Alliance examines “Affordable Housing” Monday evening

Sep 26, 2016. After a month off, the Alliance of Maui Community Associations (Alliance) again brought together a collection of representatives from a variety of Community Associations from Kihei to Kula and points in between for this month’s meeting at Kaunoa. In addition others not affiliated with C.A.’s participated

The meeting kicked off with a presentation concerning how and why these non profits should have insurance presented by Dave Gerlach (who happens to be our insurance agent)

The major segment of the meeting on “affordable housing” starting with Jason Hobson who had affiliation with the Synergy Corporation in Los Angeles, as well as successfully working in WA & OR on affordable housing, but is now participating actively on Maui

From Realtors Association of Maui’s (RAM) new (soon to be) political lobbyist Lawrence Carnicelli, who also serves as a volunteer County Planning Commissioner, the group heard his reasoning on some causes of this ongoing dilemma

They offered some points to open discussion on the issue of lack of affordable housing on Maui. Seemingly all are in agreement that we have this big time, but how to fix it is complex.

One takeaway is this is an issue all across the country, but is exacerbated here due to the extremely high cost of living, coupled with our economy so dependent on an industry which offers a large number of low paying jobs.

Beyond that the recurring charge from some developers & others that the legal requirement of 50% affordable homes in most residential developments caused the cessation of residential development as the major reason for lack of both owned & rented affordable housing arose again. Once again we see this action could have some potential effect on residential start -ups, but the obvious cessation of commercial development in the same time period verifies the great recession was the major cause.

Community Association Director Stan Franco advised that another non profit, Face Maui, is planning a community action in Kahului at 4:00 PM on October 14 calling for a housing czar to work with non profits & county government as a way to make progress with this situation. Look for details in media.