Sea level rise (SLR) exacerbates existing coastal hazards and its impacts are already apparent throughout the coasts and low-lying areas of Hawaiʻi. Sandy beaches, a public trust resource, are at risk of disappearing due to the confluence of SLR and the historic and continuing hardening of the shoreline with coastal infrastructure. The project of the Institute for Sustainability and Resilience at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is assessing the costs and tradeoffs of potential SLR response strategies. We focus on retreat from the coast within a case study of the North Shore of O‘ahu. A variety of retreat scenarios are assessed based on their public and private costs, as well as in context to potential environmental harms to the public trust. This project serves to develop a framework for identifying and, to the extent feasible, measuring the variety of costs to SLR response in the context of development adjacent to Hawai’iʻs sandy beaches. Future work will expand on the concept of “protect, accommodate and retreat” to a broader set of urban typologies, including varying shoreline conditions and existing infrastructure.