September 29, 2024 News Read > Hawaii Free Press

Hawaii Daily News Read

Sunday, September 29, 2024

September 29, 2024 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 7:15 PM :: 1049 Views

I. T. E. M. (Incompetence Takes Everyone’s Money)

Will rent stabilization reduce housing costs? Hardly.

Hawaii’s 14 Largest Cities Ranked by Cost of Living

Schatz: Democrats risk losing financially struggling young progressives over housing

Shapiro: … New York Times columnist Ezra Klein had Schatz on his podcast last month and praised him as “a very influential policy voice” and “one of the Democrats in the Senate doing the most work” on those issues.

Schatz told Klein that Hawaii’s affordable housing shortage points up an outdated mindset among fellow progressives who he believes are overly attuned to preservation and allergic to construction.

He said community engagement can’t be twisted to enable “a few people who already have homes to hijack the whole process above the needs of the many.”

Schatz said Democrats risk losing financially struggling young progressives if they think it’s fellow progressives who are preventing them from making a living.

Schatz lauded long-standing progressive environmental safeguards for “stopping bad stuff,” but said that “the new progressive movement is not just about stopping bad stuff, it’s about building good stuff.”

He called on Democrats to clear the immense state and county regulatory thicket to get housing projects done.

“Housing is not that damn complicated, we just need to make it easier to build it,” he said.

“There is nothing progressive about stopping your neighbors from being able to live in the state of Hawaii.”…

Mar, 2024: Schatz Goes YIMBY

Aug, 2024: Schatz: “We have created housing scarcity on purpose”

read … David Shapiro: Ask Sen. Schatz anything and the answer is housing

Rebuild of homes destroyed in Kula fire runs into costly Cesspool upgrades

MN: … “We had a golden window,” said Ross, who lost his home on Kualono Place. “We could build unencumbered in a sense and not have to wait in line … because we knew Lahaina was a priority.”

But Ross and others in Kula feel that golden window is closing amid the long wait to get approvals and pay for the costly wastewater upgrades needed to rebuild their homes.

Now, with Lahaina’s residential fire debris cleanup complete and just a handful of homes under construction in Kula, residents worry progress in Upcountry is stalling.

“Kula was the first one to be cleared by the Army Corps (of Engineers),” Kyle Ellison, head of the nonprofit Mālama Kula, said during a meeting in Pukalani on Tuesday. “Now Kula is falling behind in the rebuild process, largely due to the bottleneck in the wastewater. So there’s an urgency to this that I just want to make sure comes out of this meeting tonight.”

The state Department of Health is considering changes that would allow Upcountry properties to use the cesspools they had before the fire, an exemption extended earlier this year to Lahaina. Residents hope this will help them rebuild more quickly.

But Kula, as is the rest of the state, is running up against a law passed by the state Legislature in 2017 that mandates all cesspools be eliminated in Hawai’i by 2050….

read … Rebuild of homes destroyed in Kula fire runs into costly wastewater upgrades

Maui lawmaker says millions of gallons of recycled waste water are going unused daily

HNN: … Maui County Council Member Tom Cook says more than three million gallons of this water go unused daily in West Maui….

It’s called R-1 water, one of the highest levels of wastewater treatment.

Council Member Cook said the county is already producing it at South and West Maui treatment plants.

However, because of a lack of infrastructure, Cook said much of that treated water is going unused and not getting to golf courses and agriculture sites that sometimes use drinking water….

He’s proposed a resolution urging the county to expand the use of R-1 water. He admits it would likely require 10s of millions of dollars in infrastructure upgrades.

“It’s being used broadly on the island. It’s just that by expanding the pipeline and storage tanks, we’re expanding the ability for other people to use it,” he explained.

In a statement, Maui Mayor Richard Bissen on Saturday said his administration supports the resolution, adding that the ability to convert irrigation water to R-1 correlates with the goal to direct more water to local housing….

