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Maui Mayor Richard Bissen’s selection of Richard Mitchell to head the county’s new standalone Housing Department moved forward Tuesday with unanimous approval by the County Council’s Government Relations, Ethics and Transparency Committee.

There was little discussion. The members already know him well. For the past five years, Mitchell has served as the legislative attorney for the Office of Council Services. He goes by the name Remi, which one member said was an acronym for his qualities: reliable, excellence, mentorship and integrity.

And the members have individually talked to him about how he would approach the county’s longtime housing crisis, which was made worse by the displacement of about 12,000 people due to the Aug. 8 wildfires.

Bissen said housing in the county is complex and called it “the most critical challenge we face.” And he said Mitchell is the person for the job, which pays an annual salary of $147,992 and oversees a budget of about $75 million and 39 employees, some grant funded.

Mitchell, who has degrees in law, urban planning and architecture along with 30 years of experience working in those fields, says he wants to “pay it forward” to the residents of Maui County.

The 58-year-old also brings to this critical position a deep understanding of the importance of public housing, which he says “allows individuals and families to stabilize, build wealth and plan for the future.”

Mitchell, the son of immigrant parents from Jamaica and Guyana who landed in England in their teens, explained that he spent his early years in a seven-story classic public housing building with no elevators and outdoor hallways in East London.

After his parents separated, he moved at about age 12 to Baltimore, where he lived with his mother in federally subsidized housing and received help from people in public service, including many teachers who got him into programs that helped lead to his success.

“That experience is rooted in being a young man who slowly understood what it meant to be supported by your community even though I didn’t quite understand it at the time,” he said.

In November 2022, voters overwhelmingly passed a county charter amendment to create a separate housing department focused on the need then for an estimated 10,000 new units to meet the island’s housing needs. To do so, the Department of Housing and Human Concerns, which was led by Lori Tsuhako, was split into two departments. the Department of Human Concerns.

Mitchell’s appointment won’t become official until the full council votes on the resolution, expected later this month, but he’s been on the job as acting director since the new department was launched on July 1.

The department has four divisions: the Administrative Division, the County Programs Division, the Federal Programs Division and Housing and Community Development. A priority is filling the numerous professional vacancies and ensuring that each division has the support staff it needs.

Mitchell said with the ballot measure, the people called for change and were looking for a “fresh perspective, a renewed vigor in reimagining how our county government provides and supports the development of safe, stable and affordable housing for its residents.”

He said the department will be innovative, considering land use changes, code changes and new programs such as leasehold programs. The department also will focus on finding and maximizing federal grant opportunities and supporting housing and housing land trusts. And, he said, it will be more transparent about how it awards affordable housing funds.

Most notably, he said the county will aggressively work on developing housing on county-owned land, one of the biggest expenses of building on Maui. In June, the , according to Locations Hawaii real estate company.

“I can’t change shipping costs. I can’t change labor costs. I can’t change material costs,” Mitchell said, but added that he can change land costs this way.

But the land still will need to be developed close to infrastructure, water, public sewers and transportation, which have posed problems for some projects.

Council member Yuki Lei Sugimura asked if he would consider tiny homes, a project she had advocated for before the fires struck nearly a year ago.

“I will encourage looking at any new programs,” he said.

Mitchell said he also plans to make sure the county identifies and pursues all federal grants for different housing options that it could be eligible for, saying he has a “general sense there are additional opportunities that we have not leveraged.”

During an interview after the committee meeting, he said two experiences have led him to where he is today, which is a unique position to be able to understand and work through most of the nuances of building affordable housing in one of the most unaffordable places in the country.

When he finished his first degree at the Cornell School of Architecture in 1989, he was invited to practice with on a redevelopment, coincidentally in East London.

“That project significantly influenced me because I didn’t understand urban planning. I didn’t understand economics. I didn’t understand finance. I didn’t understand law,” he said.

He discovered projects are not just built.

“It’s addressing all of the challenging social issues, political issues, financial issues that one can reasonably contemplate as part of the development,” he said.

So he went on to get degrees in law and urban planning, and “I kept dipping my toe into housing not-for-profits or housing organizations, trying to figure out this one component. Because I knew it’s the linchpin to a family’s success. It’s the linchpin to a community’s success.”

While studying at the University of Michigan, Mitchell spent a summer collecting census data to be used to make important improvements to impoverished shantytowns in Kingston, Jamaica. He also clerked for the Harlem Legal Aid Society in New York City.

And he also gained economic insight while serving as a commissioner on the King County Housing Authority in Seattle.

“I learned an enormous amount about a housing authority that is not an arm of county government, but a standalone municipal corporation that leverages the county’s bond rating to utilize federal funding maximally to both acquire housing, renovate housing and develop housing,” he said.

Mitchell said while he hasn’t worked as a builder, “I have sufficient experience to not be lost in the construction world.”

He explained while working on the census in Jamaica, he also worked for an architect.

“I would go to the job site to ensure that what we drew was built and then we would videotape it to ensure that the property owner had a record of what they were paying for,” he said. “You can’t be a good architect unless you’re on the job site.”

And fresh out of law school and working in Seattle, he was placed on the real estate and construction litigation team because he could understand their industry lingo.

He said understanding construction also will be helpful when a developer wants more money because of an overrun.

Mitchell passed the Hawaii bar in 1995, but after not being able to find a job in the state he took a job in Seattle. His intended short stint turned into 27 years after he met his wife and they had three boys.

In 2018, after serving on the board of the UH Manoa School of Architecture, he made the jump to move his family to Maui, where his sons all graduated from Maui High School and now are enrolled in the University of Hawaii Manoa.

Mitchell said he knows he has a challenging and time-consuming job ahead of him, but it is an opportunity he didn’t think he would have at this stage of his career.

“To come back and have a chance to focus on housing is just amazing,” he said.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.