There will be no need for a ban on short-term rentals in West Maui to get the remaining 3,109 survivors of the Aug. 8 wildfires out of hotels and into long-term housing, Gov. Josh Green said Wednesday ahead of what could have been a moratorium starting Monday.
“We will not need a short-term rental moratorium on Maui,” Green said in his fifth-floor conference room at the state Capitol. “We won’t have to do the moratorium because we have reached a minimum number of units to successfully house our impacted families.”
There are enough housing options on Maui to accommodate everyone still living in hotels after the fires, Green said, but not all of them are in West Maui, where most people want to stay.
Some survivors have declined as many as five housing offers because the locations are not convenient for their lives, Green said.
“We have enough units across Maui but we still have some shortage of units in West Maui,” he said. “So I’m going to continue to ask for people — if they have short-term rentals or other capacity to rent to our people — to still go to helpingmaui.org/offer. You will get a very good deal.”
Owners who voluntarily turn over their rentals for housing for fire survivors do not have to pay county property taxes, a concept being considered as well by the state Legislature.
But Green threatened severe penalties for owners of illegal short-term rentals, including potential seizure of their property by the state to be sold to house residents.
“Tax amnesty would be the carrot, and the stick would be that if you’re violating the laws, ultimately you lose your property,” he said. “That’s the severest consequences.”
Maui has an estimated 31,000 legal and illegal short-term vacation rentals.
Statewide, Green estimated that 75,000 of Hawaii’s 89,000 vacation rentals are illegal.
The situation continues to anger Green to the point of profanity at a time when Hawaii needs 50,000 affordable homes to help stem the exodus of island residents moving to more affordable states.
Pointing at the number of vacation rentals, Green said: “There’s your housing solution. Then we can build in a normal fashion.”
Green has instructed state Attorney General Anne Lopez to create a task force to go after illegal vacation rentals starting in West Maui “because that is where our need is greatest.
He especially wants Lopez to target owners living on the mainland.
Green has no issue with local residents who rent out their units legally to tourists and can earn as much as $16,000 a month compared to $4,000 a month by renting to local families.
“We don’t support mainland folks making a ton of money while our people are trying to find housing after a fire,” Green said. “I promised not to swear today in the press conference but I still am thinking it, OK? … I’m going to swear after the press conference.”
He acknowledged the need to increase staffing to pursue owners of illegal rentals but warned them that “more legislation is coming” along with the possibility of “very large fines.”
The wildfires killed at least 101 people, destroyed 3,971 structures — most of them homes — causing an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion in property damage.
Of the homes that were destroyed, 561 were owned and occupied by Lahaina residents.
Some 7,796 survivors were initially housed in 40 hotels. The number of evacuees in hotels has since been reduced 60% and the number of hotels still needed has fallen to 11, Green said.
Every day, he said, 25 to 30 survivors are moving out and into more permanent housing.
He hopes the last evacuees will check out of their hotels by July 1 and into long-term housing.
At the same time, 850 units are under construction and Green has been in Washington, D.C., to lobby the White House and Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund construction of 1,000 more.
Rebuilding Lahaina could take five to 10 years so Green returned to his belief that converting short-term vacation rentals — especially illegal ones — into long-term local housing remains the fastest solution to providing more homes for residents.
“They cannot exist any longer,” Green said. “Illegal short-term rentals are consuming far too much of our housing inventory.”
For more Maui fires coverage, visit https://www.staradvertiser.com/maui-wildfires.
Read More: World News | Entertainment News | Celeb News
Star Ads
