Across Hawai‘i, there’s broad agreement on one thing: We need more housing that local families can actually afford. But financial speculators and government enablers are using the housing crisis to strip away safeguards for livability, to build for profit, while local families continue struggling to stay rooted in the communities they call home. This legislative session has produced policies promising affordability that instead benefit investors.

Bills like House Bill 1740 remove basic protections and open new opportunities for speculation rather than ensuring long-term affordability. While the bill is framed as a way to preserve housing for “local” residents, that term is loosely defined, and the structure of the policy tells a different story. It lowers the owner-occupancy requirement from 10 years to one, enabling well-connected buyers to flip their “affordable” unit after a single year or rent it out for market rate prices.

It also eliminates key safeguards by allowing buyers who own other property to purchase these units with no income caps. That means someone earning $500,000 a year and already owning a home could still qualify to buy these new units. Essentially, taxpayer-supported housing could become a one-year stepping stone to a market-rate investment — rather than providing the long-term stability working-class families need.

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Other measures this session raise similar concerns, whether by weakening inclusionary zoning (House Bill 1741, Senate Bill 2190) or offering public funding without ensuring local owner-occupancy and lasting affordability (HB 1732). Taken together, these bills reflect a broader pattern of further moving Hawai‘i toward an investment-driven housing system, leaving local families without the protections they need to remain in a market distorted by global demand.

Underlying many of these proposals is a belief that building more housing will “free up” less expensive homes, rendering them more affordable. As Mayor Rick Blangiardi recently said, when developers build at the top, “people move up,” creating availability throughout the market. That filtering or trickle-down idea is shaping housing policy across the state. This is an irresponsible position that does not reflect Hawai‘i’s realities.

Over the years, large numbers of luxury and market-rate units have been built in Kaka‘ako, Kapolei and Mililani. Yet housing has not become more affordable — it has worsened. According to UHERO, 56% of Hawai‘i renter households are rent burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing, and 28% are severely rent burdened, spending over half their income just to stay housed.

On O‘ahu, more than 40% of residents are renters, meaning a significant share of housing is owned as investments rather than by the people who live in them. Hawai‘i is also an international real estate market, with demand from wealthy, global buyers. Without meaningful protections, new housing (no matter how it is labeled) can easily be absorbed by investors instead of helping local families. Government-supported projects should prioritize long-term stability for families, not investor-driven demand.

Kaka‘ako was intended as a model for workforce housing. Instead, it has become a case study in what happens when new supply enters a global real estate market without sufficient guardrails. Estimates suggest that 65% or more are investor-owned, reflecting demand from outside buyers and second-home investors. Simply building more homes is not enough.

This is the reality Hawai‘i faces. We are not just building for local families. We are building into an international real estate market where demand from wealthier, global buyers can quickly dominate new supply. So in Hawai‘i, market-rate development does not “filter down” to local affordability.

Developers often claim affordable units are hard to sell or rent. But that points to a deeper mismatch. Many units are still priced beyond what local families can afford, or they are not designed to meet the needs of working households. Studios and one-bedrooms with no parking may pencil out for developers, but many local families are not going to take their kids to the beach or school on a bicycle. Tradesmen and landscapers aren’t hauling their toolboxes and lawnmowers on the bus. Allowing developers to ignore the ways housing functions as a home base doesn’t solve the problem. It just allows them to take more profit while forcing locals to figure out how to live in the world not built for us.

What is needed are policies grounded in how our housing market actually works, not in the hope that it will fix itself by just building more and deregulating. Such policies are not rocket science. Tying housing costs to local wages, rent control, tenant protections, housing trusts, enforcing restrictions against short term rentals, public housing, requiring that taxpayer-supported housing remain affordable in perpetuity, and taxing second, third, and fourth homes. These are solutions that can be used to protect long-term affordability and keep local families in Hawai‘i—not to create new opportunities for speculation.