Category Archives: Housing

A vignette from the Kahala housing market

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On the other side of the Waialae Country Club, there’s an area of large homes along and near the ocean (well, really, most would call these mansions, from small to extremely large). A few also front the golf course.

Here’s one of those we walk past on some of our early morning outings. It’s a 7,000 square foot, two-story house with six bedrooms and six baths, and a swimming pool, along the 7th hole at Waialae. It appears to be mostly unoccupied. In the two years we’ve walked through the area, we have perhaps seen evidence of anyone staying there once or twice, for only a few days at most. Usually the yard crew would be the only people to be seen.

City real property records show that the building is currently assessed for tax purposes at $1,805,000. The 13,000+ square foot lot is appraised at another $3,001,300. The annual real property tax is $38,756.70, according to city records.

Viewed from above.

From Google Streetview.

Well, a couple of weeks ago construction fences went up to block dust, and a demolition crew moved in. The $1.8 million structure, pool, and landscaping are now history.

The property was purchased in 2004 by Up-Front Group Co. Ltd., a Japanese entertainment company. The owners have now applied for a building permit for a new structure they value at $1.8 million.

The permit doesn’t say much about the new building.

I suppose this is all good news for the local companies that benefit from the construction. It will create jobs, at least in the short run. And the tax revenue certainly adds to city coffers.

Nearby, along the beach, is a string of perhaps a dozen mansions. All also empty nearly all of the time.

It’s hard to comprehend how much corporate or personal wealth is tied up in these chunks of island real estate without providing housing for anyone.

All I can do is shake my head in wonder. And share the thought here.

Critical views buried in story on “safe zones”

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The Star-Advertiser reports today on a Honolulu City Council proposal to create so-called “safe zones” for homeless camps (“Legislators want ‘safe zones’ enacted”).

But you have to read down to the 19th paragraph before learning that the policy is opposed by the city’s housing office and national homeless advocates.

Marc Alexander, executive director of the city’s Office of Housing, however, said safe zones are opposed by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homeless and the National Alliance to End Homelessness because they don’t work. Alexander said they’re also not cost-effective and are “merely an excuse to hide the homeless and move the problem out of the public sphere as quickly as possible and not really help the homeless.”

With no foreshadowing earlier in the story that the “safe zone” idea is opposed by homeless advocates, many readers won’t get down far enough in the story to learn these critical details.

And as a lawyer quoted in the story makes clear, the number and location of proposed “safe zones” is key when taken in the context of proposals to extend the sleep/lie ban islandwide.

In any case, it’s obviously a hot issue that needs all sides aired fully.

Another fine example of a condo war

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I’ve written before about different condo wars, battles between owners and boards of directors in Hawaii condominiums. This week my Civil Beat column tries to describe another condo conflict, this one in a Maui condo-hotel (“Ian Lind: Condo War Breaks Out On Maui When Homes Become Hotels“).

This is an example of disputes in older condominiums over management and finances of their rental pools.

The unstated background issue here is that just as Uber and other ride sharing companies are causing upheaval in the taxi and car rental industries, Airbnb and other online booking sites are disrupting the staid world of resort-condo rentals. Once upon a time, the best way for condo owners to position their units to target out-of-state visitors was to become part of a corporate-operated rental pool, usually with an experienced hotel management company. Now, when individual owners have many choices for how to manage their rental units, older management structures are being challenged.

This particular case involves an older condominium with governing documents more appropriate for a traditional residential condo than a resort-condo project. As condo boards try to protect their competitive position with attempts to intimidate or retaliate against owners that rent independent of the favored hotel pools, trouble ensues. That’s what happened in this case.

Anyway, that link at the beginning of this post will take you directly to the column.

I started with condo stories at least 15 years ago. Check out “Mondo Condo” from the April 10, 2002 issue of Honolulu Weekly.

Homelessness in a previous era

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I was looking through a couple of copies of my old Hawaii Monitor newsletter, and came across a book review by the late Chuck Frankel, who spend much of his career at the old Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Frankel was reviewing a history of the city published by UH Press: “The City and County of Honolulu, a Government Chronicle,” by Donald D. Johnson.

One snippet caught my eye. Time passes, it seems, but things don’t necessarily change a lot.

Frankel wrote:

The homeless, much in the news today, were called “squatters” in the 1920’s. The head of the Hawaiian Tourism Board suggested that Squatersville at Kewalo Basin be turned into a tourist attraction as a “typical Hawaiian village.”

So many city plans to eliminate slums and to beautify the island turned out to be ways to sweep aside Hawaiians and others who were poor and powerless.”