Niu Valley resident Jeannine Johnson calls two bills state lawmakers have advanced “monster houses on steroids.”

The companion measures in the House and Senate would allow homeowners in residential neighborhoods statewide to subdivide their lots into parcels as small as 2,000 square feet and be able to build three or more detached or attached residential units on each.

That would mean a residential lot of 10,000 square feet could technically have as many as five parcels with at least three units on each lot for a total of 15 dwellings.

Just when Honolulu County is struggling to get a handle on the overbuilding of monster houses in many Oahu neighborhoods, this is a huge step backward.

Instead of monster homes, the legislation would allow the development of monster lots dotted with small subdivided residential parcels with housing units extending out to property boundaries or a single duplex or triplex walk-up apartment building where currently just one or two family homes are allowed.

Honolulu City Council Chair Tommy Waters says if the legislation passes in its current form “it could do irreparable damage to many of our communities” and make it more difficult for Honolulu County to stop monster house proliferation.

Johnson lives in her childhood home in Niu with her extended family, including her sister and her sister’s adult children.

“If this amount of residential densification is allowed to happen, our neighborhood would not be the same,” she said.

It could also make life stressful for homeowners who want to keep their homes as single-family dwellings but become hemmed in by neighbors who max out their properties with many additional units.

Johnson is secretary of the Kuliouou-Kalani Iki Neighborhood Board, which is expected to approve a resolution Thursday opposing the further densification of residential neighborhoods. Kaimuki and Hawaii Kai neighborhood boards have already approved similar measures.

Under the bills that are still advancing, the state would require all the counties to allow increased residential density rather than let the counties decide individually how and where more neighborhood density might work.

On Oahu today, only one residential unit and one ohana unit are generally allowed on any lot that is 3,500 square feet or larger. 

Sen. Stanley Chang introduced the measure in the Senate, Rep. Luke Evslin in the House. They contend that increasing allowable density would produce many more housing units to encourage people to stay in Hawaii rather than leave the state to seek more affordable housing.

They say the counties still would have the authority to impose their own restrictions at the development stage of a permit to limit overbuilding on the subdivided lots.

Land use lawyer David Frankel says developers could sue a county if they felt a county was denying them rights they had under state law to build more dwellings on the allowable smaller lots.

“This legislation would turn state zoning law upside down. It would undermine county authority and home rule and expose the counties to lawsuits,” Frankel said.

Affordable Housing Is No Guarantee

The bills are misleading because they call for increased building density in the state’s “urban land use districts.” That sounds like city centers such as downtown Honolulu or Kakaako or lands around the rail system but the state’s designated urban lands are almost every residential neighborhood on every island in Hawaii except for conservation and agriculture lands.

Supporters of allowing more residential density are government agencies and departments that regulate business and land as well as real estate associations and affordable housing advocates. The proponents say allowing more density in urban lands would keep the country country and would decrease Hawaii’s soaring housing costs.

However the bills do not require that the additional units produced on densely packed lots be affordable.

Clearly the opposite would happen. Allowing more residential units on a property would make the parcels more alluring and valuable to land speculators and out-of-state investors eager to subdivide.  

They then could drive up housing prices by charging as much money as the market would bear to rent the units or sell the units if they were able to condominiumize them.

“The same bad actors who built monster houses and operated illegal vacation rentals will be the same bad actors to take advantage of this increase in density,” said Kaimuki resident Christine Otto Zaa.

And she says allowing density on almost every piece of residential property in the state including places we think of as rural such as Kaneohe, Hauula, Laie and Kahuku would not keep the country country.

Zaa was speaking on behalf of Hi Good Neighbor, a group that has rallied to keep monster houses and illegal vacation rentals from driving up property values in their neighborhoods.

She says the way to produce more needed housing is to outlaw short-term vacation rentals, put restrictions on out-of-state land speculators and create more housing units that local residents can afford

There is not enough room in many older areas with their narrow streets and lack of sidewalks for the kind of overflow street parking that would come with higher density.

“And we don’t even need to go on about the lack of parking and the lack of safety with the increase in cars. And how do you move people away from using their cars when rail won’t touch most communities, when the families need to shuttle keiki and kupuna?” she wrote in testimony opposing the bill.

Zaa said the legislation to greatly increase housing density took her and many other community advocates by surprise.  

It had only a single joint hearing before three committees in the house with scant notice — the hearing notice was posted on Friday, Feb. 9 for a Monday, Feb. 12 hearing —  before it was approved in a full house vote Thursday, Feb. 29 and sent to the Senate for its consideration.

At the Thursday floor session, Rep. Bert Kobayashi decried the lack of time opponents had to speak out.

“The bill was on a fast track. People were not given time to oppose it. That resulted in a lot of testimony in the hearing in support from people in the industry related to development, construction, building supplies and real estate,” he said.

Rep. Lisa Marten was also critical about the lack of time community members had to prepare to speak out against the radical change it would bring to their neighborhoods.

“This would basically make monster homes legal,” Marten said.

She says the legislation also would result in environmental damage when cooling greenery and trees are chopped down to make room for more houses and permeable ground is covered in concrete, which could create flooding.

She said everyone agrees additional housing is needed but it should be more carefully planned around core city centers and rail stations. For example, in Kailua’s town center but not the residential suburbs.

Evslin who introduced the bill defended it in a floor speech Thursday saying, “Allowing up to two ADU units on a lot would make a gentle difference … but this is a way to retain our residents who make our communities special.”

He said it was not only people from the building industry that supported it but also all four county planning departments.

Honolulu Planning and Permitting Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna wrote in an email to Civil Beat that although she supports producing more housing, she has reservations about the state mandating that counties allow more residential density when each county is different and should be able to guide development based on its particular circumstances.

She says Honolulu is already densely built, housing 70% of the state’s population and needs to guard vigorously to prevent more monster house-stye overbuilding.

I agree that it’s best to let each county decide where more building density makes sense and to build more residential units in high rises in city core neighborhoods with easy access to public transportation — not in suburbs that are already crammed with housing and rapidly losing more and more green space and trees to development.