Like most working people, I am not immune to the rising costs of housing and everyday life. Cost of living is one of the main reasons why I am running for office. I've seen friends and families who I grew up with move out of Hawaii for opportunities elsewhere in locations that are more affordable, and I'm running to bring our kids home and to help our kids stay. For me, personally, I spend a bulk of my income on a housing and basic needs, and I consider myself lucky, so I know there are people out there who are in more difficult situations, and I'm running to be their champion.
We need to take diversifying our economy seriously. Economic Diversification will grow more industries creating more good paying jobs and opportunities for local people.
I will continue to champion proposals and strategies for economic diversification, while supporting existing industries like tourism. Economic diversification will expand opportunities so that people won't have to only work in our existing industries and will have many options available to them.
The state should expand and look into training for trade programs to help people with the skills to work in various industries. At the same time, we need to provide tax credits to emerging industries while ensuring that business are using tax credits to hire local people and ways to expand their businesses.
The state needs to help with housing in general for working people. Through Act 121 of 2026, housing will be more available for local people by offering affordable 99 year leasehold condominiums. I am also a supporter of ways we can expand workforce housing.
I support a surcharge on vacant properties with the funds dedicated towards housing initiatives in Hawaii. These funds can go towards no interest downpayment loans for local people to help purchase their first home. I also would support the idea of rent to own programs.
More has to be done to make housing affordable for working families and the middle class. One of the biggest cost drivers is the infrastructure needed to support new housing, including sewer connections, water systems, roads, and electrical capacity. Even when a housing project is ready to move forward, those infrastructure costs can delay construction or make the final homes more expensive.
One proposal I believe we should seriously consider is a dedicated housing infrastructure grant program, similar to Washington state’s Connecting Housing to Infrastructure Program. A program like that could help fund the infrastructure needed to make housing projects possible, especially projects that serve local families and working residents.
I would support ways to exempt groceries from the General Excise Tax (GET). I believe this can be achieved by find ways to make our government more efficient and taxing vacant and un-utilized properties to off set the loss of revenue for the state so the state would not have to cut back on programs.
The state can expand of preschool opportunities through Ready Keiki. At the same time, the state should look into private public partnerships to expand childcare centers. The state can lease state properties while partnering with the private sector to establish a childcare center in areas close to where people work. This way businesses can provide childcare benefits to attract job applicants, while the state's interests in lowering childcare costs can be addressed.
I hope that we can lower income and general excise taxes to help local working families and off set that with surcharges on un-utilized vacant lots and vacant properties. Tax relief in income and the GET will help working people, while surcharges will ensure that those with the means can pay their fair share.
It is a combination of things, but primarily it is where we are geographically. In the past, Hawaii has been a link between the US mainland and Asia, but as technology grew, planes and ships no longer have to stop in Hawaii anymore for refueling. We are also islands, so land is scarce and as a result housing is expensive so the workforce pool is limited. Many of our industries, like tourism, also rely on a pristine environment so we have existing regulations to protect our environment. To improve these conditions, the state will need to support existing and emerging industries through grants and tax credits to help them expand. We will also need to look at ways we can remove regulations that have been in place for years that are no longer needed due to the changing times.
I believe that the legislature needs to be a full-time legislature and thus prohibit legislators from holding outside employment, this would prevent conflicts of interests. I would like to see us ban fundraising all together during the legislative session. Right now, non-incumbents can hold fundraisers, and it allows for special interests to threaten sitting elected officials to donate to their challengers to pass their bills.
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