Hawaii affordable housing developers got together with city and state officials in Waikiki on Monday to mark the United Nations World Habitat Day and to try and come up with some better ways to build more housing for local people.
The goal of the two-day event was to come up with plans and recommendations that will be passed along to the UN.
Panelists at the Monday morning event at the Prince Waikiki Hotel included Timothy Yi, president of developer Samkoo; Honolulu Council Member Kymberly Marcos Pine; Craig Hirai, executive director of the Hawaii Housing Finance Development Corp.; real estate analyst Ricky Cassiday; Mark K. Flood, vice president of sales and marketing at D.R. Horton - Schuler Division; Derek Lock, director of development at HNL Development Inc.; and Robert Oda, senior planning and development manager at Kamehameha Schools.
The event also featured a luncheon address by Wataru Kawasaki, a UN Habitat program and planning officer based in New York, and presentations by Duane Kurisu on his Kahauiki Village project, and architect Aaron Ackerman of Bowers+Kubota on his Haleola’ili’ainapono project, a Living Building Challenge project, which won the Grand Prix of Real Estate and Environmental Design category from the National FIABCI-USA Council last year.