Rising rents are putting new strain on one of Hawaiʻi's most important safety nets for low-income renters, according to a new report finding that federal spending on the state's Housing Choice Voucher program has jumped 70% after inflation since 2003 even though only modestly more families are being served. The program, commonly known as Section 8, currently supports about 12,000 low-income households across the islands.
Federal spending on Hawaiʻi's tenant-based vouchers climbed from roughly $55 million in 2003 to approximately $170 million in 2024, according to a report detailed by University of Hawaiʻi System News. That means taxpayers are now covering a much larger share of the cost just to keep roughly the same number of families housed, as rising rents outpace the incomes of the people the vouchers are meant to help. Under the program, voucher households generally pay about 30% of their adjusted income toward rent and utilities, with the government picking up much of what remains.
Joonyup Park, the report's lead author and an assistant professor at UHERO and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, said the math is becoming harder to sustain. Rising rents require more federal funding just to maintain the program, Park said, which makes it tougher to expand access for the families still waiting for help. Only about one in five income-eligible households in Hawaiʻi currently receives a voucher, even as thousands more wait for assistance, per the same report.
A Narrowing Window to Use the Help
The stakes for individual families are steep. Voucher recipients generally have somewhere between 60 and 120 days to find a qualifying rental with a landlord willing to accept the voucher, according to the university's reporting. Households that cannot find housing in that window can lose their voucher entirely and return to the bottom of the waiting list, effectively restarting a process that already took years to reach the front of.
That pressure has coincided with a shift in who the program serves. The share of households newly admitted to the program while experiencing homelessness has grown from roughly one in 20 in the mid-2000s to about one in five today, the report found, underscoring how the voucher program is becoming an increasingly important pathway out of homelessness rather than simply a rent-assistance tool.
Highest Housing Costs in the Nation
The financial squeeze on the voucher program is unfolding against a backdrop that researchers describe in stark terms. Hawaiʻi residents face the highest housing costs in the nation, according to UHERO's Hawaiʻi Housing Factbook 2026. In 2024, Honolulu carried the state's highest median rent at $2,083, while Hawaiʻi County had the lowest at $1,510, the Factbook found. Statewide, the median rent in 2024 was only 0.1% above 2023 levels, and the median asking price on Craigslist listings actually dipped slightly, from $2,200 in 2024 to $2,128 in 2025.
Even with rents largely flat, the broader cost of housing continues to weigh on the state's economy. High housing costs are contributing to a shrinking labor force and reduced consumer spending, the Factbook notes, and UHERO's housing dashboard separately observes that steep housing costs lower residents' standard of living and hinder the state's ability to attract workers. West Hawaiʻi Today has also reported that the state's aggregate property insurance premiums rose 13% in 2024, the largest annual increase in more than a decade, compounding costs for landlords and renters alike.
Construction and Incomes Seen as Levers
The UHERO report identifies additional housing construction as one possible way to ease the pressure, noting that more supply can slow rent increases and create more affordable options for voucher holders while also reducing the amount of government assistance needed per household. National research from Pew backs the broader premise: adding more housing of any kind, including market-rate units without subsidies, helps slow rent growth. Pew's analysis found that Minneapolis, New Rochelle, Portland and Tysons all saw slower rent growth after adopting zoning changes that allowed more housing to be built. In New Rochelle, permits jumped from an average of 37 a year in 2017 and 2018 to 989 a year between 2019 and 2021 after downtown rezoning, and rents there fell 5% between January 2020 and February 2023 after rising 12% in the prior three years.
Helping voucher families raise their incomes is another lever the report points to, one that could reduce reliance on subsidies altogether and free up vouchers for other households stuck waiting. But Park cautioned against viewing any single fix as sufficient. Hawaiʻi's housing affordability challenge cannot be solved by rental assistance alone, Park said, adding that housing policy, economic opportunity and public-benefit structures must work together to support long-term housing stability.
A National Shortage, A Local Squeeze
Hawaiʻi's struggles mirror a national shortfall in affordable housing. More than 7 million affordable homes are lacking for the nation's more than 10.8 million extremely low-income families, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Seventy percent of extremely low-income families nationwide are severely cost-burdened, spending more than half their income on rent, and just one in four families who need housing assistance actually receive it.
The connection between rent and homelessness has also drawn scrutiny at the federal level. A 2020 Government Accountability Office study estimated that a $100 increase in median rent was associated with a 9% increase in the estimated homelessness rate, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Separately, West Hawaiʻi Today has reported that buying Hawaiʻi's median-priced single-family home now requires more than 180% of the area median income, putting ownership within reach of only about one in five households statewide — a gap that helps explain why demand for rental assistance keeps climbing even as the program's costs strain federal budgets.
Park's report was produced through UHERO and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, both housed within the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's College of Social Sciences. Park holds the Hawaiʻi Community Reinvestment Corporation Professorship in Affordable Housing, a position focused on studying exactly the kind of structural pressures now bearing down on the state's voucher system.
