Making the Case for Increased Urban Density

If we want to increase the supply of homes for local people, we need to build up, says Alana Kobayashi Pakkala, CEO of Kobayashi Group, a local, family-owned development company.

“I think it’s inevitable that in order to meet the housing demands of our community, we need more vertical development,” she says. “I do believe in keeping the country country and trying to preserve our rural areas to the best of our abilities, and so really the answer to that is to get more people living in the urban core where high-rises are already part of the lifestyle.”

In urban areas, the infrastructure for new housing – roads, sewers, utility lines – already exists to a large degree, which reduces the cost of building new homes.

Economist Paul Brewbaker has long advocated for greater urban density, following two principles of what he calls “bumper sticker economics.” The first principle is “Keep the Country Country: Make the City City.” If Hawai‘i wants more housing for local people that doesn’t sprawl into rural areas, he says, it must increase the density of its existing urban areas.

Brewbaker’s second principle of bumper sticker economics is “Density is Proximity, Proximity is Mobility,” which means that when people live close to jobs, stores, restaurants and entertainment, long commutes are eliminated.

Kobayashi has a similar mindset. The problem, she says, is that a lot of Hawai‘i is zoned only for single-family homes, which cost a lot more to build than multifamily homes.

“There is very little land zoned for multifamily at all, and very little land that’s zoned for urban density that would actually be cost-effective, where you could actually deliver homes at a lower cost that’s accessible to our kama‘āina population,” she says. “If you think about it, the higher you can build, the less expensive it is to deliver homes.”

Existing infrastructure also reduces the cost of new housing. “It all comes down to where you’re pulling your infrastructure from – where you’re accessing sewer, water, gas, electrical, etc. – and every district would have certain capacities,” she says.

Hawai‘i has the highest construction costs in the country – so building homes will always be expensive, Pakkala says, but greater density mitigates those costs.

Kuilei Place | Photo: Courtesy of Nan Inc.

“The dream of your very first home being a single-family home with a yard – that’s a wonderful dream, but I think it sits outside of reality, outside the grasp of the majority of our community,” she says. “But a condominium is within the grasp of more people.”

Then later on, after a family has built equity in a condominium, maybe they trade up to a bigger condo or a single-family home. “That’s the whole concept of the housing ladder,” Pakkala says.

Most homeowners in Hawai‘i are older, while young adults have the lowest rate of homeownership. Less than 32.7% of people in Hawai‘i born between 1981 and 1996 own their own homes, the third lowest rate in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“This is our future,” Pakkala says. “These are our [future] leaders. And if we can’t deliver homes to that generation, then our workforce issues, our out-migration issues, are just going to continue.”

While some people might have doubts about condo life, Pakkala says it gives her and her family of four freedom and a sense of community that they wouldn’t have in a single-family house.

“I’ve been living in condos for the majority of my last 22 years of life,” she says, “and I really love [it]. … I think that the benefits far outweigh the sacrifices.”

She says that in her condo she is free to have personal space as well as shared amenities that she wouldn’t have in a single-family house.

“For me, with a family, a pretty typical family in Hawai‘i – two working parents to two young kids – the gift of time is probably the most impactful thing for me. Living in a condominium versus when I lived in a home, I spend more time with my children. I’m not maintaining the home in the same way with the same amount of time.”