There are nearly 14,000 legal short-term rentals in Maui County. Nearly half are part of what's known as the Minatoya List — a collection of units in apartment-zoned districts that county officials say used to be largely workforce housing.
They now operate as legal short-term rentals under a longstanding exemption. But they would be phased out as vacation units under a county proposal, with the goal of addressing Maui's housing crisis for residents.
“What you'll see is that like 95% of them are located in West Maui and South Maui,” said Matt Jachowski, referring to the 7,000 Maui units on the Minatoya List.
Jachowski is a Maui native who has been compiling housing data since the August fires. Most recently, he's created a dashboard of Minatoya List graphs in his role as director of data, technology, and innovation at the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement.
He highlights the locations of Minatoya List units as an important distinction.
“I think we might have some people who are operating legal short-term rentals in other parts of the island who get worried about whether, you know, they're going to be shut down, and the answer is no. Like, these are almost all entirely in West Maui and South Maui.”
He also breaks down what types of units are actually on the list.
“One thing that's important to know is not all of those properties are short-term rentals,” he said. “You have people who are living in them as their primary residences, you have people who are offering them as long-term rentals. But most of them are short-term rentals — 6,150 of them are short-term rentals. So that's an important distinction.”
Those who oppose the proposed county legislation often point to the revenue generated from short-term rentals.
“People correctly point out that short-term rentals generate a lot of tax revenue from our counties,” Jachowski told HPR. “Just the short-term rentals from the Minatoya List would contribute about $70 million in taxes, property taxes this year.”
Jachowski said that’s not actually the case because some of those owners are receiving a wildfire property tax exemption, but it's a good ballpark for looking at revenue implications for the county.
“Depending on what they change into, whether they become non-owner occupied, like second homes for people, or whether they become owner-occupied, or long-term rentals, we're going to see a reduction of like $30 to $50 million in property taxes,” he explained. “And if you look at the county's proposed budget for 2025, that's a reduction of 2.5% to 4%. So that's the amount that it would impact the county's budget.”
One out of 18 Minatoya List owners, or 6%, have so far offered long-term leases of 12 or more months to fire survivors.
Those owners, along with those who participated in the FEMA Direct Lease program, were eligible to receive the tax exemption to pay no property taxes for 12 to 18 months, depending on when they applied.
Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen has said county officials "understand that there's going to be a give and take" when it comes to tax revenue, but said their priority is housing local residents.
Jachowski also compiled where Minatoya List owners live based on their mailing address.
“A lot of people have said, ‘Hey, there's local residents who own these rentals and operate them. And that's how they survive.’ So there are, and if you look at the data, 766 of these short-term rentals, which is about 12.5%, have owners with Maui County mailing addresses,” Jachowski said.
“We can see in the graph that the largest category of owners, by far, is Californians," he added. "And we have a lot of other owners from Washington and Canada.”
There are still a lot of unknowns looking into the future of the county's proposed short-term rental legislation. For example, how many units would realistically become available for residents?
“It's unclear how many people are going to be able to afford to buy these units if they start coming onto the market, and it's unclear how many existing owners are going to be willing to convert to long-term rentals if they're used to using them for their vacations when they come and visit,” he explained. “So I think there is an open question, right? If you no longer allow short-term rentals, how are we going to incentivize… that these units actually house Maui residents?”
If passed, the legislation would go into effect for West Maui in July 2025, and for the rest of the island the following January.
Click here to view this data and explore more numbers and data behind the Minatoya List.
