Building Better Housing Policy Starts With Better Information

Over the past several months, we have been asking some important questions about Hawaii's long term rental housing market.

In the first article in this series, we looked at Hawaii's housing data gap and the surprising amount we do not know about the long term rental homes that already exist in our communities. In the second, we looked at the people behind those homes and why small, independent rental housing providers are too often misunderstood or simply missing from housing policy discussions.

Those two issues are connected.

We cannot create thoughtful policy for a housing market we do not fully understand, and we cannot understand that market without knowing more about the people and properties that make it work.

That brings us to the next question. How do we get better information?

Start With What We Need to Know

Before proposing another housing program, regulation, tax, or incentive, Hawaii should have a reliable understanding of its existing long term rental inventory.

How many long term rental homes are there? Where are they located? What types of properties are providing those homes? Are they condominiums, single family homes, accessory dwelling units, duplexes, or small apartment buildings? How much of our rental housing is provided by individuals with only one or two units? Perhaps most importantly, is our long term rental inventory growing, shrinking, or simply changing?

Right now, answering even some of these basic questions can require piecing together information from tax records, Census estimates, surveys, advertisements, and other sources. Each can tell us something about the market, but none gives us a complete picture. That matters because Hawaii is constantly making decisions intended to affect housing.

Hawaii Island and Kauai county councils created a property tax incentive designed to encourage long term rentals. On Oahu, the council repeatedly considers taxes to influence and/or change how property is used. The state legislature regularly considers new requirements affecting rental housing providers. Our tax dollars are used for public housing programs.

But how do we know whether those policies are working if we cannot reliably measure the market before and after they take effect?

Better information would give us that starting point.

Other Communities Have Already Recognized the Value of Knowing Their Rental Inventory

Rental registration is not a new concept. States and cities across the country have created registration systems for different reasons and designed them in very different ways.

Rhode Island requires residential rental properties to be registered statewide. Maryland maintains a registry focused on older rental properties as part of its lead safety program. Seattle and Boston operate local registration systems connected to housing quality and safety programs. The lesson for Hawaii is not that we should copy any one of these programs. In fact, we should not.

Some registration programs have become closely connected to inspections, enforcement, fees, and additional regulatory requirements. Those approaches understandably create concern among responsible rental housing providers, particularly small providers who already navigate an increasingly complicated regulatory environment.

Hawaii has an opportunity to start with a different question: What information do we actually need to make better housing policy?

A Registry Can Be a Starting Point, Not an Enforcement Program

A thoughtfully designed long term rental registry could provide Hawaii with something it currently lacks: a reliable picture of the homes being used for long term rental housing. At its most basic level, registration could identify that a property is being offered as a long term rental and provide a way to communicate with the person responsible for that property. That alone could be valuable.

Imagine being able to measure whether the number of long term rentals increased after a county adopted a tax incentive intended to encourage them. Imagine knowing whether certain neighborhoods were losing rental housing or gaining it. Imagine being able to communicate directly with housing providers when rental housing laws change, when assistance programs become available, or when communities are recovering from a disaster.

A registry could also give policymakers something they rarely have today: a direct connection to the people actually providing rental housing. That could change the conversation.

Instead of guessing why housing providers make certain decisions, we could ask them. Instead of assuming what might encourage an owner to keep a property in the long term rental market, we could collect information and measure the results. Instead of designing policy around anecdotes, we could begin with actual data. For HRHPA, that is the real opportunity.

The Details Matter

Supporting the concept of a rental registry does not mean supporting every possible version of one.

A poorly designed registry could become another layer of bureaucracy. Excessive fees, complicated reporting requirements, unnecessary collection of personal information, or automatic inspection requirements could discourage participation and create additional costs for the very people Hawaii needs to remain in the long term rental market. Those concerns should not be dismissed. They should shape the policy from the beginning.

If Hawaii eventually considers a long term rental registry, small independent rental housing providers should be involved in designing it. Registration should be simple. The information collected should have a clear purpose. Privacy protections should be established from the outset, and costs should be kept as low as possible. Most importantly, we should be clear about what problem we are trying to solve. The first purpose of a registry should be information.

Better Information Creates Better Policy

For years, Hawaii has debated how to create more housing. That conversation is important, but preserving the housing we already have matters too. Long term rental homes are part of Hawaii's housing infrastructure. Every time an existing home remains available to a local family, senior, student, military household, or working resident, that home continues to contribute to our housing supply without requiring a new development, a new appropriation, or years of permitting and construction.

We should understand that inventory just as seriously as we track the housing we hope to build. A long term rental registry will not solve Hawaii's housing crisis. It will not create thousands of homes overnight, reduce construction costs, or fix our permitting challenges. It can, however, give us something we desperately need before making the next housing policy decision: a better understanding of where we are starting. That is why a thoughtfully designed rental registry should be viewed as a first step, not a final solution.

Before we decide where Hawaii's housing policy should go next, we should understand the homes already housing our communities and the people who provide them. Better housing policy starts with better information.