The One Oʻahu Podcast with Mayor Rick Blangiardi
On this week’s episode of the One O‘ahu Podcast, Kevin Auger, Executive Director for the Mayor’s Office of Housing, joins host Brandi Higa to talk about the 2025-2028 Strategic Housing Plan, exploring new funding models to create more affordable housing, and how restructuring the department will improve the City’s ability to deliver results.
To listen to the full episode, click here or search “One O‘ahu Podcast” wherever you get your podcasts. The One O‘ahu Podcast is available on:
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2025-2028 Strategic Housing Plan
The City and County of Honolulu’s Office of Housing (HOU) has released the 2025-2028 Strategic Housing Plan, a bold initiative to expand housing opportunities for residents of all income levels across O‘ahu.
“We’re moving from a policy platform to an executing platform, a platform where we actually partner with development professionals in the field to deliver more housing,” explained Kevin Auger.
For a link to the City and County of Honolulu’s Strategic Housing Plan click here.
New funding models
Existing funding sources for affordable housing, including General Obligation Bonds, Private Activity Bonds, and the Affordable Housing Fund (Ordinance 7-19), are limited. The City is committed to exploring new financing strategies that will expand resources and create additional opportunities for housing development.
“Beyond the private activity bond program, we also need to develop our own independent means of financing these projects,” said Auger. “A key part to the plan is reworking City policies to make housing development faster, more efficient.”
One model the City is aggressively exploring is Multi-Family Taxable Revenue Bonds—a tool that lowers costs for developers and gets housing built faster.
Restructuring the Department
For nearly three decades, the City has lacked a centralized housing department. As announced in Mayor Blangiardi’s 2024 State of the City address, the City plans to consolidate its housing programs under the proposed Department of Housing and Land Management (DHLM).
“When we initially started looking at how to structure a housing department, we had to look across many, many departments because the functions were actually spread out amongst various departments.”
This restructuring will improve efficiency, accelerate project delivery, and enhance coordination of housing initiatives.