Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York in November by a landslide, either because of his populist campaign platform or despite it, depending on your point of view.
Mamdani embraced the issue of affordabilty, and promised to attack it in several ways.
Housing received lots of attention in his campaign platform.
Housing
Freeze the rent.
Building affordable housing.
Cracking down on bad landlords.
Supporting homeowners and ending deed theft.
Affordability
City-owned grocery stores.
Fast, fare free buses.
Fighting corporate exploitation.
Early Childhood & Education
No cost childcare.
Baby baskets for New York’s newborns.
K-12
Paying for Our Agenda
Taxing Corporations & the 1%
Of course, it remains to be seen whether these campaign pledges can successfully become public policy. But the guiding vision is there.
It got me wondering.
Given the fact that the lack of affordability in Hawaii is certainly on a par with New York City, What would a Mamdani-like campaign platform look like in Hawaii?
What would be the primary elements of the platform?
I’m sure Lots of people have been thinking about this since the success of the Mamdani’s campaign. So let’s hear your suggestions.
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Thanks for sharing, and I hope that our state’s politicos think about this and find ways to fix our biggest and most concerning issues! Let’s start with Governor Green and on down the elected and appointed ladders!
Excellent question you raise. All of the above!
1. Cancel current building contractor licensing requirements. Make it legal for independent tradesmen to go out and be independent contractors without being subject to current restrictions.
2. Grant automatic approval of any residential building permit that takes more than one week to review.
3. Establish mandatory death penalty for corrupt public officials.
4. Allow all people to grow and sell small quantities of marijuana and tobacco without regulation.
5. Drastically cut the size of state government. Lower state income tax, increase tax credits to low earners for excise taxes on food/ medicine. Eliminate hotel room taxes for residents.
6. Instal infrastructure on some large swaths of land for residents with initiative to build their own affordable homes.
7. Set up a services industry to support deep sea manganese mining.
8. Work with Amazon to set up a space rocket launching facility in Hawaii.
9. Go all-in on geothermal energy.
The list goes on…
Sure but the net effect will be zero on affordability. There are 2 prices that stand out. Housing and electricity. So to take housing 70 percent of the value of homes is land. How will deregulating contractors change this. Or zoning for that matter. Say a sudden deregulation leads to a surge in altruism and they build houses for free. Home price might drop by some, but those bad prices are for house already built. Similarly “deep sea manganese mining”? It is fully automated, not much employment or wages there. An analogy is cruises. Infrastructure was developed for them. No big increase in employment or income there. As ro state and local government there are statistics there, combined state and local government employment we rank around 20th among 50 states. So move to 25th? Mississippi is quite proud of its small government.
I think it is important o first understand where the problem of affordability is. It is actually 2 “prices”. Housing and electricity. The burau of labor statistics has developed a consumer price index that is comparable across states and the components that are really out the are electricity and housing. Housing is around 60 percent higher. But electricity really stands out. There is a federal body that tracks energy consumption. We pay around 30 cents per kwh while it is 10 cents elsewhere. And this not because of costs or regulation. Electricity prices are already regulated by the Public Utility Commission. In order to develop renewables this pricing function was limited. Now renewables produce electricity at 6 cents per kwh. Yet the price the PUC requires HECO to pay these firms is tied to the cost of electricity produced at HECO’s oil fired plants. It’s a simple fix but think what the total effect would be.People’s bills would be reduced, but think of all the other users, restuarants, food stores…
My comment is Oahu specific and has to do with the property tax schedule and how it affects (effects?) the rental rates for the working class on this island.
Honolulu residential property tax essentially has 3 tiers. You own and live in your house, it’s taxes at $3.50 per $1k valuation . If you don’t live in the house, rent it out, let it sit vacant whatever, it’s $4 for the first million in value. But… once the value ticks over a million, and most single family homes have, the value over a million is taxed at $11.40, a nearly three fold increase.
Now, if you rent a house that’s say 1.5 million in value, the landlord is looking at a $9000 yearly tax bill.
It used to be a 1.5 million dollar house was fancy, but now, the median sale price has topped a million, and many neighborhoods 1.5 is the low end.
Where are the landlords going to get the money for this property tax? It’s not gonna come out of their savings accounts…. They gonna raise the rent.
In regards to the folks that want to buy up houses and let them sit, I say tax the S$&t out of them. But if you have property, and are renting to regular folks, let’s keep the tax rate par to if you were living there yourself.
Maui at least has a long term rental rate. And Oahu should be looking to do this too.
On a side note…. What is the status on anonymous posts? I thought we had to put our names out now…. lol
I think you can still post anonymously, or with an obviously fake name. But using your name gets some credit. For example, if someone posts anonymously, I feel freer to moderate and edit or trash their comment. I only occasionally do that with a post from someone who signs in.
Fair enough.
Thanks for all you do Ian!
Keep up the great work