Like many of us, I'm living with the experience of increasing costs changing my buying behavior due to federal mismanagement of trade and foreign wars. HECO's price hikes have increased our energy costs by $100 a month in my house, gas is more expensive for my car, and my buying power at the grocery store has dramatically decreased so we're buying less food for more money. All these recent increased costs on top of the already high cost of living has left a lot of hesitancy in my household over our ability to afford a good life, raise a family, explore job opportunities, or pursue higher education. These pressures create long term underlying anxiety in day to day life.
Make housing cost accessible to working families. The sole focus of our government should be on lowering the cost of rent across the state through a building boom. It would be nice if people could afford to purchase a home but with elevated construction costs, slow approval processes, and increased interest rates the cost of borrowing money to purchase a home is no longer comparable on a monthly cost basis to renting. If you can keep your housing cost at or below 30% of your income everything else starts to ease and people have more opportunity to stretch their dollars toward other needs and wants--the only way we achieve that is maximizing housing options for our community.
The low wages is the most straight forward to address: increase minimum wage to a living wage. Lagging opportunity is more complex because it requires diversification of our economy--which is not something the government can hand select and choose. Diversification of our economy will come when people live close to others, have the option to explore ideas--try and fail those ideas, but also try and succeed--to create new industry, new economic opportunity, and new jobs for our communities. The best way we can encourage an environment where new ideas can blossom and grow is to invest in two things 1) dense housing opportunities in urban areas, existing business areas, and around our public education centers (both DOE and UH); and 2) long term investments in the UH system. Our economy can diversify when we build abundant housing in proximity to others and when our UH system can invest in the next generation of thinkers, workers, and entrepreneurs of our state.
Again, see above, increase the minimum wage to a living wage.
Increase the supply of housing across the state year over year consistently. UHERO has done great work in their recent working paper "The Housing Market Impacts of New Honolulu Condo" (2026) showing that one new condo in Ala Moana opened up an estimated 500 vacancies in older, cheaper housing allowing residents who can afford a brand new unit to vacate an older one that is cheaper. This research from UHERO as well as national research all point to the same solution to lower housing cost: build more new housing to make older housing more accessible.
It is impacted by out-of-state buyers but I wouldn't categorize it as "constrained", the constraint is artificial "housing production caps" that the counties whether intentionally or unintentionally impose on new housing developments through challenging discretionary approvals, slow permitting, and under zoning. Year after year using purchaser data from Title Guaranty dating back to 2015 shows that the majority of residential housing buyers in Hawaii are residents of Hawaii every quarter. If we want to advantage residents in our constrained housing market we can develop the tools to do so through deed restrictions limiting purchasing or occupancy to residents, down payment assistance programs, and enabling community land trusts to develop and purchase property in their communities.
Pre approve and permit to the highest allowed density and height of state owned properties particularly in urban areas, provide low interest rate and public financing options in partnership with private equity, and establish a beneficial developer fee and competitive RFP process so that the majority of the regulatory barriers are out of the way and it's competitive for local developers to bid on the project. Additionally, enabling legislation that would allow for pre-fab, pre-cast, and other innovate technologies that reduce material and construction costs to not just government projects but private ones as well.
Eliminate GET on food costs, it's a regressive tax that hits our working and lower income residents the hardest. Incentivize diversity of local farms selling to residents through making it easier for farmers to provide worker housing, build green houses, provide GET and tax credits to partially subsidize operations, and make it easier to sell direct to consumer. On the consumer side expand two state food programs: DaBux which provides 50% off of local produce, and Food RX which utilizes Section 1115 of Medicaid to essentially allow healthcare providers to write a prescription for local produce we can expand and invest in both programs to make them more accessible and available to residents and reduce the cost of groceries while also investing in our agricultural economy.
Number one for childcare is paid family leave and paid medical leave which would have allowed new parents afford time with their child instead of outsourcing costly care when parents could be home with their child and not fear loosing wages they desperately need to afford a baby and also have a job to return to. Second would be expanding and accelerating its investment in universal pre-K through the "Ready Keiki" initiative which provides free pre-k to a limited number of classrooms. Continuing this investment and expanding the program as well providing paid family and medical leave should be thought of as economic infrastructure, these policies bridge the gap between birth and pre-K, closing some of the most expensive years of childcare so parents aren't forced to choose between their job and their baby. Parents who stay attached to the workforce return at far higher rates and if we want to solve our labor shortage and stop pricing working families out of the state then paid family leave and universal pre-k are necessities.
Young persons tax credit, people 18-35 are leaving our state in droves. We have the third worst retention rate of 20 year old's in the country and are loosing a large share of our younger local residents--that's our future workforce leaving for better opportunity, better financial realities on the mainland. Our tax structure is designed to keep wealth in the hands of an older generation through borrowing against the future of our young people and the future of the state, which leads to losing the work force that is supposed to fill our nursing shortages, teacher shortages, and will eventually pay into a tax base that keeps Hawaii afloat. A targeted credit for young workers and young families would signal to that generation that we are invested in them and their future here in Hawaii.
This ranking came out of CNBC and they noted childcare access was specifically cited as also lowering quality of life, which historically has been one of the nationally recognized benefits of living in Hawaii (good quality of life). Workers can't afford to live here so local businesses can't find or keep the staff they need, and it's a challenge to launch a new business here. In addition to addressing cost of living issues so workers can stay here, we can provide supports to help local businesses navigate our complex permitting, licensing, and compliance system as well as examine these processes to see what we can cut back or do away with entirely. We won't be able to diversify our economy if government continues to get in the way of new ideas and new businesses emerging.
Our government on both the state and local levels is one more concerned about process for the sake of process than results. The legislature produces studies that get shelved, audits without follow through, and no real consequences for agencies found to not be executing their duties. I support requiring agencies to publicly report on dated implementation plans within a set timeframe after an audit finding, so we can see if recommendations were implemented or ignored. I would also support fiscal notes on legislation, so lawmakers and the public know what the true cost of a bill is before it passes. And I also believe we need more churn in the legislature itself; long uninterrupted incumbency is part of why process becomes the point instead of the outcome. New voiced bring urgency that entrenched ones lost long ago: we don't need more studies sitting on shelves, we need a government that works for us and delivers.
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