The only way Maui County, and Hawaii in general, will be able to navigate through this housing crisis is if the state and county governments develop and build public housing.

Public housing has seen much success in other parts of the world, such as Singapore and Austria, and has made housing affordable and simple for its citizens.

We would be able to spend our money on things that we actually want, instead of dumping our entire paychecks on giant monthly mortgage payments and overpriced home insurance.

There are candidates in this election that claim that “public-private partnerships” between the local government and developers are the main way we can end this housing crisis, or that we need to provide tax breaks and credits to help subsidize the “cost of housing development.”

These large developers have no shame in asking for subsidies while bringing in wheelbarrows of cash into their own bank accounts. You can look at the Lahaina Front Street Apartments where the developers received $15 million in tax credits from the government to keep their apartments affordable, and then turned around and brazenly attempt to raise the rent back to the point where some of its residents would no longer be able to stay there.

They were completely willing to kick our uncles and aunties and their kids from their own home just to make more money.

If we must spend a lot to build housing, we might as well do it ourselves.

Marston Lau

Kihei