chocolate. is a great place to get back to nature and see have beautifully placed in the. -- how beautiful a place can be. ♪ the c-span bus recently made the long journey to hawaii for the 39th stop of our 50's capital tour. join us all weekend to watch our visit to hawaii on c-span, book tv and american history tv. we will feature stops across the hawaiian islands showcasing the natural beauty, unique history and literary culture of the 50th date. ♪ host: we will turn now to the issue of affordable housing. we will turn to hawaii office of planning director leo asuncion

who is calling on skype to talk about the issue. leo good morning. ,guest: good morning, jesse. host: what do you define as affordable housing in the united states? guest: we and hawaii, there is always by the numbers. we can use the hud numbers, the area of median income, but it is also for a person to say what is affordable? is it 30% of your mortgage? here in hawaii it is 40% to 60% of your income towards your housing and transportation needs. what we do is we try to stick numbers and look at how you would locally, what is affordable for our residents. especially for us with a high cost of living.

host: what is hawaii doing to help people find affordable housing? is the state doing anything out of the ordinary to make sure people have a place to live? guest: what we are doing is trying to partner with our private developers here in the state. basically it is through the financing. the governor has set for himself a 10,000-unit goal by 2020. other studiesave that have been done where demand is upward of 66,000, of which about 22,500 would be affordable rentals. my office just completed a study on how we would get there, at least for the rental part.

that goal is by 2026 to have 22,500 affordable rental units completed for residents. we are looking at targeting the little gap area where 60% to 80% income.n no one really builds to that. that is a nationwide problem as well. host: put it in perspective for us mainlanders. is the problem of affordable housing worse in hawaii than the mainland united states? compare and contrast for us. guest: i think it is. one, we have a limited amount of land. we are islands. none of the islands are connected in any way except by air. you could take a boat. it takes a couple of days to traverse the pacific to another island. really, you take oahu, our most dense island, we have one

million people here and 640 square miles. i would say 40% to 50% of it is our conservation area, foothills up to the mountains. then we have other factors we are looking at, sea level rise, climate change and what that will bring in where we can develop. we have quite a bit of urban land, we probably need a little more. if we change the densities in our current urban land, the projection is for -- -- i was talking about the 22,500 affordable rental units -- the projection is 40% will be on oahu and the rest spread throughout the other islands. i think we have unique challenges. we just don't have the space to

just go out and build but we do , have different opportunities where we can do a lot of urban infill. we have a rail system coming in. we're looking at development as a way to bring affordable housing as well. that is a few years off. we are doing the planning for it now, especially looking at state lands or state-owned lands along the transit corridor, the rail corridor, and seeing what we can do on our state lands partnering with the developers. host: has affordable housing always been a problem in hawaii? or is this something that has come up in recent years? guest: know, i remember when i -- no, i remember when i first started my career in planning almost 30 years ago. i remember one of the first meetings was talking about affordable housing. it has been a perennial problem for our state probably since

statehood, 1959. there were boom years where we got a lot of projects done. over the past 10 to 15 years, production has really slowed down. a lot is tied to our permitting process, we are trying to streamline those to a minimum. bism, a lot of nim it is communities will seek to file suit against different permits into more of a court setting that you have to go through before you can proceed. we are trying to look through different barriers. we do have an effort that governor ige says these are the barriers to he said let's sit

down and talk about it. over the past two years of effort we have made great strides in getting affordable housing production going. host: how do you decide fair market rent, and how does that impact affordable housing in hawaii? the fair market rent issue is something that is sensitive and hawaii given that we have limited land. usually landowners are not , developers as well. you are adding on another piece. if you take out the developer side of profitability of a project. we try to look at fair market rent, but really it is supply and demand thing. if we do not provide the supply, then the demand will keep growing. thus rents will go up as well.

