Hotel occupancy on this island is now over 80 percent with room rates exceeding $200 per night. To institute a ban or additional oversight by the county of vacation rentals in private homes invites a decline in tourism, which is the economic life blood of our island.
Vacationers who choose to rent space in private homes rather than hotels are often doing so because these rentals have lower total costs than renting a hotel room. If the county institutes new regulations for these types of rentals, they are likely to negatively impact demand for our island as a tourist destination, reducing the overall size of our economic pie. It is important for our elected representatives to remember the simple economic rule that if you increase costs demand will drop.
The new plan has several other difficult implementation issues which the county has not addressed.
1. How will the county police these uses? If it is voluntary it will not be obeyed. If it is not robustly checked by some new county entity that polices the internet and rentals of these homes (with that added administration cost), it will be unfairly and haphazardly enforced.
2. What constitutes a short-term rental? Many homes in neighborhoods with CC&Rs that restrict homes to rentals of over 30 days often have homes rented as vacation homes for a shorter duration but show the rental was for the 30-day period. Exactly how would the county regulate what constitutes a long-term and a short-term rental?
3. Some rentals are written so that the occupant is paying for something other than rent. For example, they may call the experience an educational retreat or a therapy treatment. Are these vacation rentals?
The county has not shown it is capable of enforcing its zoning or building codes as written. Numerous properties in light industrial zoning are used for offices and retail establishments, which do not appear to meet the use restrictions of the zoning. Buildings are added onto and built everywhere without permits. Additional living units are commonly added to homes without permits by converting garages and carports. The assessor’s office often makes note of these unpermitted additions and is happy to assess the owner for the improvements, but does not report the unpermitted addition to the building department. Yet, with no track record of being able to handle the regulations they have already established, the county believes it should add more for it to look after.
As I have written in the past, this county needs to concentrate on professionalizing its services. Assessors are not required to meet any minimum legal recognizable valuation standards. Permitting new projects can take months longer than it should. Illegal additions are often noted by the assessor, but this information is never passed along to the building department to enforce permitting. The planning office institutes community plans that essentially make it impossible to achieve zoning changes in the central Kona corridor until the Alii Highway is built from Keauhou to Kuakini Highway, and Lako Street is connected to Alii Drive, even though neither of these road projects is likely to be built in our lifetimes because archeology is in the path of both roadways.
The county should concentrate on the jobs it has already committed to. Once they have found a way to make these existing systems function properly, they can think about expanding their scope.
Raymond Kirchner is a resident of Kailua-Kona.