The Maui County Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee conducted a preliminary review last week of the Department of Housing in preparation for the Council’s annual budget deliberations.

Mayor Richard Bissen is scheduled to present his proposed fiscal 2027 budget this morning (March 25). The committee is chaired by Council Member Nohelani U’u-Hodgins.

In his opening remarks, Housing Director Richard Mitchell began by introducing his team and then addressing what he said is a persistent question.

“Everyone always asks the Department of Housing not what we’ve had to do administratively to stand up the department, but rather, ‘How many units have we built?’ That’s the first question even though standing up a new department is an incredible amount of work,” Mitchell said.

His presentation can be found on YouTube here. It begins at time stamp 1:51.13.

Regarding the question of the number of housing units built by the department, Mitchell said that, since the Housing Department’s inception on July 1, 2024, “over 800 affordable rental units and workforce homes have been constructed and made available to county residents.”

He went on to list several projects, including Kaiāulu o Kūku‘ia, Kaulana Mahina and two phases of Hale O Piʻikea. Kaiāulu o Kūku‘ia celebrated its grand opening Oct. 16. That project includes Hawaiʻi’s first Bezos Academy preschool.

For a complete list of affordable housing projects, see a screenshot below of a portion of an infographic provided by the Office of the Mayor Communications Team.

“As you see, we’ve pushed forward on a lot of projects,” he said.

But Mitchell said what’s not often discussed is “a lot of the administrative work that we’ve had to do.”

The department started off with 37 staff members, and now it’s up to 47, with a couple more authorized but unfilled, he said, pointing out the importance of having a fully staffed department.

The initial expectation had been that the new department was “going to be able to run the mile in a minute, but we weren’t staffed to do that,” he said.

The department also has implemented seven or eight office policy directives, when the department had none to begin with.

The department set up the Housing Advisory Board, which had its first meeting last month. Another meeting is scheduled for next month.

On its website, the department also has a Maui County Affordable Housing Dashboard. There, a “user-friendly interface” can help residents find project locations, income eligibility requirements, status updates for units in developments and existing affordable housing rentals.

“That dashboard will continue to be improved with time,” Mitchell said.

Regarding housing data, he said: “We’ve located over 100 residential workforce housing agreements that were not in a database, and we plan to make sure they’re databased so they’re available to the public.”

The department also has located an “enormous amount of documents that relate to housing credits,” he said. “They were not data based, and we intend to database those so that we can validate the credits through the marketplace and make sure it’s transparent to the entire community.”

And the department inherited other things.

“I can’t tell you the amount of equipment and furnishings that we’ve had to remove from the department. I will just say it’s a lot,” Mitchell told committee members. “I stopped counting when I got to about 154 drawer steelcase cabinets on the shop floor because I realized that there were years and years of cabinets and documents that had not been reviewed. So, by my count, we’ve now gotten rid of over 50 of those cabinets.”

In reviewing documents, the new Housing Department staff found one document dating back to “maybe 1971, so well beyond any reasonable retention period.”

“And that goes to show the amount of work we had to do to understand what was in the department and how we either manage all the information that was there and begin the process of decluttering the office,” he said.

He also told committee members that there were more than 150 banker’s boxes stacked in the office of the prior (Department of Housing and Human Concerns) Housing Section. That section had “gone through two prior moves and, during the process, things were simply boxed and stacked. And so when the new department started, we had to figure out what all these things were.”

Cassiopia Yamashita, Housing Programs administrator, reported that, overall for fiscal year 2026, which ends June 30, there are 16 projects funded with $68.6 million in affordable housing funds.

“These projects will assist 959 units, and I use that word ‘assist’ because that’s the word that is used in the reporting requirement in the county code. But it could mean maintenance repairs, construction development, all of those things.”

One project has already been completed, a water systems development project for Kilohana Makai, she said.

In other updates, the department has released a request for proposals for the Hale ʻO Lāʻie, the former Haggai Institute in Kīhei, is one of five affordable housing projects in various stages of development, according to department staff. A mandatory, onsite pre-proposal conference was held on March 12. The deadline for a notice of the intent to offer a proposal and submission of questions is March 27. The department aims to select a tender on June 5.

The department’s rental assistance program – administered through nonprofit agencies such as Women Helping Women, Maui Economic Opportunity Inc., Family Life Center and Ka Hale A Ke Ola – provided assistance to 231 households in the first half of the current fiscal year.

There’s also a voluntary deed restriction program being piloted on Molokaʻi.

According to the department, guidelines for the program are being modified and clarified in working with the Department of the Corporation Counsel. The modified guidelines are aimed at streamlining the process to carry out the program. The application and review process is expected to be announced in April, with the program anticipated to serve at least five households beginning in June.

The department also is working on rolling out its first-time homebuyers program, with three households assisted this fiscal year with an expenditure of $60,000. Overall, $1 million is budgeted in revolving funds for the program.

The department is considering holding two lotteries for the program, one that allow for the current eligibility criteria and the other specific to first-time homebuyers purchasing residential workforce housing properties.

During questioning from committee members, Council Member Tamara Paltin asked Mitchell if he would support various Maui County fee waivers for housing projects that are not 100% affordable. She pointed out that the county’s residential workforce housing policy exempts developers from paying fees when a project is 100% affordable, but imposes fees when projects are not fully affordable.

Mitchell said he’s supportive of fee waivers for projects that are not 100% affordable, but for “those portions that are affordable.”

“I am supportive of that because that helps us to reduce the cost and move along with expediting projects,” he said.

Last week Friday, council members passed Bill 48 on first reading. That measure would allow full or partial fee waivers for residential workforce housing units, even if the project is not fully affordable.

The measure waives 100% of fees for affordable and below-moderate-income workforce developments, while providing 50% fee waivers for residential workforce housing units that fall into the above-moderate-income category.