Is there anything else about your background or how you identify that you would like to share?

I am a husband and father of two young children. While in college I co-founded a composites manufacturing shop which has grown to become the largest producer of outrigger canoes in America. In addition to my experience in the private sector, I have a Masters in public administration with a graduate certificate in public policy, I teach high school civics and coach high school paddling at Island School, I have served on the County Council for four years as well as on a number of county boards, committees, and local nonprofits, and I previously worked as a columnist focusing on land use, energy, and climate change.

What is your vision for Kauaʻi?

- Everyone can find housing that costs no more than 30% of their income.
- The island runs off of 100% clean energy (for ground transportation as well as electricity).
- We retain our rural nature of concentrated towns separated by productive agricultural land.
- We have smart, sustainable, vibrant communities where everyone has the option of finding an affordable home close to where they work.
- We divert at least 70% of our solid waste.
- We produce at least 30% of the food that is consumed on island.
- We have world class playgrounds and beach park facilities that serve as a gathering place for the community.

Who is the most influential female figure in your life who is not in your family, and why?

I come from a family of very strong women, so it’s hard not to pick them (my wife Sokchea, my mother Micki, my sister Tanya, and my two sister-in-laws Marissa and Genevieve). They have shaped me as a person more than anyone in my life, by far. The most broadly inspirational non-family member is Ruth Bader Ginsburg– who spent her life fighting for justice and equality, often against overwhelming odds. But, while RBG is inspiring, the most influential female non-family member in my life are all of the women who work at council services. I won’t mention their names because their jobs should remain non-political and they prefer to remain behind the scenes– but their work, input, and dialogue has a profound influence on my policy work as a councilmember. Not only in producing high quality policy, but in challenging my own views and broadening my perspective.

Kauaʻi and other rural areas have elevated rates of youth suicide. 11% of our high school students report having attempted suicide. The risk is significantly higher for LGBT teens on Kauaʻi, with 41% reporting suicidal thoughts (YRBS, 2019).

A key factor in youth suicide prevention is making sure that every kid has a positive relationship with a caring adult in their life.
Afterschool programs and activities are key strategies to tackling this youth mental health crisis; however, we don’t have nearly enough afterschool programs on Kauaʻi to meet the need and few safe spaces where our kids can go.

What can the County do to support the increase of afterschool programs, community activities, and safe spaces for our youth?

As a high school teacher and high school paddling coach– I wholeheartedly understand the need. I believe strongly in after school activities, and, as I coach paddling 5 days a week, I personally do all that I can to provide them. The primary lever that the County has to increase the number of afterschool programs and community activities is through grant funding. We already provide some for these types of activities and there is certainly always a need for more.

But, where we do have a huge influence beyond grant funding is in helping facilitate the construction of safe spaces. The newly renovated Kapa’a Skate Park is a good example of how a public space can become a safe haven for youth and for healthy physical activity. While we can’t have a skate park in every community (and not everybody skateboards), we can have vibrant and activated public spaces– like public parks, libraries, and even sidewalks (described in more detail below)– that help fill a similar role. As Jane Jacobs describes in the Death and Life of Great American Cities, safe places must have eyes on the street (or for a park, clear sightlines from the outside in) and continuous users (for a park, this means various overlapping activities which draw people). She describes how people attract people– and it’s that critical mass of people which creates a safe space. When we design our public places, we need to keep these concepts at the fore. So that when teenagers are looking for a place to go after school or on the weekends, they are drawn to these safe and vibrant public spaces. In turn, by fostering connectivity in the design of our community-- we can reduce depression and suicide (more described below).

Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that occurs in every state, including Hawaiʻi. In Hawaiʻi, labor trafficking most frequently occurs in domestic work and elder care venues (ACF/HHS, 2017).

Between 2019-2022, Child Welfare received 205 reports of child sex trafficking (AG, 2019). On Kauaʻi, there are at least 6 known child sex trafficking victims with this estimate likely being a gross underestimation (ASU/ HSCSW, 2020).

How would you address the issue of human trafficking and commercial sex exploitation on Kauaʻi?

I don’t have a great answer here. The U.S. State Department provides a list of 20 things to help fight human trafficking, and none of them are targeted at local governments. However, I do think it’s vital for law enforcement to work towards building community trust to ensure that victims can feel safe coming forward to the police. It’s also important to go after grant funding through the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to help develop prevention programs and police officer training. But beyond that, this is outside of my knowledge, so if YWCA has suggestions, I’d be happy to talk more.

