28-02-2025
Honolulu City Council looks at ADUs to bolster housing supply
HONOLULU (KHON2) — Increasing housing supply is the target of a bill that just passed its third reading in the Honolulu City Council. It extends accessory dwelling unit fee waivers set to expire.
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'Bill 63 expands the sewer waivers, permitting fee waivers, the grading and stockpile. My cousins live with my grandma, and this is really a chance for local families to be able to add on additional space for family members,' said City Councilmember Tyler Dos Santos-Tam.
Pushback on the bill has been sparse, but some residents are concerned about parking availability and neighborhood character.
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'Other issues that we have, of course, is the capacity of our neighborhoods, things like sewer capacity, parking, and all of these other issues that we as the council and the mayor through the administration are also gonna have to work on in order to really, make a dent in our housing crisis.' Dos Santos-Tam said.
The bill has garnered support from entities like the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and the Building Industry Association of Hawaii. Last year, the state passed a bill that allows for at least two additional dwelling units per residential lot.
'So we've seen, several hundred ADUs, some possibly over a thousand, being built over the past few years,' Dos Santos-Tam said. 'We hope that that pace increases. But, again, it's gonna take an all of the above approach really to start making a dent.'
Adding ADUs is just a part of local government plans to add housing inventory for residents.
'It's really difficult to build kinda small and medium apartments, and that's why we see out in the market.' Dos Santos-Tam said. 'We have a lot of, the sort of subdivision developments out in West Oahu. We have a lot of high rises coming up in town, but those kinds of small and medium apartments really haven't been built, the kind of things you might see in Makiki or McCully. So we're looking at changing the standards for how we build these small apartments. In addition, of course, we need to also look at office conversions. We have a couple of these downtown office buildings that are practically vacant, and so that's also gonna help to transform our downtown area.'
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Bill 63 has been transmitted to Mayor Rick Blangiardi, who has until March 13 to return it.
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