What Hawaii Governor Josh Green said today could be a blow to the Maui vacation rental industry.
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What Hawaii Governor Josh Green said today could be a blow to the Maui vacation rental industry.
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Here’s another question. Is Mayor Bissen housing any displaced families? Governor Green? Anyone in the government trying to set up these ridiculous moratoriums? What sacrifices have they made to help Lahaina? The housing problem was here before the tragedy…and unfortunately will be here well after. This has been a disaster waiting to happen for years. Poor regulation of utility companies, poor water management and poor safety precautions all come from the top.
The ratio of visitors to residents on the master plan for Maui should be enforced. We were already being overrun but tourists before COVID and the wildfires. Please put a moratorium in place to stop any additional tourist accomodations and attractions. Focus on rebuilding the community and infrastructure. We do not need to bring the world of visitors here. Respectfully submitted, Linda D
Hope you have a great pension or private source of funds as you attitude will drive us away and there will be fewer and fewer jobs
“They said that visitors do not understand the geography of the state or of Maui. For example, West Maui’s 109 square miles make up 15% of the island. But that small percentage, according to HTA, has caused Maui and statewide tourism to suffer.”
I have read this often on social media. And it is a darn shame that many tourists come to an island, not from the history of its beauty, but from social media frenzy. Personally, I hope these people ignorance keep them off the islands. I think one should earn the ability to visit the islands. STR need to be for tourism, period. There is plenty of land for long term and Govt. needs to get them help! Now!
Excellent plan for restricting. As a 35 yr. resident and real estate experience I applied at red cross to help with the transition. Hta also needs solid plan. I think that planting the outside burn area black fence might help. Urecas, bamboo,ext… Something that looks good and brakes up the seen. Get Peter Martin to water them and share cost.
Oh I love your idea! This would be inexpensive too. I have always said, if I Lived on Maui again, there would be No reason why anyone could not have beauty surrounding them! Take advantage of the naturaly resources about you and hide the fire zone to enhance the areas beauty for all!
Better attitude may bring visitors back.
No job, no house….get off island. Can’t be on assistance for ever.
Without sounding too cruel in text, I agree. Many state they can live on their own resources and do not need tourists. Yet, I dont see much news on those farming, and actually building like, ie, (amish people), and getting things dones. They should not continue to hold up STR. They should not have to leave the island. Its’ a huge island, If these people were always employed, they should be working and meeting with bankers to get something temporarily built until they can rebuild back to where they once were. If you were all 5 famililes just living in one house, so you dont have to work, then its time to make a life change.
Are you saying that 5 families were living in the same house? How big of a house were they living in. Also how many people in a family in the US that’s 3.1 in the world it’s 4.9. Doing the math that’s either 15.5 or 24.5. Their is no way that most short term rentals in condos or resorts will be able to put that many people in 1 unit if you go by the maximum occupancy rate listed on rental agreements, you’re talking about multiple units per family.
Just stating the obvious.
I’ve suggested it before and I’ll suggest again;
What the Governor, and mayor of Maui, need to do is have FEMA bring in, and allow owners to bring in tiny homes on wheels to the fire damaged properties once they’re cleaned.
FEMA should invest in these rather than Temporary solutions!
These tiny homes on wheels can then become Ohanas after new homes are finished, or moved to tiny home villages, for long term affordable housing.
Many of these rentals have HOA of over 2k a month,
Never understood take ones misfortune and placing it on others.
How does Green expect tourism to increase and tourist to bring money for tax dollars and increased business dollars when he threatens a moratorium? Guests will not make reservations when there is a threat of shutting everything down again and they loose vacation plans.
LK
In one release by HTA, I read:
Provide consistent messaging that Maui is open to visitors.
Increase Maui travel.
Then: From the Governor:
A moratorium on short term rentals?
Where’s the consistency????
