Affordable rentals hard to find

[urbanguy]

Affordable rentals hard to find

Hawai'i's tightest home rental market in 25 years is taking its toll on people like Eddie Smith.

The 55-year-old veteran has medical problems and a Section 8 rental subsidy that expires soon. He is too young for senior housing and after four months of searching has had no luck finding an affordable home.

Meanwhile, he is living at the Institute for Human Services.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Smith said from the homeless shelter. "I'm going to keep looking through the paper and places people tell me about. I'm checking all of them out. I guess I'll still be here at IHS awhile longer."

This is the flip side to Hawai'i's booming housing market, a double whammy born of decades of not building affordable housing and aggravated now by a rental market that is shrinking

[Wendell FOX]

sad to see this happening; but I assume Honolulu's homeless problems aren't that bad as it's only a medium-sized city, and with the other article, is growing in jobs.

[urbanguy]

^For its size though the homeless population is pretty damn huge its in the thousands! The homeless are scattered though you'll find many in the city as well as way out in the burbs living on the beach or parks. The economy is booming but the problem a lot of these homeless are having which the first story in this article hits on is that its hard to find an affordable place to get started the inventory is so low that prices have been jacked up and the remaining have been placed on the market for sale cause of low interest rates and most of the newer residential condos going up are mostly luxury and the like so its not looking good for the unfortunate and well there havent been any affordables built in like forever which something they city is finally gonna address with the new bill being proposed to build!