The challenges of Hawai'i’s public housing system, as urgent an issue as they represent, are not problems that are easily disentangled.

So while the Legislature’s good intentions were evident in a pair of bills passed this past session, both seeking to chip away at the weaknesses of the system, the timing of the measures is less than ideal.
Both measures — House Bill 1692 and Senate Bill 1160 — would demand more than the Hawai'i Public Housing Authority can deliver in a short time, and when funding will be more restricted than ever. The authority should, at its meeting today, recommend that Gov. Linda Lingle veto the bills.
Specifically, the House measure creates a pilot project to limit the length of time a tenant can live in public housing. One of the state’s public housing projects would be selected for the test. HPHA Executive Director Chad Taniguchi rightly wonders how a working group, including tenants, will be able to select the place by an Aug. 29 deadline, or what will happen if it fails to do so.
The bill also would require development of a transition plan to help prepare tenants to move into market housing by seeking subsidy vouchers or other means. Helping people move toward greater self-sufficiency is a worthy goal, but crafting such a plan will take more time and public input than this bill will allow.
The Senate bill also attempts needed solutions, including streamlining the process of evicting tenants who break rules and holding them accountable for their own vandalism. That part is fine, but the bill also would assess all tenants 1 percent of the cost of maintaining the common areas, which are not defined. It’s unrealistic to expect people in need of subsidized housing to pay an extra fee for upkeep that should be covered by the basic rent.
It’s also unfair. Years of neglect by the state — with collapsing garbage chutes, broken-down elevators and dangerous stairwells — shouldn’t be corrected by penalizing those who can least afford it.
Few problems seem more pressing than boosting the state’s affordable housing supply and making it more sustainable. But it’s a problem that can’t be solved on the timetable set by these bills. Neither does the burden belong entirely with an agency that can’t even seem to handle bringing the existing stock of dwellings up to decent standards.