DPP releases Annual Report on the status of land use

News release from DPP, Dec 23, 2020

The Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) has released its Annual Report on the status of land use on O‘ahu for fiscal year ending 2019. 

The report focuses on population trends, housing construction activities, land use approvals, and other trends relating to the city’s eight development and sustainable communities plans. The information is intended to help the City Council, other elected officials, government agencies, the development community, and interested citizens understand how growth is occurring and how the development objectives of the city are being met. This year’s report provides new data summaries by development plan (DP) areas, sub-areas within the DP areas, and neighborhood areas.

The report predates the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and projections did not account for the social and economic disruptions occurring now and into the near future.

Some of the highlights of the 2019 report:

• Based on projects in the development pipeline and projects announced by developers, the current shortage of 9,750 units is expected to gradually increase to more than 10,000 units by 2027, but over the long-run there is an anticipated surplus of 7,300 units by 2050.
• A shortage of affordable housing units is projected to continue over the next decade, with nearly two-thirds of these units needed for households earning 80 percent or below of the area median income.
• The population distribution continues to trend in a direction consistent with General Plan policies.
• Low to extremely low income households continue to be the most impacted by housing costs, with the number of households in 2017 and 2018 being about 10 percentage points worse off than in 2010.

“Although the current pandemic has severely impacted our residents and the local economy, construction on major projects continue and we remain hopeful that we can address the housing shortage, especially the addition of much needed affordable housing,” said Kathy Sokugawa, DPP acting director.

A copy of the report is available at https://bit.ly/2KOTdtY.

PBN: Oahu affordable housing shortage worsened in FY 2019