The Hawaiʻi County Council is working to simplify its new short-term rental laws.
As the council overhauls Hawaiʻi Island's STR regulations through Bill 121, it has made a series of amendments in response to concerns from homeowners, local officials, and other stakeholders.
Seven amendments were made to the bill this week, and four were applied during a council committee meeting in July.
Two of the widely agreed-upon amendments would remove some of the requirements to register STRs, also known as transient accommodation rentals, with the county.
One change would omit the submission of a floor plan as part of the registration process, and the other wouldn’t make rentals meet current construction code requirements.
“I think this would just help to make a much more simplified registration process for transient accommodation rental owners,” said councilmember Ashley Kierkiewicz, who introduced the amendments.
But, there were other changes that some councilmembers found to be complicated or overreaching. One proposal, for example, would have allowed one type of short-term rental to temporarily function as another.
“ Wow, talk about making mud muddier. As much as I really want for there to be parameters and more solidification and more security and more support for the people in our county as related to TARs, I feel like this at this point, I can't keep up with it. I have people who are experts in the field who can't keep up with it,” said councilmember Rebecca Villegas at Tuesday's meeting.
She was referencing the number of amendments, in general, but was also responding to a specific proposal surrounding “owner-hosted” STRs.
Bill 121 would establish categories for STRs based on whether a rental unit is on the same property where the homeowner lives. Homeowners must live and be present on the same site as their “owner-hosted” unit, which would then be subject to cheaper registration fees and more zoning flexibilities.
However, one of the proposed amendments says “owner-hosted” STRs would be allowed to be rented out for up to a month while the owners were not at the property.
“We are creating a policy for, quite frankly, the minutia of people's activities when they're running short-term vacation rentals … For the county government to be this far into people's daily lives, it feels a lot of ‘big brother’ to me," Villegas said.
Villegas said her district, which covers the South Kona area, has the highest percentage of the island's STRs.
“If we're going to give them lower costs, and going to see owner-hosted (STRs) in a certain way … those people can’t just rent short term when they're on vacation," said councilmember Jennifer Kagiwada.
Council Chair Heather Kimball, who introduced the amendment, withdrew it after concerns from other councilmembers.
One of the amendments from Kierkiewicz would allow STRs in certain areas to operate in any zoning district. Kierkiewicz said those “visitor destination areas” would have high concentrations of STRs, and wanted to open them up to tourism without allowing more resorts or hotels.
That amendment narrowly passed 5-4 after there were concerns it was not following the spirit of the measure.
Some of the other amendments that passed included allowing STRs that didn’t have to register with the county under current law to be “grandfathered” into the new law — setting limits to the number of renters per bedroom in an STR — and updating certain definitions.
The new STR law would give the county a better idea of the island’s growing rental industry and how to regulate it.
According to a 2023 report by the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization, there are about 6,800 active STRs on the island.