The recent Dobbs decision which overturned 50 years of legal precedent has raised concerns about the possible erosion of abortion rights in Hawaiʻi. Although abortion is currently legal in Hawaiʻi and recent polls show 66% of Hawaiʻi residents support legal abortion, access to abortion services on Kauaʻi are limited, often requiring women to fly off-island for care.

If elected, would you vote for a resolution in support of strengthening abortion rights, and are there other actions you would take as a councilmember or individual to increase local access to abortion care?

Yes, I wouldn’t hesitate to vote for a resolution in support of abortion rights on Kaua’i. While this is outside of the purview of the county council, I support increasing access to medicated and surgical abortion, I support Governor Ige’s executive order to ensure that Hawai’i does not cooperate with other states trying to prosecute people who have an abortion in Hawai’i, and I support any efforts at a federal level to codify a women’s right to abortion.

In 2020, there were over 400 unhoused people on Kauaʻi, many of whom (37%) are unsheltered families (PIT, 2020).

What action will you take to address Kauaʻi’s housing crisis for families? Should property tax revenue should be adjusted to invest more in affordable housing? Why or why not?

Yes, I have twice tried to increase vacation rental property taxes to more than double the funding for affordable housing– but the measure has failed both times. I’ve also tried to amend our charter to ensure a dedicated revenue source for affordable housing (which also failed) and I’m currently in the process of another effort with Vice-chair Chock to allocate 2% of real property tax revenue to affordable housing.

Our homeless crisis is based on a lack of affordable housing. Along with the efforts described above, most of my legislative work has focused on reducing the cost of housing. I’ve co-introduced legislation to:
-Eliminate all fees for affordable ARUs;
-Provide Kaua’i homeowners with FREE septic systems;
-Prohibit community covenants from restricting against additional units and long-term rentals;
-Allow the construction of ARUs in the Lihu’e Town Core;
-Reduce the building code requirements for tiny houses;
-Eliminate minimum lot size restrictions for multi-family homes;
-Allocate 2% of Real Property Tax revenue annually towards affordable housing (still in process);
-Create a tiered tax structure to allow us to increase tax rates on high value vacant houses and vacation rentals to fund affordable housing and incentivize those units to convert to long-term rentals;
-Increase the Vacation Rental property tax rate to discinenvitze vacation rentals and apply nearly all of the money raised to affordable housing (measure failed).

In general terms, I believe that solving the housing crisis requires an all-of-the-above approach utilizing all five of the strategies outlined below:

1) We need to build more homes in and around our existing towns. Every study on affordability includes increasing supply as a prerequisite for affordability. This is the first decade since Statehood where home construction on Kauai has fallen far below our population growth — and it’s this lack of homes that is the driver of our exploding costs.

2) We need to put more money towards affordable housing to leverage private, state, and federal funds. The County is currently pursuing three large housing projects in Kilauea, Waimea, and ‘Ele’ele. We need the funding to make these happen.

3) We need to continually strive to make it easier for families to add on additional units for their parents, children, or long-term renters.

4) We need to build the infrastructure for more townhouses and condos in Lihu’e. These are the only non-subsidized units that can be built within a truly affordable range for many young families.

5) We need to continue raising property taxes on vacant second homes and vacation rentals, which make up one in five homes here. An effective tax rate for these homes can incentivize them to convert to resident housing and help fund the construction of affordable housing.

Over 4,000 people on Kauaʻi are on the waitlist of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL, 2021).

60% of the over 200,000+ acres of land governed by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands for Kānaka Maoli housing may never have homes due to the lack of infrastructure for residential housing (DHHL, 2019). Kānaka Maoli have the highest rate of homelessness in Hawaiʻi.

What initiatives will you undertake to help combat Kānaka Maoli displacement?

In general terms, I will fight for the policies and principles outlined in my answer to the homelessness question above which are the counties strongest tools to prevent displacement. In 2019 I co-introduced and passed a bill to extend the definition of family for property tax purposes to provide access to existing beneficial property tax rates and exemptions to families with no living owners on title. While this policy is not a race based policy (which we have to be careful about, because there are lots of legal challenges to explicitly race based zoning or property tax policy), the primary beneficiaries of this policy are likely to be Native Hawaiians where property ownership on family land is split among so many individuals that it’s not clear who retains title. Yet with passage of this bill, a descendent of anyone on the title can file a claim for property tax relief (which they couldn’t have done previously if they weren’t on title) which can help them retain ownership of their land. Regarding how to help support DHHL, the best support we can provide as a county is to partner up on infrastructure– such as wastewater treatment– which can help expand both County housing and DHHL housing.

