Tag Archives: hawaii

A Place in Paradise: Housing in Hawaii

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           While the beaches and scenic vistas on Hawaii Island are unparalleled, in between those lovely views, the country’s more significant housing issues are playing out in paradise. In my few weeks here, I am learning to see a few systemic problems just under the surface. My perspective comes from my ability to choose where I would like to stay. As I get to know the island, I see the truth to the classic complaints about this island. Housing is expensive, and there is little public infrastructure.

              The old adage, “it is who you know NOT what you know,” goes quite deep in Hawaii. I initially spent two weeks at the home of an acquaintance, introduced to me by our mutual friend in Tokyo. From there, I began to search for my own place to rent. Getting started here required me to call upon a lifetime’s worth of patience and resourcefulness. I found both my current home and my car privately through a circle of acquaintances.

Between Luck & Charm

              My studio rental is a convenient sub-lease from another traveler. With a gorgeous garden setting, fully furnished, and entirely solo, it is a pleasant change from my first two weeks here, in the acquaintance’s home with five other housemates. Though my temporary studio is beautiful, it includes a cat, traveling geckos, and barking neighbors. As I explore homes in this area, I know people like me are part of the problem. I have some savings to work from and can work online.

              The influx of computer-clad techies is pushing the cost from residents beyond control. A new friend and fellow slow-traveler is renting an off-grid cabin (hear, no running water, solar-powered electricity, and 10Mbs speed internet) for $1,300 a month in Puna. For her, this is a good option. A helicopter pilot rents a furnished single bedroom with no kitchen and no internet for $900 a month in Kona. He has running water and hot showers. I think he got a deal. For the locals, these rates are beyond reach.

Poverty in Paradise

               The town of Hilo, for example, is densely packed and rainy. Poverty is all around. I cannot help but notice the people pushing worn-out shopping carts from corner to corner. The Landless Lot, my free-verse poem, was written in Tokyo but echoed here. Affordable housing for working people is often in poor condition, if even available. Many city-side homes have upwards of 5 cars parked outside, a tell-tale sign of house-hacking when some share a home with multiple renters (much like my acquaintance’s home).  

              Though I am in a decent position to look around my limitations go beyond my budget. (I do not have the F-U money to buy a $3 million condo with thousands in monthly association fees. For anyone interested, there are some of those available in the posh North Kona.) For creative solutions, I have considered buying land and building on it. Two immediate hurdles are (1) permitting and (2) wastewater management. 

Delays & Cesspools

              If I were to buy land and build on it, there are multiple avenues for delay. First, the best contractors, builders, and architects are booked up through the following year. Second, getting a building permit could still take over six months with housing plans drawn up. The slow-moving housing and building departments remind me of Japanese bureaucracy. A labor shortage further compounds these delays. Most surprisingly, while I have been looking around Hawaii Island, I learned about cesspools. A cesspool is essentially a hole in the ground where you let wastewater drain. Cesspools are a popular option when a home cannot connect to the sewage system or won’t go through the expense of a septic system. The cheap solution: a cesspool that barely leads off your property. Later, it will drain into a lava tube on someone else’s land. The consequences are enormous public health concerns. Guess where the wastewater goes? When there is a lot of rain in the areas around Hilo, the beaches get runoff from turbid water. Locals know to check for water quality warnings. Though the EPA has committed Hawaii County to eliminate commercial cesspools, residential builds have a longer leash.  

Why Bother?           

   Hawaii County still manages to pull a lot of potential residents from the mainland. By comparison, cheap land prices in remote areas have their draw. Of course, incoming mainlanders create more cost competition for the islanders. Here, I have only part of the picture; the federal government’s program for native Hawaiians still has not delivered on many promised homes. As I pop around and everywhere, I see that Hawaii Island is a microcosm of the country’s housing crisis. The crisis here is compounded by a few active volcanos and poor infrastructure. Thank you for following along on my adventure!

Asking for A Friend: Do you Trust in Science? Or Nature?

