Affordable Housing for all

The median price of a Hawai’i home is $778,000. Honolulu workers need to make $39/hour to afford a 2-bedroom rental.

Many factors lead to the housing crisis, and AiKea is working on addressing a number of them:

The rise of illegal vacation rentals on websites like Airbnb

• There are an estimated 33,000 homes being used as vacation rentals in Hawai’i.
• On Oahu, 79.6% of AirBnB listings are categorized as “entire place,” meaning an entire housing unit is being rented out to visitors.
• A lack of enforcement of existing laws is a significant part of the problem. According to research conducted by Civil Beat in 2010, 749 investigations were launched that year in response to complaints about illegal short-term rentals units, but only 24 violations were found. Only 18 of the violating property owners were reprimanded, and only 2 of the violators were fined, with fines adding up to just $4,433
• Read a PDF version of our full report.

The onslaught of new development that isn’t truly affordable

There are a number of new development projects that we are following that are not building enough affordable housing and/or not building truly affordable housing. This includes:

• Sky Ala Moana (developer: Avalon)
• Hawaii Ocean Plaza (developer: California Investment Regional Center)