The debate is similar to what's happening in other parts of the country that are also struggling to build affordable housing.
Certain new housing developments in Hawaii would be exempt from lengthy environmental and historic reviews in an attempt to build more units faster under bills that appear likely to pass key legislative votes this week.
Supporters of the measures argue that regulations slow down the development of important projects like affordable housing that the state needs. In particular, a permit applicant must show through a study that the proposed project doesn’t negatively impact historic and environmental resources – or if it does, that there are ways these negative impacts are being mitigated.
These studies can take a long time and are subject to delays. Supporters of the current rules say that the studies are crucial for protecting the environment and areas with historic import, and that exempting developers from going through the review process risks irreversibly damaging the state’s natural and historic resources.
The bills still under consideration in the Hawaii Legislature echo conversations happening around the country.
In California, a state senator is proposing similar legislation to exempt certain development in downtown San Francisco from environmental impact statements, as reported by The New York Times. And in New York City, officials are proposing a “Green Fast Track For Housing” rule change that would remove environmental review for small- and medium- sized housing developments that meet certain criteria.
Senate Housing Committee Vice Chair Troy Hashimoto says the backlogged State Historic Preservation Division is an example of one of Hawaii’s bottlenecks to housing development.
The goal is to help clear this backlog by sending only the most historically significant properties its way – “making sure that that’s not a place that holds up further building of affordable housing,” said Hashimoto.
A slew of bills were introduced this year to deal with the issue, and two in particular remain on track for passage.
House Bill 2358, introduced by House Speaker Scott Saiki on behalf of the governor, would exempt affordable housing developments in certain places from environmental impact statements.
And Senate Bill 2129, introduced by Hashimoto, would change the definition of “historic property” so that fewer projects require a study in order to be constructed.
Current law deems any property over 50 years old as automatically deserving of historic review, and Hashimoto’s bill would raise that threshold to 100 years. Properties over 50 years old could still be deemed historic if they meet certain criteria like being on a historic register or being significant to Native Hawaiians or other ethnic groups.
The bill received generally supportive testimony, including from Historic Hawaii Foundation and the Department of Land and Natural Resources, which hosts the State Historic Preservation Division.
“The Department believes that this is entirely appropriate and will allow for appropriate consideration of properties that are truly historic rather than simply old,” wrote chair Dawn Chang.
In Hawaii, when an applicant wants to build on a property, the state or county agency that issues a permit determines whether the property has to go through the State Historic Preservation Division process.
SHPD head Alan Downer estimates that the division receives about 1,800 to 2,400 projects for review each year.
A bill passed in 2015 exempted many single-family homes from this process, though some say that more can be done to lessen the workload of SHPD.
Downer said this session’s bill would be chipping away at the issue rather than a full-scale game changer.
Only a small percentage of the buildings that are referred to SHPD for review are truly free of historic significance, Downer said.
He said the division needs more staff members to fill vacancies and while the Legislature last year allocated money and positions to help with the workload, few new hires have materialized. But the salary increases at least make the positions competitive enough to finally get applicants, he said.
Gov. Josh Green’s emergency proclamation on housing, initially issued last summer, sought to quickly increase the supply of housing by removing many regulatory barriers, including laws requiring standard environmental and historic review. His streamlined process was overseen by a working group. Green issued a subsequent proclamation in September that took out those elements and recently turned the working group’s responsibilities over to the Hawaii Housing and Finance Development Corp.
Now, a bill to exempt affordable housing projects in state-zoned urban lands from state law requiring environmental impact statements is poised to clear a major milestone in the Legislature, where it could cross from the House to the Senate later this week.
Supporters include the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, whose housing waitlist for Native Hawaiians is decades long, as well as the Hawaii chapter of the commercial real estate development association, NAIOP.
Developers, in testimony, say that the intent of environmental review is good. But they argue that such strong regulations legitimately harm the construction of needed affordable housing and other infrastructure projects.
“We completely understand the importance of EISs, however, we support the need for expedited regulatory reviews that enable the development of much needed affordable housing,” wrote Reyn Tanaka, head of the NAIOP’s Hawaii chapter.
The bill also has plenty of opponents. They argue that these regulations are put in place for a reason, and that blanket exemptions can easily lead to desecration of Hawaii’s landscapes.
Testifying in opposition to HB 2358, the Sierra Club of Hawaii writes “that an exemption from our environmental review law as proposed by this measure may result in significant, unnecessary, and irreversible impacts to a range of public interests in the use and development of our limited public lands.”
Rep. Natalia Hussey-Burdick was one of several House members to vote against the bill on the House floor.
“Chapter 201H already provides broad exemptions for all kinds of things, all kinds of hard-fought protections in the name of affordable housing. And so to chip away at that even more could be really detrimental to our environment,” she said in an interview.
“There’s a reason we have environmental impact statements: to make sure we’re not building in flood zones or in critical habitat protected areas,” said Hussey-Burdick.
The bill does stipulate that exempt projects cannot be built in shoreline setback areas or environmentally sensitive areas, which including “a flood plain, a tsunami zone, a sea level rise exposure area, a beach, an erosion-prone area, geologically hazardous land, an estuary, fresh waters, or coastal waters.”
Hashimoto, who said he agrees with the intent of HB 2358, is skeptical that it holds enough public support at this point to pass into law.
Green’s emergency proclamation was an experiment in seeing where the public’s accepted level of risk tolerance is for streamlining environmental review, said Hashimoto.
“I think we’ve kind of learned what that risk tolerance is,” he said.
Sign up for our FREE morning newsletter and face each day more informed.
