At a blessing to celebrate the opening of city-subsidized affordable housing, Mayor Rick Blangiardi stood behind a podium bedecked in lei to talk about the value of adding 29 new rental units to the city’s urban core.
“This is exactly what we know we need to create,” he said last April in Makiki. “It is absolutely on the money, at the right time, incredibly needed.”
PenseMetro, at the corner of Pensacola Street and Lunalilo Street, was among the first to start construction under Honolulu’s Bill 7 program, which offers developers incentives to build a new generation of low-rise rental apartments.
Almost 10 months after the mayor’s speech, nobody has moved into the building as it awaits final permitting sign-off. Some nights, homeless people sleep in its ground-floor parking area…