Last month, the Kauaʻi County Council unanimously voted to return the property and buildings designated for a drug treatment facility to Grove Farm.

According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, Hawaiʻi is designated as a Health Professional Shortage Area. Only 14.2% of the Mental Health Care need has been met as of September 2021 (HRSA, 2021).

What concrete steps will you take to ensure the mental health of our community is addressed? What can the County do to ensure individuals seeking substance abuse treatment are able to access the care they need?

While public health is broadly the purview of the State, there are a few realms where the County does have the power to impact mental health. A primary contributor to the lack of available treatment providers on Kaua’i is our housing crisis-- as they simply can't afford to live here. So, the most important thing that we can do as a County is work to reduce the cost of housing through the principles I outlined above in my answer to the homelessness question– which can make it possible for more treatment providers to afford to live on Kaua’i.

Along with contributing to a lack of mental health providers, the housing crisis also contributes directly to ill-health. The former Baltimore City Health Commissioner, Dr. Leana Wen, writes in her book about how the opposite of poverty is health. Lower income families often have worse health outcomes, and one of the best ways we can improve health is to improve wealth. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, 36% of households on Kaua’i are cost burdened– meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Families in this category face higher stress levels, often have less time available for their families and for socialization, less time and money to make healthy meals, less time to get physical exercise, and a host of other contributors to ill-health. So, the best tool that we have as a county to improve these outcomes is to reduce the cost of housing.

There is also clear evidence from around the country that people in rural areas experience higher levels of depression and suicide. On this front, I’m influenced by the work of sociologist Eric Klinenberg, who writes that social capital (our network of human relationships) is vital to a healthy life– and how states and local governments have a lot of power to influence social capital through the design and funding of public places. As I described briefly in the question on safe places for our youth, we need to design our parks and streets and even neighborhoods to encourage human connection and interaction. For example, at my home we often sit in our front yard in the afternoons to watch our kids play. Because my Lihu’e neighborhood was built with a network of sidewalks, there’s a steady stream of neighbors that walk by every afternoon. Through the interaction of our front yard with the sidewalk and the street– we are able to have a daily connection with our neighbors. This regular social interaction contributes to health, and it makes the community more resilient when neighbors know each other and can check on each other. As Eric Klinenberg writes in his aptly titled book, Palaces for the People, we need to be designing palaces for the people— or, in other words, vibrant public spaces that help foster social capital which, in turn, contributes to better health outcomes.

We’ve talked about housing, childcare, the displacement of Kānaka Maoli, and healthcare as separate topics. If we take a wider view, we can see these issues as interrelated and part of systemic discrimination and devaluation of women and girls.

How would you use your role as a community leader to address the impact of systemic injustices so young women and keiki can have equal opportunities to live to their fullest potential?

Again, this comes back to housing. The burden of our housing crisis falls disproportionately on women and children. Domestic violence is one of the primary contributors to homelessness for women and children and, as the Department of Justice writes, “when a victim of domestic violence chooses to leave their abusive partner, safe and affordable housing is one of the primary barriers they will face for themselves and their children” (Rogers, 2019).

To address this at a county level, we need the full spectrum from affordable housing, domestic violence shelters, emergency homeless shelters, transitional housing, and transitional housing with full wrap-around services for women and children. We have components of all of these on Kaua’i (the YWCA shelter, KEO shelter, WIN Kealaula project, Pua Loke transitional housing)-- but, we need to ramp up our financial support for all of these elements. I have twice proposed an increase to our vacation rental property tax rate to more than double the county funding for affordable housing (the fund is also used to help subsidize transitional and homeless housing)-- but I have failed both times. I will continue to try and increase funding for all forms of affordable housing.

Are there any other important issues for our community that you would like to address?

We face many other issues such as solid waste, declining agricultural productivity, over-tourism, the need to rapidly transition to 100% renewable energy, the difficulties in adapting to climate change and rising seas, and– most importantly– the decimation of our communities because of the housing crisis. For more information about who I am, what I’ve accomplished, on the County Council, and what I hope to continue to work on if re-elected, please check out my website at www.lukeevslin.com. You can also see my response to questions about the issues described above in a recent candidate interview by the Kaua’i Chamber of Commerce: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp6WvKIV0Vw.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out via my county email at levslin@kauai.gov or my phone (texting is always best) at
808-635-6623. Thank you for the opportunity to serve Kaua’i.