We own a small condo in the west side. We can barely pay our costs with short term rentals. Long term rental would mean we lose money – paying out of our pocket for someone else to live there! How is that fair? If this goes through we would have to sell. But the moratorium would make us sell for less than we bought it. So again it’s ripping us off. How is any of this fair? We worked hard for 40 years. 80 hours a week on a small business. The money you are stealing is our hard earned retirement!!
I agree and I just keep getting the message that the Government there is living on Island time, and not broad minded to think out of the box. In this situation, I believe a mainland professional would make better decisions. I know they want to keep all the local natives in business there as a family. And I get it. It should have stayed that way for many years. But now in this sad situation, there needs to be more brain power, someone that is not afraid to step on the toes of the locals and offend them. There has to be reality check in 2024!
Where is FEMA?
Distribute the burden of long term and short term rentals evenly throughout all of maui’s resorts. Many workers will have to commute to the west side from other side of island’s communities. Many workers already do. Only fair. We shouldn’t expect west side to carry the load/burden of housing by themselves. All island policies mandatory all resorts. Do the math. Can help with commute costs for those assigned to other side housing. Fair for all owners this way too. Thxs martin.
I just got back from Maui 3 weeks ago. I had booked my yearly visit a year ago and up to the past week or two we went back and forth about going. We ended up going and tried to be very respectful to locals and not bring up anything about the fire. Some locals brought it up themselves and we tried to be supportive. Most locals were glad we were shopping, spending money and they were grateful for the work with the influx of visitors. A very complex situation and my heart goes out to all the people that were affected by this fire.
Great information. I keep wondering why we keep thinking that government is the solution. I was reading an article about affordable housing in Sacramento, CA. Private developers can build a unit for $390k, and the affordable housing units wind up costing $600k due to increased regulation and compliance costs. Maybe the government should just back off and let the people figure it out. Just an idea.
So I have experience with surviving a wildfire, Campfire that burned the community of Paradise to the ground, there’s so much tied up in litigation that nothing is getting done.
That’s after 5 years!!!
For simpletons that means any move by the government to force STR property to be converted to long term is going to be met with stiff litigation that will go on for years.
Smart attorneys will organize STR property owners to donate 100.00 a month to fight the government. That’s 1.5 million a month.
The harsh reality is that those who lost homes and had jobs in businesses in Lahaina Town will have to move if they have not been able to find new employment. Looking at the fire that devastated the town of Paradise Ca, far more homes and businesses were destroyed and from the NY Times, “ five years after the fire, the numbers have not returned. The population has fallen to around 9,000 from roughly 26,000. Today, there are fewer than 4,000 houses and 450 businesses in Paradise, compared with 12,000 homes and 1,500 businesses before November 2018.Nov 9, 2023. nytimes.com › paradise” Governor Green needs to understand that it will take a long time for tourism to return and help people move on.
The news coverage also has a role in this. On the mainland, every time somebody sees a news article about reopening journalism expectations say that you have to give a certain amount of space to an opposing viewpoint. Even if that viewpoint is extreme or held by just a small number of people mainlanders don’t know that they just see the news talking about some guy that got interviewed who’s ranting about travelers.
The economy of the island of Maui even more than the rest of the state of Hawaii is so highly integrated with tourism.
The idea of converting short term units to long term is not practical. Most short term rentals units have very little storage for items either inside or outside of the unit. Most rental units do not allow pets or have places for things like kids bikes. Most rental units are on the small side leaving little room for families. Short term rental units provide millions of tax dollars to the economy. Many of the amenities that are used by all will not survive without tourist dollars. The political base is trying to make short term rental owners pay for the lack of supporting low income local housing for many, many years.
Yes, I agree, and I may add, since I am a world tourist. There is a noticable change in the condition of units when rented out to individuals that are doing hard living in a small quarters. I for one, do not want to rent a place that is worn out and shown abuse. I have been searching very hard as for a rental that isnt charging high prices for worn furnishings. I won’t do it, and it is a challenge unless one pays an extremely high rate. the prices being charged now are now worth what one gets. After the long term rentals are done, it will be even worse. i will go elsewhere, sadly!
