Iran sought to project a sense of order and control Monday by quickly naming an acting president and foreign minister a day after a helicopter crash killed both leaders. The change in leadership came at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East and domestic discontent in Iran, where many residents have called for an end to decades of repressive clerical rule.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced five days of mourning for the president, Ebrahim Raisi, 63, and the foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, 60, who died when their helicopter plunged into a mountainous area near the Iranian city of Jolfa. The men had been returning from Iran’s border with Azerbaijan after inaugurating a joint dam project.

Iran’s armed forces said they had created a committee to investigate the crash, which state media attributed to a “technical failure.”

Raisi, a hard-line cleric who came of age during the country’s Islamic Revolution, oversaw a deadly crackdown on protesters as the head of the judiciary in 2019 and as president in 2022. He had been widely viewed as a possible successor to Khamenei, 85.

On Monday, Khamenei named Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, acting president and announced that Mokhber would organize elections for a new president within 50 days. A conservative political operative, Mokhber has a long history of involvement in large business conglomerates closely tied to Khamenei.

Iran’s Cabinet appointed Ali Bagheri Kani, a deputy foreign minister, as the ministry’s “caretaker,” the IRNA state news agency reported. Bagheri Kani has served as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and was involved in a deal last year that freed imprisoned Americans in exchange for several jailed Iranians and eventual access to about $6 billion in Iranian funds.

Iranian officials said there would be a public procession in Tabriz, the closest big city to the site of the crash, on Tuesday and that the bodies would then be brought to Tehran for a state funeral.

“Raisi was tireless,” Khamenei said in a statement. “In this very sad incident, the people of Iran have lost a valuable and loyal public servant.”

Analysts in Iran said that while there was speculation about who might be elected as the next president, there was little question about the overall stability of the country or the government. They pointed out that Khamenei will remain supreme leader with power over major state policies.

Despite the official calls for mourning, many Iranians welcomed Raisi’s death, seeing him as one of the key figures in a corrupt regime who oversaw the execution of dissidents, used brutal violence to suppress and kill.

Only 1 in 5 households in Hawaii can afford to buy a single-family home — a dramatic drop from just three years ago, according to a grim housing report released by the University of Hawaii on Monday.

In 2021, 44% of Hawaii households could afford the mortgage on a median-priced single-family home. That figure is now 20%. As a result, home sales plummeted last year, hitting a 25-year low. But the slump had little impact on prices.

“We haven’t really seen any drop in prices, but there’s this huge increase in what it costs to buy a house because of interest rates,” said Justin Tyndall, an assistant professor of economics with the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization and the lead author of the report. “Affordability is as bad as it’s ever been.” 

High interest rates have had a crippling effect on would-be homeowners in the state by not only making mortgages significantly more unaffordable, but also reducing the number of houses on the market. 

A majority of mortgage-holders in the state are paying an interest rate of less than 4%, according to the report, making many homeowners wary of putting their home on the market and trying to purchase something else at a much higher interest rate.

The state’s housing market has also worsened for renters in the last year. Hawaii has the highest median rents in the nation and a majority of renters — 56% — are considered “rent-burdened,” meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent.

The Maui fires worsened the state’s housing crisis, causing prices to rise while “the availability of rentals have plummeted,” according to the report.

Vacation Rentals And Out-Of-State Buyers

Short-term vacation rentals make up about 6% of the state’s housing stock, a figure that has grown in recent years but also varies dramatically by island. The number of active short-term rental listings grew 9% statewide between 2022 and 2023. Kauai saw the biggest spike, with a 22% jump in listings.

The number of short-term vacation rentals on Maui has actually increased slightly since the fires, despite the loss of 380 vacation rentals in West Maui and tax incentives for unit owners across the island to convert their units into long-term housing.

“The policy was supposed to incentivize a bigger shift away from vacation rentals and toward housing locals, but we haven’t really seen that in the aggregate,” Tyndall said.

While short-term vacation listings on Maui plummeted after the fire, they are now 2% higher than they were a year ago.

The report also found that “a significant portion of Hawaii’s property owners” are not residents of the state. People from out of state made up 13% of property owners on Oahu and 32% on Maui. More than half of property owners in Lahaina had an out-of-state mailing address.

On Maui, about 85% of vacation rentals are owned by people from out of state, Tyndall said.

Another big takeaway from the overall data, Tyndall said, is that the state isn’t building enough housing to have any real impact on affordability. The state has significant issues with permitting delays, although some progress has been made in the last year in multiple counties, according to the report.

However, strict limits on where multi-family homes can be constructed, along with steep developer fees and permitting delays contribute to the high costs of condos and “reduce the amount of new housing the state.”

“While many households have a preference for single-family homes, building high-rise condominiums can provide many more units, allowing vacancies to propagate across the market, and pushing down housing prices everywhere, including for single-family homes,” the report says.

Converting thousands of vacation rentals into long-term rentals — which Maui’s mayor is proposing to do — could have a really significant impact on affordability, Tyndall said.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The state Department of Transportation launched its annual “Click it or Ticket” campaign Monday in an effort to remind driver of the importance of wearing a seatbelt.

Police departments across the state are bolstering enforcement efforts as well.

“The great thing is Hawaii leads the nation in usage — with nearly 98% — but we dropped off from last year,” said Hawaii Department of Transportation Director Ed Sniffen.

“It’s a big thing. We also see right now that of in the last four years, of the people who died in their vehicles in Hawaii, half of them weren’t using their seatbelts.”

The cost of a ticket for not buckling up is $102 on Oahu, Maui and Hawaii, and $112 on Kauai.

For more information on Hawaii’s ‘Click it or Ticket’ campaign, click here.

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