we have a limited amount of land, so anything, a city block that becomes a couple of condos or high-rises for affordable housing, that for square footage, even construction and rent tends to increase. host: i heard you use the term "urban infill," can you tell us what that is? guest: sure. we have a lot of areas, especially on honolulu, they used to be plantation towns. they already are urban, if you will. there a metropolitan, but is old stock. there might be an old office building. right across the street from my

office there is a 12-story used to be office building that a developer just got her permit to renovate that into affordable rentals. ironically, right next to a new condo that used to be a parking lot that goes above 25 stories. the prices, when they opened, because they were not required to do anything affordable private capital did it, they are upwards of $600,000 to $800,000. you have pockets of land, and parcels, and buildings, and even vacant land that used to have something on it that the use may be terminated 10 years ago and is just vacant land. we're looking at these types of properties to see if we can do urban infill. host: how much does the state of hawaii work with the federal

government on the affordable housing issue? we were mainly through hud her our public housing, roughly of 0% to 32% of area median income. that segment starts to include the homeless as well, those who are 0% median income. that is our main conduit. we also work with different federal grants, if you will, housing grants. that would be through our state housing and finance development corporation. we work with them trying to make sure there is enough funding that is pipelined that comes to the state. then we can then distribute that to our counties, who also work

with h.u.d. and federal agencies to ensure they can do their part in achieving affordable housing goals. host: you brought up homeless. how often does the lack of affordable housing lead to homelessness, and how much of a problem is that in hawaii? guest: i think that maybe i think myself back four years ago ige administration first came in, we had a serious homeless problem. they were camping out in the streets, sort of like gypsy homelessness. when the police came in, and we wanted to clean up an area, they just moved to another public site and things like that. since then, we have put emphasis on transitional shelters.

the city club of honolulu, also foring for buildings or low-rent apartments, purchasing them and making them into transitional shelters and apartments for the homeless. we also have a lot of work in the philanthropy world. one of our philanthropists here in hawaii, he took it upon himself, he saw vacant land on the outskirts of an industrial area that had all the components, public transit. he could get a little village community. today it is thriving. he wants to do the next phase of it. the first phase, my understanding, is he did it with sweat equity and volunteerism. the total cost was about $20 million to do the village.

so there are these different efforts. through those different types of efforts, we have to be able to -- like last year, i believe, was the first year we saw a and decline in the rate of homelessness. we focused first on the families that are homeless, get them into shelters, transition them to some affordable housing. and now we are working on individuals. of course, you have those that are impacted by drugs and the toe, and they are homeless, o. we have different programs trying to go other ways working with service providers in honolulu and statewide, to try to get to these folks and get them into housing. host: we would like to thank leo cion, of the hawaii office

of planning, leo thank you for , coming. guest: you are welcome. ♪ >> the c-span bus recently made the long trip to hawaii for our c-span 50 capitals tour. join us on c-span, book tv, in american history tv. we will feature stops across the hawaiian islands, featuring the unique history and literary altar of the 50th -- culture of the 50th state. ♪ >> c-span's "washington journal," love every day with news and issues that impact you. coming up sunday morning, roger cliff and "washington examiner'" siraj hasmi will join us.

andr, we talk about why nuclear energy and the clean energy and initiative with jeff mikulina. >> in about an hour, the senate is expected to vote on the nomination of judge brett kavanaugh to be the next justice of the u.s. green court. the senators have been -- supreme court. the senators have been in a continuous session since friday morning. while the debate has been going on, protesters have gathered at the sprint to the u.s. capitol. -- the supreme court and the u.s. capitol. there is a live look right now at the u.s. capitol, live coverage on c-span.

[indistinct conversations] again, a senate vote on the nomination of brett kavanaugh to be som supreme court justice is expected to happen in about an hour. and coverage of the debate the vote can be seen now on c-span2.

president trump is scheduled to speak at a rally in topeka, kansas. we will have live coverage of the president's remarks beginning at 7:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> pulitzer prize-winning author geraldine brooks is our special guest on our actual "in edition."tion episode. chord."ret live from noon until 3:00 p.m. eastern live on c-span two, and be sure to watch next month with author jodi piceault. ind melzer will be our guest december on book tv on c-span2. >> hacking charges have been filed against seven russian

military intelligence officers. they are accused of hacking into databases of american, european, and new zealand agencies ahead :f the 2016 summer it's in rio de janeiro. this is about 30 minutes. >>