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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:
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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.
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- 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
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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
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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.
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