Increasing Workforce Housing on Maui

"My goal in this paper is to offer land use policy changes to help expedite and facilitate construction of new housing units. These changes will not require expenditure of public funds for new programs, and they may instead reduce the amount of subsidy spent on a per-project basis. I will suggest regulatory approaches to facilitate and incentivize the creation of new housing that meets the needs of households in the 80%-120% AMI range. My proposals cover strategies for tactfully increasing residential densities, introducing transfer of development rights (TDR), and planning for parking mindfully, inter alia. Given the limited production of infill housing in both Wailuku and Kahului in recent years, these proposals deliberately set the goal of making it easier for workforce households to continue to have the option to live in more convenient, job-accessible, and sustainable locations on Maui." I evaluated my policy proposals by deploying a financial pro forma model of a residential site and analyzing how policy changes could increase the likelihood of the site housing more people.