It is our time to have 6,000 apartments built in the 80s and 90s for our workers, but changed by Richard Minatoya, a former Maui Corporation Counsel deputy, to visitor use.

Without this housing available, Maui County Council paid Hawaiian Community Assets to create a plan to address our housing crisis.

The goal of the plan was to build 5,000 homes in five years. That plan, which would cost $1 billion to implement, is on council members’ shelves collecting dust.

So, building homes for our local people seems to be too expensive and apartments rented to visitors are not unavailable for our workers.

As a result, we see the movement of local people to the US mainland to find homes for themselves and their families. Our children and grandchildren cannot longer afford to live here and this means that Maui will lose the aloha and ohana that we have long cherished.

It is our time. Tell the council to pass Bill 9 to reverse the Minatoya opinion and let local residents find housing in the apartments that are now transient vacation rentals.

Stan Franco

Haiku