August 2007

Innovative legislation helps families and the economy in Hawaii

Dear friend:

One of the most rewarding aspects of public service is to see ideas and issue you've worked on actually come to fruition and make a difference in people's lives. A July 6th Pacific Business News article highlighted a true partnership in home construction for military families between the U.S. government and the private sector that I helped write into law more than ten years ago.

The Pacific Business News headline was "Military Jobs Insulate Contractors from Chill," and described an innovative approach to building and upgrading family housing on military bases. The program brings in private sector companies to build, renovate, maintain, and manage base housing. Instead of paying for the work through annual appropriations from Congress, residents pay through their Base Allowance for Housing. This plan has resulted in more quality family housing on bases across the country much sooner and at great savings to taxpayers.

One of the other benefits to the program is the amount of work it has generated for lacal businesses and the number of stable, good-paying construction jobs it supports.

"Although home construction has slowed, commercial building and military housing projects will continue to support thousands of jobs well into the next decade," the article reported, largely due to two large public-private partnerships between mainland-based developers - Actus Lend Lease-Hawaii and Forest City Hawaii - and the local military community. The companies have 50-year contracts to build, ronovate, maintain, and manage more than 16,000 homes. The contracts include project-labor agreements that ensure local construction trades will continue to have jobs over the next 50 years. All together, the projects are worth billions of dollars, and have stabilized work in construction and a wide range of business support services.

 

Aloha,

Neil Abercrombie

Member of Congress