The County’s Department of Environmental Management (DEM) has been collaborating with Councilmember Cook on an amended version of Reso 24-161, and it is anticipated to be referred to the WAI Committee for further review.

read … Maui lawmaker says millions of gallons of recycled waste water are going unused daily

Miske Gang: A job with benefits--Food, drinks, and protection

ILind: … Freitas describes the benefits of being in Miske’s good graces, which included regular food and drinks at Miske’s M Nightclub, later renamed Encore. But receiving those benefits required doing some things ….

read … A job with benefits: Food, drinks, and protection

Mafia News: Hawaii film tax credits keep thugs ‘working’

SA: … Hawaii taxpayers helped finance the series in 2023 with an estimated $215,162 in tax credits, according to a report submitted to the state Legislature earlier this year.

The report from the Hawaii Film Office listed the names of film projects with estimated credit claims for the first time in the subsidy program’s 27-year history. Previously, recipients of credits were listed only by the type of production, which includes movies, episodic shows and commercials.

For 2023, the biggest estimated credit was $5.7 million for a live-action remake of Disney’s 2002 animated movie “Lilo & Stitch.”

The second-biggest was $4.9 million for the fifth and final season of a “Magnum P.I.” reboot. The TV show was canceled by NBC last year after CBS decided to drop it after four seasons. The final episode aired early this year.

Another now-canceled TV series, “NCIS: Hawai‘i,” also had a big share of estimated credits in 2023, totaling $3.7 million for seasons two and three. CBS announced its cancellation in April….

In all, $21 million in credit claims are expected from 28 productions last year: eight commercials, seven feature films, seven TV series, three TV movies, two TV specials and one documentary.

“Red One,” a Christmas action-adventure comedy starring Dwayne Johnson, is one of the feature films and has an estimated $2.6 million credit claim.

Some of the commercials, and corresponding estimated claims, were for Aulani Resort ($88,438), First Hawaiian Bank ($123,705) and Kona Brewing Co. ($308,696).

The two TV specials were broadcasts of the 61st annual Merrie Monarch Festival ($120,465) and the 103rd annual Kamehameha Schools Song Contest ($65,752).

To qualify, a production must have a minimum of $100,000 in qualified spending, and the credit is a share of such spending — 22% on Oahu and 27% on the neighbor islands….

The Tax Foundation of Hawaii has called the program a “drain on the state treasury” with no rational basis for increasing and extending credits other than to keep pace with escalating incentives in other states.

A University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization analysis in 2021 recommended ending the program in 2030, saying the main reason productions film in Hawaii is access to the state’s natural and cultural capital.

Local economist Paul Brewbaker of TZ Economics also has long questioned the merit of the program, noting that a reboot of “Hawaii Five-0” that ran from 2010 to 2020 wasn’t likely going to be made in Georgia where attractive film tax credits exist….

REALITY: Miske Mob Were All Union Drivers on Set of Hawaii 5-0

read … Hawaii’s tax credits for film productions help boost the local economy

Activists Admit: Homeless Sweeps make bums accept shelter

HNN: … The kauhale in Iwilei will be the state’s 17th. The 58 units will be operated by the Institute for Human Services.

“We didn’t know at all that there was going to be a kauhale built next door to us,” said Iwilei resident Candice Kraughto. From her high rise, Kraughto can see where the kauhale is being built off Iwilei Road near Aala Park -- an area that’s been a magnet for the homeless for decades.

“We need to clear out the streets,” said State Homeless Coordinator John Mizuno. “It’s unfortunate, but for years this place has kinda looked like a third world country.”

“So you get the homeless into kauhale, you get them off the streets. You get those tents, the wooden structures, everything, away from the sidewalk and it’s a safer neighborhood,” he said.

The village will be just down the road from the Institute for Human Services, which operates a shelter that often reaches capacity after homeless sweeps.

(BINGO! Sweeps work! Reclaims our streets! Open more barracks-style shelters and sweep all the drug addicted bums into them!)

“We can see that sometimes people want to come in, especially when there’s a lot of enforcement. But if we don’t have enough beds, that’s going to be really difficult,” said IHS Executive Director Connie Mitchell. “So these kauhale, we’re hoping, will really open up some new beds and will really create flow for people to get to where they need to go.”…

HNN: City brings mobile homeless triage shelter to Kapolei

read … Officials try to ease concerns over ‘kauhale’ homeless village in Iwilei

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