Who will reimburse the STR owners for lost income? I doubt that they are making 50% profit so that going to long term rentals won’t bankrupt them. Seems that Hawaii needs to reimburse them for the lost income, at least cover the loss for mortgage, tax, insurance, and other similar costs. If it is a societal benefit then society should pony up.
Here’s an idea: since Maui County incompetence and mismanagement created the issue, they deal with the inconvenience. Mayor Biden lives in a 5-bedroom house. Put a couple of families on the four spare bedrooms. Same with all of the MEMA employees who have done nothing for the past 5 years other than collecting paychecks. Same with the guy in charge of water who didn’t release it for five hours. Same with the Fire Chief who mishandled the fires. Go down the line with all government employees. Drug test all before giving them housing.
How about moving some displaced Lahaina residents to other islands? Tourists spend money and keep restaurants, hotels, bars, other service businesses, and yes legal STRs in business. No one has addressed what the State and County will do if a displaced resident moves into an upscale STR and trashes it. Who pays for the remodel? What if they refuse to leave at the end of the rental? Hawaii laws are pro-tenant and an STR owner will have legal cost, loss of income, and remodel costs. Talk to anyone who owns rental properties and they will tell you horror stories! A friend was in one of the hotels used for displaced housing and he told me about vomit in the hallways, and unsupervised teens and tweens stealing from vacationers.
And this does not surprise me. And I am not renting from an abused room. i for one, have been looking at rental photos and really studying them. I Will Not pay the outlandish rental prices for abused properties. Not the owners fault, but if they don’t think about these issues, (Some) will not care for the str, and the owners will lose out anyway with repair bills, or having to lower their prices for a destroyed unit rental. Yes, it will happen.
The government allowed speculation in the housing market for many years. Now they need to eliminate the speculators with their mini-hotels in neighborhoods across the entire state of Hawaii.
Dump all short term rentals in non-vacation zoned areas. All of them. That’s why certain areas are zoned “Residental” and “Agricultural”, for Residents and AG use.
Look around the world at all of the short term rentals being banned or greatly limited. Recently all of New York City, Dallas, all over the world.
Dump it all.
I agree with part of your statement, no STRs in areas not zoned hotel. That will keep them to primarily condo units in touristy areas and our of neighborhoods where kids run and play. However, to get rid of STRs completely is a very poor decision. Many people traveling to Maui want to be able to have a kitchen, their own space, laundry etc. Most STRs provide that at about the same cost as a room, a room at a hotel. These people are spending money on the island that goes back to the island in many ways.
I’m not reading any other options to get 3,000 people a long term home. Sometimes you have to close the cash register to get peoples attention. Who will stand up and help people? 15,000 owners have a choice to do the right thing and still get paid 50-60% what they would normally make If there are tourists to fill them. Big picture folks. Helping someone start over is priceless.
If our officials are not going to protect landlords how do they expect STR owners to get on board with this plan? Many STR owners would do so if there was some kind of protection. Non payment of rent, damage to property, theft etc. are true concerns. Plus, how, in a free country, can you force owners to switch from STR to LTR? You can’t. You’ll put 1000s of people out of work…PMs, cleaners, maintenance, etc. and negatively impact the incomes of those owners, thus impacting what’s spent on the island. This plan won’t work. The incentives are too weak and the protection for landlords is a joke.
Interesting. And No mention of timeshare which is not rental but interval ownership.
This proposal screams, “We don’t know what we are doing.”
Maui has significantly eroded its tourism industry. Now the government, with some local support, wants to add insult to injury by banning short-term rentals? I hope owners have enormous cash buffers to pay Hawaii’s sky-high property taxes, income taxes, power and water utility rates, just to name a few of the many expenses imposed by the government.
Finally, let me be clear: there will be no “industry” relocating to Maui/Hawaii. It’s thousands of miles from any population center. Shipping and transportation costs are astronomical. And Hawaii’s cost structure is one of the Least competitive on the planet, and most certainly the United States.
