Mass mailers soliciting Kauai homeowners located outside of resort areas to open their residences to short-term vacation rentals have riled some county officials.

The letters by VRBO, a company owned by Home­Away, based in Texas, were recently sent to homeowners in communities on the Garden Isle that include Anahola, Kapaa, Lihue and Waimea, all of which are outside of the county’s designated visitor destination areas. Vacation rentals outside of resort areas are considered illegal unless the property owner has a nonconforming-use certificate. Violators face civil fines of up to $10,000 a day.

County Planning Director Mike Dahilig as well as Prosecutor Justin Kollar were among the homeowners receiving letters from VRBO soliciting short-term vacation rentals.

“I was irritated by it,” said Kollar, who resides in a Wailua home outside of visitor destination areas. It is impossible, he said, for local residents to find a place to live as what he called predatory actions from companies like VRBO attempt to snatch properties.

Dahilig said illegal vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods are becoming a “more persistent problem when it comes to our livable housing supply.”

In the past two years, the Planning Department shut down more than 110 illegal transient vacation rentals. There are currently 142 appeals and 39 open transient vacation rental cases at the department since 2013.

Approximately 420 legal vacation rentals outside of resort areas were approved by the Planning Department before a March 2008 law prohibited them without obtaining a nonconforming-use certificate.

HomeAway is owned by Expedia Group, which operates Expedia.com, an online traveling booking website for hotels, cruises, airline tickets, rental cars and vacation rentals.

County officials said companies that solicit homeowners for vacation rentals adversely affect the island, which spans 552 square miles with a population of 72,000 residents.

“They’re literally turning our island into a hotel,” Dahilig said.

HomeAway spokeswoman Christina Song said the letters were sent in error. “This was a mistake and we apologize for the error. The letters should not have been sent to communities where homes are not zoned for use as vacation rentals.”

“Our partnership with the community is incredibly important to us — we are working swiftly to address any confusion and look forward to continuing our decades- long relationship with the residents, homeowners, property managers and tourist and government officials in Kauai,” Song said in an emailed statement to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

She added that the company is working to institute procedures to ensure the error is not repeated.

In recent years the number of visitors opting to stay in vacation rentals instead of hotels have affected residents, according to a report, “Kauai Tourism Strategic Plan 2019-2021: Refocusing Tourism to Find Balance,” released in August.

“In the past, when visitors mostly traveled in tour groups, stayed in hotels and got around on tour buses with a set itinerary, the impacts did not feel as great as they do now. Today, most visitors are free independent travelers (FITs), often staying in vacation rentals within communities, traveling in cars they rent for their entire stay and searching for special ‘undiscovered’ places (often found on social media), including places they should not be. As a result, the impact of visitors feels much greater to residents,” the report said.

A March 2018 report by the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law &Economic Justice said 1 in 8 homes on Kauai is used as a vacation rental unit.