Hawaii State Legislature End of Session Summary for Vacation Rentals

It was a brutal season for the Vacation Rental industry at the state legislature. We were watching over 10 bills make their way through the state legislature with a calls to action on a several of them. This is your summary on some of those bills and where we are at now.

This year House Representative Sean Quinlan (North Shore Oahu) is the new chair of tourism, and he kicked off the season by sponsoring a bunch of bills aimed at managing the visitor industry and eradicating illegal vacation rentals. However, these bills were far reaching and punitive, failed to have any input from stakeholders, and would have put legal vacation rentals out of business or altered property rights.

We successfully organized and testified at these meetings to let the state know about our legal operators and what they are doing to benefit our communities. We also informed them about the benefits of community based accommodation businesses and the contributions they continue to make in their counties. Lastly, we gave them pause as to why they would even consider closing down small businesses in our current economic climate. 

We met with Tourism House Committee Chair Sean Quinlan before the end of session and this is what he had to say:

His sentiment is pro-resort zoning for STRs and getting them out of residential neighborhoods because of the housing crisis (except maybe for Big Island where it isn't as big an issue due to size and current home prices). 

He isn't happy with the large numbers of unhosted rentals on Maui. He also said the residential non conforming properties doing STR are definite targets. He believes Kauai has the best model, STRs in resort zoning. 
  • He would like to work on a possible statewide Bill on STRs this summer. He'd like to get representatives from each island, along with the heads of DPP and the Mayor's office as a working group. He realizes the Counties may be too different to regulate together though.

  • He will be off for a couple weeks after the session. We will be back in touch at the beginning of June.  

  • Our stance in the conversation: We are rationale people that understand we need to balance the STR issues with the other housing issues on the islands. We do not want to see illegal activity in the community either. We need to work together on this.


Our takeaway is that we would like to continue to educate our community on why small business accommodations are critical to cultural and regenerative models of hospitality. The state level legislators need to know more about the legal pathways on Maui and show them our enforcement reports from the Department of Planning that clearly show there are not large numbers of unhosted rentals in residential areas on Maui. We need our legislative representative to make data and fact driven decisions.

Quinlan has indicated he wants to bring several bills from this session back. See the bill summaries below
Hawaii Island county employee, and hosted stay operator testifies that Bill 84 gives county councils too much control, and gives the hotel industry and lobby high advantage over small local operators
State Bill Summary

Here is a quick summary of just some of the bills we watched, testified and organized on:

HB820
  • Aimed to tax TVRS at a TAT rate of 25%
  • This punitive bill was supported by the HTA as a way to enforce illegal rentals. 
  • We generated hours of oral testimony and over 400 pages of testimony in opposition
  • Bill is dead for this legislative season
  • This bill can be brought back during next years session


HB84
  • Aimed to give counties authority to create laws to phase out legal, permitted, non conforming or otherwise short term rentals in any zoning districts.
  • This bill was touted as a methodology for enforcement for counties.
  • We generated hours of oral testimony and over 395 pages of testimony in opposition
  • Bill is dead for this legislative season
  • This bill can be brought back next year

HB1376
  • Establishes an Office of Tourism and Destination Management within the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism that encompasses regenerative tourism and best practice destination management, and replaces HTA.
  • We utilized this bill to inform the legislature how crucial it is to have small business accommodations stakeholders on any tourism management committee or group moving forward

HB1375 
  • Establishes the powers, duties, and responsibilities of the destination management agency, including its director and commission and repeals HTA.
  • We utilized this bill to inform the legislature how crucial it is to have small business accommodations stakeholders on any tourism management committee or group moving forward


SB219
  • Clarifies county zoning to explicitly authorize counties to adopt zoning regulations that eliminate or amortize land uses or structures.
  • Senate counter part to HB84
  • Bill is dead for this legislative season
  • This bill can be brought back next year

SB1522
  • Establishes an Office of Tourism and Destination Management within the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism that encompasses regenerative tourism and best practice destination management and replaces HTA.
  • Senate counterpart to HB1375
  • Bill is dead for this legislative season
  • This bill can be brought back next year


We have created a dashboard to follow State measures here.
State Coalition: Mālama Hale Kipa

In order to have a stronger cohesive voice about the small business accommodation industry we are forming a new organization to organize the different counties together in a new statewide non profit organization.

This organization meets weekly on Mondays at 8:30am. If anyone is interested in joining any action committees or participating please let me know. We are working together to meet with our state legislators and drive education, awareness, and better data for the next state session. 

This organization is a nonprofit organization. So far the groups meeting on Monday include Ohana Aina Association (Hawaii Island), Oahu Short Term Rental Alliance (Oahu), Friends of Kuilima (North Shore Oahu), Hawaii Legal Short Term Rental Alliance (Oahu) and MVRA (Maui County). We are also currently seeking any individuals or groups interested in joining us from Kauai county. We also hold another meeting with the National and Global OTA groups of Rent Responsibly, VRMA, AirBNB, and Expedia Group.

Mālama Hale Kipa means protecting guest house hospitality. We are a hui concerned with taking care of and protecting independently owned small business accommodations. These small businesses are the backbone of a community based responsible visitor industry. 

We recognize that this legitimate industry needs a unified voice, to educate our state legislators, and share the benefits of small business ownership in the accommodations sector. We believe in a managed visitor industry. Fair and balanced results for the community will be accomplished by representation of all of the facets of the hospitality industry, not only large wealthy corporations.

Thank you for your support!
If you have any questions please feel free to email me
at jenrusso@mauivacationrentalassociation.org or call me at 808-280-3286.

Mahalo

Jen Russo
MVRA needs you now more than ever. Our voices are stronger together. We continue to advocate for the Vacation Rental industry in this challenging landscape. With our local government discriminating against rentals with no good cause, and proposing to pass legislation that reduces or eliminates property rights our work is more important that ever before. Since 2001 Maui Vacation Rental Association has been the non profit publicly supporting the rights of Maui property owners, small businesses, management companies, and managers. We know our work is more critical than ever. Thank you for supporting, engaging and being a part of this organization. 
We are actively watching the administration’s activities and remain concerned about discrimination against vacation rentals as well as threatened property rights. If you want to continue fighting for your property rights to be a vacation rental on Maui then please consider contributing to our legal fund. We continue to work on the legal arguments, phone calls, relationships and strategies for keeping your businesses from being discriminated against during the pandemic and into the future. Please join our legal fund today by clicking here to contribute so that we can continue to be well prepared. Mahalo to those who have contributed already.