaiian communities, many who are homeless, many who are living in overcrowded conditions to be prepared for home ownership or rental housing. And so we have this initiative working with OHA to get resources out to the how to prove counselors to be doing the one-on-one counseling and the homebuyer education to prepare our families for these opportunities. And then we're also working with the University of Hawaii, UHERO to also create a housing database so that we have real-time information on housing opportunities, both rental and for sale opportunities by county, by districts, so people can do searches and understand what the opportunities are currently and in the future. Yeah, Kauai, HHHL has a lot of property in the thousands of acres, it also got some hope developed, lots, you know, roadways and utilities put in, but it's vacant from what I understand, you know, people who cannot qualify for housing like to put in their own housing, so maybe they get a department that has to put in the housing or something. Yes, you get to look at all aspects of that, as you mentioned. That is, you know, I think DHHL is open to, you know, having people put what they can afford on those lots, it might be a tiny home. I know the Anahola Homestead Association has worked on a prototype for a tiny home. There's, you know, different opportunity, Habitat for Humanity is doing an amazing job. When people put in their own sweat equity and bring down the cost of housing, I think that's a really great model for Kauai because they have such amazing capacity and it's a great model for the whole state. Yeah, especially at Kauai, they're doing a great job. I think they've run it in some other places, like Anahola. You know, in LA, LA, they're building a three bedroom, one or one and a half baths home a few years ago with a mortgage of $240,000 at the time of closing, that home was worth $400,000 and today it'll probably be worth 600,000 bucks. So this is how we build our middle class. This is how we build housing security. And we know that the Habitat model also builds community because families are working together. They go through this hard period of working on each other's homes. They learn home ownership skills and they have a built-in community when they're done. So it's a reason why last session I introduced the Affordable Home Ownership Revolving Fund and that passed and this is to help programs like Habitat do more of what they're doing because they're doing it so well. Yeah, like I mentioned at Kauai, you get Steven Spears and Milani Pimentiali. So now other organizations and people want to partner to help them get more people in houses. Yes, and I really like the motto. I think it'd be great if we could do more of that on Hawaiian homelands and other infill housing and large-scale subdivisions like they did in LA LA. I know Claudia Shea and self-housing was doing stuff like that before, right? Yes, and they continue to do it in, non-coolly they bought a whole subdivision that went through foreclosure during the last recession and they are building these fabulous two-story homes that have these million-dollar views and they are likewise quite affordable under $400,000 per unit. Yeah, that's great, that's great. Yeah. You served on a lot other than a part of the commission before. Were you on HFDC also, before? I did, I think I followed you. You left, I was lying. And the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Okay, a little bit, I'm gonna talk about tourism and where do we go from here? Sure, I'm very happy with the leadership of Hawaii Tourism Authority in pivoting from promoting tourism to destination management. And yes, we do need to promote tourism but we also need to manage the impacts of visitors in our communities around the state. And I think I see a real commitment to doing that. Every visitor bureau has now hired a destination manager and each has a pot of funds to now implement their destination management plans. I think what we did in Haina State Park is a great example of how we bring community, the county, the state and the visitor industry together to do problem solving. And we did that by a facilitated several years of meetings even before the flood event to talk about what some of the solutions are gonna be. And luckily, and then the flood happened and we've had resources to implement the Haina State Master Plan and our shuttle plan. We were super fortunate to have the 100% support from the state deal in our parks division. They put together all of the improvements at the park that were devastated from the flooding event. And then we put together a parking reservation system and several of my bills passed that increased the parking fines from $35 to $235 because of the illegal parking. And then last year, a few other bills passed that helped to increase the entrance fees based on peak demand. And then we also allowed the county police chiefs on every island to hire non-police officers to do parking citations on state highways. So those funds go to the counties for enforcement. Understand that tourism was in the past few weeks was really low in the Waikiki area. And now it picked up only because of the military water fuel problem, right? That's a big issue. I mean, they're filling up the hotels in Waikiki but what you got to say about the fuel issue at Red Hill? Yes, I believe that many of the state legislature signed on asking the military to remove those underground fuel storage tanks and to address this concern. Yeah, there's about 2,000 families that are eligible for hotels in Waikiki until January of next year because of this issue. And it's a major concern. I believe the state needs to have in-state water testing facility that we should not be spending five days or a week sending samples to the mainland, to the West Coast to figure out the quality of our water. We need that capacity. And when I was managing director, we had a similar problem in Lihue with I think it was bacteria in the water. And again, we had to wait five to seven days to get the test results. Well, no, you told me we had bacteria in the water. No, I'm just kidding. I think we, they were great. They sent bottled water to families impacted and the water department on Kauai did a great job as well, getting the word out. I think it was in, I forget whatever, but it was, we need that capacity in state. We should not have to wait and get lost packages in the mail and then wait longer for this result. I think it's a public health issue. I believe the legislature will be addressing this issue next session. Okay, thanks, Lidhi. And I just see a note like our time just running out. Any last words? No, just thank you, Dennis, for this opportunity to talk story with you. It's been a while, so it's been fun. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you, Nadine, for joining us on Think That Kauai and thank you to the listeners. Mahalo, aloha, ahoy, ho, and happy holidays. See you next year.