If one was contemplating a move to Hawaii, what advice would the Dopers give? We have a few questions, but aren’t sure what we haven’t thought of yet! Our questions are all about the big island, but if you have experience/suggestions/warnings/etc about other islands, please share!
Home prices on the big island- generally speaking, is market softening or still going up?
Is there a lot of crime on the big island? As a visitor to Oahu, I get the impression that there is quite a bit of crime on Oahu (including gang activity), but that may be a result of having most of the state’s population there…
What is it like to raise kids on the big island? I am wondering about peers, quality of education (both public and private), expectations (do most parents expect their kids to go to college or not), etc.
Outside of tourism & agriculture, what’s going on from a business perspective? And how’s the state economy doing?
On Kona side, where do middle class folks generally live?
I appreciate any experience or advice!
Probably a fair bit of property crime. Drug offenses. . . the culture’s a bit different, and if drug culture bothers you it might be a lot sketchier looking than it would if you didn’t find, say, marijuana farming to be on the extreme edges of hard crime. It’s a bit backwater so imagine small town weird rural style crime, otherwise. Domestic disputes, burglary, small-town drug vendettas, bored teens wanna-be gangland and such. I suspect there’s still an ice problem, but that seems to have spread to the rural mainland as well so nothing new there.
Somewhere between fine and not great at all, depending on the town/high school. Kids that go to Hawaii Prep Academy (private) or St Josephs (private Catholic) or Waiakea or Hilo High or Kona might have access to AP classes and a wide range of electives and have expectations of going to UH or even a UC. If your kids go to Ka’u or Pahoa or Laupahoehoe, not so much.
I graduated in 1990, which is ages ago, but if things are the same I would not wish one of the smaller rural schools on my kids. At my public school, for example, 3 kids in my grade took pre-calc but it was a special setup, and the foreign languages that were offered were… Spanish. You could take Hawaiian, though, which would be interesting but of limited usefulness to most people. The “GT” class setup consisted of one English class per grade (in some years they threw all the GT English kids of several grades into one batch), inhabited by mainland transplants who grew up with standard English and thus didn’t fit into the regular curriculum (and the best math class (since it was a freakshow) coincided with the best English class so you had to make a choice-- if you wanted precalc you would up in the 4th English group learning to use helping verbs and practicing reading aloud/phonics). Of my 12th grade class of 120 or so I think 80 or 90 graduated, and perhaps 15 went to college from there-- several at UH Hilo, a number at UH Manoa on Oahu, and I think 3 or 4 on the mainland. A good number of kids head into the military, as it’s a pretty good option.
I suspect the race relations are better now, and possibly the curriculum, but it was just not a prosperous part of the island and because of the language issue things were just a bit different. If you already knew your standard English grammar it was very frustrating. Imagine your average rural small high school-- few elective options, limited possibilities, poor economy (you could tell who the unusual “rich” kids were- because they paid the whole 45 cents for lunch, unlike the other 95% who got the subsidized free lunch (“You pay for lunch? Why? What?”))-- and toss in a whole pile of unexpected random issues like the strange language situation and race relations and being stuck on a rock in the middle of the fucking ocean, etc).
Sorry, I’m a tad damaged, perhaps. Might be a useful perspective for you to have, however, so any fantasies of a lucrative orchid farm next to your banyan tree-house in the cool breeze and macadamia orchard by the beach are tempered by some nasty realities.)
Big Island? Like any rural and small city economy, minus any sort of production for export that isn’t agriculture (why would anyone bother, say, paying to ship machine parts or anything from there?). Usual service industries, I suspect, and the city supporting the city. But again this may have shifted in the last 10 or 15 years.
Kona’s probably considered the ‘rich’ side of the island, i.e. middle class. Not sure if you’re trying to avoid overly pricey areas or overly inexpensive areas; I should let a more recent resident answer that, again.
The only place I’d go to on the Big Island to live would be Hilo. You hear bad things about Puna. Although interestingly enough the last I heard about the place was that it was becoming a destination for gays from San Francisco who want to get away from the city because Puna is on an erupting volcano the building permits are very restrictive. Essentially 2 stories is all you’re allowed to go.
What is it like to raise kids on the big island? I am wondering about peers, quality of education (both public and private), expectations (do most parents expect their kids to go to college or not), etc. It was the greatest place in the world to grow up, so much nature to have fun in. White, black, red and green sand beaches, snow capped mountains, more rain forest then you can shake a stick at, active volcanoes, waterfalls, natural hot springs, natural steam baths and fruit, fruit, fruit. My mother moved us away when I was 10. She saw that because there wasn’t so much to do there, especially for teens, a lot of people turned to alcohol. Of the kids that we knew that were my age who stayed on the island most had issues.
Outside of tourism & agriculture, what’s going on from a business perspective? And how’s the state economy doing? If you have a degree there’s the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Mauna Kea has several of the world’s most important telescopes. The state is doing pretty well but the Big Island has always had a much higher unemployment rate. There’s some bio-tech firms on the Kona side. And there’s also the Volcano park. But I haven’t lived on the island since the early 80s.
On Kona side, where do middle class folks generally live?You can see where the homes are on Google Earth. Although my guess it most would actually live in Hilo.
Watch out for the centipedes! We use to pop over to the Kona side for a week or so and camp out. Those suckers were huge.
I’ll throw in my 2 cents’ worth, even though my info is not up to date; it’s been years since we lived in Hawaii. But we did visit there as recently as two years ago, and you said any experiences. Two years ago, we heard a lot of complaints about the cost of housing skyrocketing. I mean even more so than when we were living there. It’s always been “skyrocketing,” but now they were blaming Californians who were going over and paying inflated prices for houses, thus pushing up prices for everyone. Or so we were told.
We spent 2 1/2 years in Honolulu, and I felt safe for the most part. My first semester (still a bachelor and not seeing my future wife yet), I was actually burgled for the only time in my life in my Makiki apartment, and while I was in the shower, but other than that, I never felt unsafe. I used to work needle exchange on Hotel Street in Chinatown and so would be down there rather late at night, so I saw a lot of the seamier side. (We were surprised how cleaned up Chinatown had become two years ago, though.) I’d be more wary of ethnic tensions than outright crime, though.
We didn’t spend much time on the Big Island, but Hilo seemed a nice place to live; had a friend there who loved the place. We liked the Waimea area, too. I’m a city guy, though, so I would definitely stick to Honolulu myself if we ever moved back.
Maybe I can help a little on the school thing - my parents moved us out of Hawaii (Honolulu) when I was little specifically because of the (nonspecific) school situation and the bored-turning-to-hooliganery situation (among other things) - but growing up there before the formative school-age years (I’d say middle school and up, though we left before that) seems like it would be fine and it was awesome for us. Mellow vibe, nice people, nice weather, conducive to playing outside and to developing a laid-back, friendly personality (maybe). So it would depend on the age of the kids (also, what they were interested in studying, if older).
Our questions are all about the big island, but if you have experience/suggestions/warnings/etc about other islands, please share!