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For two years now, we have faced an unexpected, unknown monster. COVID and its various forms have surprised and challenged all of us. Each of our lives is reeling from different interactions from the novel pandemic. In April 2020, the American Embassy sent a chilling email to Americans living in Japan. They suggested Americans leave the country immediately or hunker down for some indefinite period.

Initially, I chose to stay in Japan. My life in Tokyo was clean, low-tension, and bike-friendly; an excellent place to lay low. In Japan, ex-pats left, social life dried up, and the calendar became riddled with canceled events. New strands & COVID scares kept people home. I found new hobbies and took long, solo walks. As time wore on, the discomforts in my Tokyo life grew, as did a longing to see my family. In the early summer of 2021, when shots were available for Tokyo residents, I urgently took my first vaccine. Pre-Olympics, at least half of Tokyo was still unvaccinated. By August 2021, I was ready to face and see a different world. When I left Tokyo, I naively expected last summer to be the end of this conundrum.

Sunsetting

Hawaiian Shocks

Before heading back to the continental USA, I wanted to prepare myself for reverse culture shock and thought stopping here on the Big Island of Hawaii would help. Instead, when I first arrived in August 2021, I got a new culture shock. So many stores and restaurants here seemed oblivious to COVID. I went into a south island coffee shop with some acquaintances and nearly had a panic when I noticed no one was masked. I ended up stepping outside to keep my cool. Later on that first trip, we drove through Hilo where I saw a city block of anti-vaxxers holding demonstrations.

The few times I engaged in honest conversations with COVID deniers, I saw Swiss-cheese logic in place for the fundamentals of reasoning. For the sanctity of my surroundings, I did not push for agreements. Instead, I just started listening. In trying to understand and know this place, I noticed an aversion to the mainland. People moved to this remote island to find a place that is not America, but still is technically in America. I see a distrust of the government, disdain for nosy neighbors, and a strange disregard for science. Here, the appreciation for science is limited to the bounties of fruits in nature. This part of Hawaii island, the Kau region, also has an outsized share of poverty, hunger, and homelessness.

This island gave me an actual culture shock. A few words, overheard from my time here: —Why should I pay the DMV $200 to register my car? — I pay for snacks with my EBT, but will pay cash for the beers. — Let me advise you on cars, but I don’t believe anyone’s expertise on anything else.

Mask, eh?

Team Science?

Growing up in a family of doctors, I take a different attitude towards expertise—especially medicine. My mother, raising two children, returned to school to get credentialed to continue practicing medicine in Georgia. My sister and I were lucky. For minor coughs and fevers, our doctor-Mom could fix us up without visiting the clinic. Did the rest of the world forget that modern medicine has reduced human suffering, increased our lifespan, and sometimes improved the quality of that lifespan?

But, of course, American medical treatment is costly, bloated, and skewed towards a defensive practice of medicine. Perhaps the companion to our medical industry, the pharmaceuticals eroded some trust after all those ads suggesting you nudge your doctor into a prescription. After working towards better health in my own life, I hear the loudest and most extreme anti-vax voices growing in adherents from the sheer rage. I get the rage (there is so much to rage about: voting rights, a social safety net, women’s issues, climate change, to name a few), but I also have a certain respect for biology.

How Does This Even Work?

Nonetheless, our general knowledge of science is relatively low for an increasingly technologized world. Unsurprisingly, our health is poor, and as a country, we have suffered an enormous loss of life in the last two years. Ironically, the country still has to import doctors, engineers, and scientists to keep our high-tech industry competitive. Our attachment to the luxuries of technology only matches our distrust of science here.   At this moment, we can re-examine our lives. I love the audacity of Naomi Klein’s perspective in the Shock Doctrine. Can we use this moment to learn how we might re-align priorities? How about education, health care, and genuine housing equality. These factors undermining general public health come from poor public education, a distrust for science, and a disrespect for the government. The anti-vacciners seem to be right at this subset.