Hawaii’s property taxes are the lowest in the USA for owner occupied homes. STVR owners will get a Huge property tax break when renting long term. A large portion of STVR properties are owned by people who live on the mainland and international investors. A relatively small amount of that money stays on Maui. Also our unemployment rate is consistently one of the lowest in the country , for the past 20 – 30 years every tourist industry business has been begging , pleading for employees. The biggest problem has been affordable housing for service workers. Over the years more and more local housing units have been converted into STVR , making it more difficult to find housing .You think your wait to be seated at a restaurant is long now?
Aloha,
Please help me out; apparently I am challenged in both math and basic English. Reduce short term rental by 20% and increase tourism, (to what level; tourism is down 50% so…decrease STR by 20% and increase tourism by 30% for a perceived balance which will hypothetically increase permanent housing by 20%?), short term rental pays 352% more than long term but convert private short term rental to long term rental. Nope. I don’t deny the housing crisis, and it is a crisis, but this sounds like the ever so popular totalitarian approach occurring in other jurisdictions. You can take a million dollar condo and cut the price in half and it still won’t be affordable. Who absorbs the loss? This could end badly…
Mahalo
Oh Gerrty, This will end poorly. I can see Maui going to hell in a handbasket. Gov, does not want to offend the locals, so he is iffy in his decisionmaking. Nothing is happening, nothing is helped. Locals are the only ones winning only in their fight. But, they will be homeless again, when resorts become like some islands that are poor, half shut down, and run down. because tourism will lessen greatly. I went to a town in St. Martin and the resort was so poorly maintained, my vacation was abrubtly stopped until I got a return flight home. I can see this same scenario on Maui. Everyone better wise up Today, This is going to be a crappy ride for all!
On the one hand the governor wants to increase tourism and on the other he proposals a moratorium on short stay rentals. That would mean having to cancel reservations already made by tourists already skeptical of the sincerity of Hawaii’s desire to welcome vacationers.
Booked a Maui trip for summer 2024 using Hawaiian Airline miles several months ago, and booked a condo with a local rental agency.
It’s looking like this may have been a bad idea.
We intentionally avoided HI during the pandemic because of the ever-changing restrictions.
We love Maui and seeing friends we’ve made there over the years. We want to support their local businesses.
Thanks, BOH for info about the press conference. Will have to watch closely at future messaging.
Hotel suites are too pricey for us and hotels don’t want more than four in a regular hotel room. Staying in a condo is the only way our family can travel.
Hope we don’t have to cancel or “get canceled” by gov’t decisions.
People over profits! Dependent on tourism = Disappointment 😞 If all you see is $$$ in your eyes then you’re not who should be trying to fix this crisis..jmo
There needs to be a meeting of the minds here. There is opportunity to proceed and build back in a more responsible manner. Tourism is a fact of life in many places throughout the world. How to do it responsibly is the key. Hawaii cannot secede from the nation and isolate from the world, as much as some might like to. It also has to remain within the framework of the Constitution.
Somehow a middle ground is imperative!
Respectfully, this is a highly uneducated comment. You should be upset with your elected officials who are making this so difficult. Housing has been an issue for years. But now, because of the Lahaina tragedy, it’s in their faces and they’re panicking. This state bankrupts without tourism. The roads you drive on, water systems to give you drinking water, your power, etc. are more than 80% funded by the tourism industry. Your officials tax the hell out of their constituents, you included. They’re who you should be upset with. Not people contributing to this beautiful island. STR owners pay Double in real estate taxes…that’s a lot of revenue for the island.
Thanks BoH. I’ll skip Green’s lack of understanding of basic economics. The short answer is build More housing, not less. Fast track it too. On Maui tourism, something I don’t hear many talking about as a reason for the drop off is Lahaina itself. While not thought of as an official destination, Lahaina was, in many ways, the magic of Maui. It’s still so hard to think of all the eclectic shops and restaurants that made the town so charming are gone. Visitors are now left with a void that can’t be filled by Whaler’s village or boujee malls in Wailea. So the high cost of Maui doesn’t math with the experience you get (now). There will be many opinions, but somehow old Lahaina has to be recreated.
