HONOLULU (KHON2) — Oahu was finally graced with sun after a barrage of rain last week into the weekend. Some parts of the island were soaked with 13 inches of rain, which led to flooding in some areas and road closures, but overall the state seems to have escaped the Kona Low with minimal damage.
Governor Josh Green told Wake Up 2Day Monday morning that he was concerned about a possible overflow of Wahiawa Reservoir, also known as Lake Wilson, which had water levels reach 80 feet of its 88-foot maximum capacity.
“Extra preparation matters,” Governor Green said. “The Department of Transportation and Ed Sniffen were fantastic. We were worried about the dam but I did the emergency proclamation for the weekend because we wanted some additional National Guard support. We got close to evacuations. The dam and the water were a concern but everything held and it was good news.”
This came as the Governor helped introduce a 197-unit affordable housing complex in Kakaako named Ililani. The building is located at Keawe and Pohukaina street and offers one and two-bedroom units. One-bedroom units start at $477,000, while a two-bedroom starts at $582,000. KHON2 was told 14 of these units are still available.
“We’re pushing as hard as we can, we have been for 14 to 16 months now and that’s making a lot more projects possible to launch,” Gov. Green said of affordable housing. “This project started 8 years ago so much credit to all of the mayors and governors before us. It is hard to build in Hawaii and we need to strip away some of the regulation as long as it’s along the rail and it’s not going to threaten our environment at all. We need to build 50,000 units and we are also going to do some major changes on short-term rentals to give houses back to the local owners. It’s going to be a process I hope everyone sees that but it’s gratifying when we launch a project.”
Gov. Green is also looking to add housing inventory to the homeless community with the Kauhale program. The recent point-in-time count of homeless individuals on Oahu came in 12 percent higher than 2023, though Gov. Green points out that in the last six years, the count has basically remained flat.
“You’ll see big changes in the middle of 2025 but it’s happening in real time. That point in time count happened in the second week or third week of January, since then we’ve already launched 6 kauhale. They’re all full, they fill immediately. These are the tiny homes, extremely affordable. They drop the average cost of an individual who’s homeless by about $6,000 per month per person so it’s a big deal. We will build 1,400 to 1,700 Kauhale units by the end of 2025 but they’re rolling out as we go. Much credit to Mayor Blangiardi his team. We’re also looking at launching a lot more housing right here in Honolulu. Waikiki Vista is another project that has 100-150 families of housing available. We’re going to be pressing that in the coming weeks. Just so everyone has perspective on that point in time count, six years ago we had like 4,450 and today we had 4,450.”
Gov. Green hopes that it can lead to progress in his lofty goals on homelessness.
“My goal is to decrease chronic homelessness by half in our term. It’s an ambitious goal. Very few places have seen a decrease in homelessness in fact most places have seen an increase. We’re dead flat and I hope that these Kauhale Villages are meaningful and if we spread them out, we’ll have 20 of them by the end of next year, we will all do our part in each region to help with this crisis.”