Dive Brief:
- A December 2015 50-state Gallup poll found that only one in four Hawaii residents said they have access to "good, affordable housing," while 82% of Wisconsin residents are satisfied with their housing affordability.
- Gallup found a correlation between dissatisfaction and median home values where home values are highest — Hawaii, California, Massachusetts — with residents in the highest priced markets expressing the greatest dissatisfaction. However, residents in the markets with lowest median home values — West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas — do not have high rates of satisfaction with their housing.
- The economics of affordable housing in Hawaii compounds the rate of dissatisfaction, according to Builder magazine. Land and the cost of construction are so high that the rents that lower- and middle-income residents would find affordable cannot make up for the costs of building and maintaining the properties, much less bring an owner a profit.
Dive Insight:
Because of the high rents and home prices in Hawaii, families are often forced to live together to make ends meet. Hawaii has the highest median home values in the country — $528,000 — according to a 2014 U.S. Census Bureau report.
Waiting lists for affordable housing in Hawaii are long, and those who get a spot in an affordable unit have the tendency to stay put, even if their financial circumstances improve, because they still can’t afford standard local housing.
However, despite the dismal housing situation, Hawaii ranked near the bottom among residents who said they would like to leave their state.
Among the other 49 states, residents of the eastern and western regions of the country have housing satisfaction below the 50-state average of 68%. Midwest residents tend to have above-average satisfaction, while southerners tend to have below-average satisfaction.
In an effort to battle the high-rent dilemma in Hawaii, developer Bento Box, announced in October that it is planning to build a $5 million micro-unit apartment building in Oahu set to open in 2017. Cities like New York, Seattle and Portland, where rents are prohibitively expensive, have also seen a rise in micro-apartments' popularity.