We were told repeatedly not to come to West Maui. There’s more there than just Lahaina town. That included Kaanapali Beach and north. One of the protesting spokesperson said they’d asked visitors not to come, visitors didn’t listen and now they have blood on there hands. Do they not care about all the businesses north of Lahaina town?
This article makes me more confused than ever. They want to increase Maui tourism by putting a moratorium on short-term rentals? No doubt owners get a high return on their investment, but so does the state in terms of absurd taxes and fees. They want to give up that income? I understand residents need housing but that doesn’t sound like a viable/legal solution. I hope someone figures this out sooner than later and if such a moratorium goes into effect, it will insure owners give deposit refunds, regardless of timing. And airlines too.
The best way to help west Maui is to visit with lots of tourist dollars.
What a ridiculous situation between HTA, Green, and Maui’s Mayor: Don’t come, don’t come, come, but when you come, don’t have fun around other people. Now we want everyone to come again. Too Sad, too many people are suffering because of this and their stupid decisions.
What does Hawaii want? It seems that the other islands (other than Maui) already have issues with over-use. And they want to divert more people to them? Cant’s see how the reduce tourism and grow our tourist economy can function together unless they set some sort of spending minimum; you can come to Hawaii if you spend a minimum of $2,3, or 5 thousand a day.
9 most scariest words “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
And now theyre ready to help Hawaiins with housing?That horse left the barn a long time ago.Who believes that there will ever be justice for the people of Lahaina?Or for Hawaiins in need of housing?
me neither.
They could have brought in the people converting storage containers to tiny houses and had them done and ready for deployment in 6-8 weeks. We have a couple of storage container apartment buildings and small housing developments here where I live and they’re pretty nice. If they would have done that, these units could be deployed as ADU after the more permanent structures were developed which would have increased the supply of housing.
It seems like the people in charge are just wringing their hands. That is exactly what they did during the fire though so we shouldn’t be surprised.
The guv’nur says that he is learning on the job then what exactly was he doing in his time as the Lieutenant Governor other than helping to exacerbate the Vid lockdowns!? So now he is fundamentally going to institute another “short term” lockdown on Maui rentals, whatever short term really means with no mention of what the short term rental criteria even is.
Then there’s the HTA statement that puts the locals housing situation dead last on their list. Now that’s a great PR statement to make the locals feel good, said no one ever. Mixed messaging once again.
Well how are you going to increase Maui tourism if you eliminate all the short term rentals?
I am on several sites trying to stay informed. The messages from all including the government are unclear as to tourists being welcome. We live in Montana which also relies on tourism. So we understand the conflict between residents and vistors. I am sure the displaced still need jobs, which may be difficult if the tourists don’t come. We’re spending our usual month at Kahana after calling our resorts there to make sure we are welcome. We consider Lahaina our 2nd home, It will break our hearts even more to actually see the devastation.
Well wishes to everyone who has been directly affected by this tragedy. Lahaina town was a magical place and will be again.
Why hasn’t the Governor asked for the Seabees and other military construction units stationed on Oahu to take the ferries over to Maui and speed up the cleaning operation. The units sit idle most of the time and senior bras as well as many enlisted Hawaiians are itching to contribute to Maui recovery. Waiting to be asked to help
Sounds as if they’re desperately throwing darts blind at the board and praying to hit a viable solution… While a great many of those STRs are owned by off island people and entities, how many of them are owned by locals who depend on them for income and to pay their mortgages and fees? How is a moratorium going to affect them?
Regardless of what the Gov states, this, if implemented, could (will) drive many small owners into financial hardship foreclosure and worse with an economic ripple affect spreading across the island because locals who depend on the STR industry for their lively hoods will suddenly be added to the rolls of the jobless…. How is That going to make things better? JMHO
Best Regards
Very few, sadly, are truly local owners. I did research on this topic and was surprised how few.