Praising City Council

Three cheers for San Diego’s gutsy City Council! It takes a lot of courage to buck the tide and button the lips of the anti-tax curmudgeons and other dinosaurs. But they did it. They passed a landmark multimillion-dollar Housing Trust Fund--a fund so thoroughly researched and crafted that it is already becoming a model for other major cities facing affordable housing crises.

Nearly every major city has an affordable housing problem these days, including Honolulu. Wages never seem to catch up with skyrocketing rents. Land costs escalate even as federal housing assistance dollars continue a decade-long decline. In most areas of the country, direct subsidies in support of rehab and new construction are the only remedy.

I hope San Diegans are proud of their elected leadership. Here in Honolulu, we are still grandstanding, still looking to quick fixes and outright publicity gimmicks, like “tent cities” in public parks. Oh, there is support for legislation creating affordable housing--lip service, but no bucks.

This year’s legislative session was different. Thanks to the example set by San Diego (and more than 40 enlightened cities and states around the country), the Hawaii Legislature approved funding for a housing trust fund feasibility study.

Granted, this is only the first step, but it represents a genuine effort to garner broad-based community backing for housing assistance and support for a statewide affordable housing advocacy made up of social service providers, community activists, business, labor union and government leaders--employing San Diego’s successful Housing Trust Fund Coalition and Task Force model.

Thank you, council members Wes Pratt, Bob Filner, John Hartley, Linda Bernhardt and Deputy Mayor Abbe Wolfsheimer for withstanding the heat, for having a heart and doin’ the right thing. You are exemplary role models for elected officials everywhere.

LINDA B. MARTIN

Kaneohe, Hawaii

(formerly of Pacific Beach)