City officials Tuesday said they will be issuing notices to violators of the new vacation rental law, despite saying Monday that no notices had been issued due to a pending lawsuit.
Kathy Sokugawa, acting director of the Department of Planning and Permitting, said the first violation notices could be issued as early as later this week.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell said at a news conference Tuesday morning that DPP is “investigating a couple hundred violations right now.”
He added, “I don’t want anyone out there who has an illegal vacation rental to think that because of this lawsuit, or others that may be filed in the future, that the City and County of Honolulu is not going to enforce the laws that’ve been enacted by the Honolulu City Council and signed into law by the mayor.”
The law that went into effect Thursday makes it illegal to advertise an unpermitted vacation rental of less than 30 days. It also increased the fines for advertising or renting an unpermitted vacation rental to a maximum of $10,000 a day instead of $1,000 daily.
On Monday, after being asked by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser whether violations had been issued, a DPP spokesman sent an email that said investigations tied to Ordinance 19-18 are continuing. “However, because of the pending litigation, we have not yet issued any notices of violation.”
Asked to clarify, the spokesman declined Monday to say whether violations would be issued before the lawsuit’s conclusion.
The Kokua Coalition on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the city’s enforcement of the ordinance, arguing that its members have a 2018 settlement agreement with the city that allows them to operate. Its members consist of operators of so-called “30-day rental” agreements, a contract for 30 days even though it’s understood the tenant might not stay the entire 30-day period.
Caldwell took issue with Tuesday’s Star-Advertiser story and said it is wrong to say city enforcement is on hold due to the lawsuit.
“We are going to be enforcing (the bill) that I signed about a month and a half ago,” he said. “If you have a vacation rental that is less than 30 days that you don’t have a nonconforming use permit for, that is not in a hotel and resort, if you’ve been violating the law since the 1980s, under the law I just signed, you continue to violate the law.”
The change with the new law is that “now we can use social media platforms to find out what you’re doing and to crack down,” he said.
The city wants to “make sure that when we send out the notice of violation, it is correct, accurate, and that we’re going to succeed if they persist on advertising illegally and having an illegal vacation rental.”
DPP rules call for violation notices to be issued to those who have been found to be in violation of zoning or building codes. Those cited have seven days to comply. If they don’t, they face notices of orders that could result in initial fines and the beginning of the daily fines.
The city estimates that there are 6,000-8,000 illegal vacation rentals on Oahu, although others have estimated there may be as many as 25,000 unpermitted units outside of hotel-resort areas.
“We’ve never let up on investigations; we’ve always been committed to enforcing the new law,” Sokugawa said. “Yes, it’s true we have not issued (a notice of violation) yet, but we should be doing that very soon. And we should start rolling them out perhaps as early as this week.”
No violations have been issued so far because the city is “still in the research phase,” Sokugawa said. “We want to make absolutely sure that (in the) citation we use … that we have the correct information … so that it’s irrefutable.”
ON THE MOVE
Bikeshare Hawaii has announced the promotion of their program and grants manager, Justine Espiritu, to associate director of programs and community partnerships. Espiritu has 10 years of sustainability experience, including serving as sustainability team leader of TEDxHonolulu, bikeshare coordinator for Hawaii B Cycle, clean-transportation fellow within the Kupu-RISE program as well as project coordinator at Honolulu Clean Cities (now known as the Sustainable Transportation Coalition of Hawaii under the Blue Planet Foundation).
PATCH, People Attentive to Children, Hawaii has selected Terry Walsh as its new executive director. He has 20 years of extensive child welfare, refugee, immigration and international experience in Michigan, Hawaii, New Jersey and Africa. Walsh recently was president and chief executive officer of Catholic Charities Hawaii and served as a consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which worked with the “Lost Boys of Sudan” and their resettlement into the United States.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter Sophie Cocke contributed to this story.
