Solutions to Hawaiʻi’s housing crisis focus of UH speaker series 

Matthew Desmond

Affordable housing woes remain one of the leading causes of why many local residents are forced to relocate away from Hawaiʻi’s shores or face the harsh reality of homelessness. To help call attention to policy interventions related to housing prices and poverty, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Better Tomorrow Speaker Series will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist Matthew Desmond, a Princeton University professor.

“We are so pleased to welcome Professor Desmond to Hawai‘i,” said Lt. Gov. Josh Green. “His work underscores how our country’s most vulnerable people struggle to find affordable housing. He and his research team have also developed cost-effective solutions, many like those we have been exploring, which may work here. Hawai‘i’s housing crisis is currently our greatest challenge. We all have to work together to solve it.”

The in-person event, Defending Home: How to Protect Renters and Fight Poverty beyond the Pandemic, will be held on Thursday, March 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the Orvis Auditorium at UH Mānoa. The talk is free and open to the public. Proof of vaccination is required. (Register online) 

“Professor Desmond’s groundbreaking research and eloquent writings have had a huge impact on policy debates about evictions, homelessness and renter protections,” said Philip Garboden, Hawaiʻi Community Reinvestment Corporation professor in affordable housing, and assistant professor in UH Economic Research Organization and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the College of Social Sciences. “Dr. Desmond’s findings also demonstrate how surprisingly simple it is to keep struggling families from losing their homes, how relatively economical interventions can stabilize the most precarious rungs of the housing market. His are lessons we need to apply here in Hawai‘i.”

Desmond is the author of four books, including Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which won the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award. An expert on inequality, housing and public policy, he is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a MacArthur “Genius” fellow. Desmond directs The Eviction Lab, which tracks housing and eviction patterns in cities across the country. 

The Better Tomorrow Speaker Series is a joint venture of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, Kamehameha Schools and UH Mānoa. The series is also sponsored by the College of Social Sciences and the William S. Richardson School of Law. 

Co-sponsors of this event include: the Hawai‘i Book and Music Festival, Kahala Hotel and Resort, Matsunaga Institute for Peace, Scholars Strategy Network, UH Alumni Relations, the departments of Sociology and Urban and Regional Planning at UH Mānoa.