The city Department of Planning and Permitting is beefing up staffing, hiring up to six new temporary inspectors to help enforce a new and tougher vacation rental ordinance.

Three retired inspectors already have been rehired and should be on the job in a few days, DPP Acting Director Kathy Sokugawa said Wednesday. The other three will be hired if there proves to be a need, she said.

The City Council set aside money in this year’s budget in anticipation of the hires. Sokugawa notified Council members of the hires in a memo sent last week.

The cost of the hires is $132,312.96. The six will be paid $24.18 an hour working 19 hours a week for up to 10 months, according to the memo.

DPP’s Residential Code Enforcement Branch has 17 full-time, permanent inspectors who handle not just vacation rental violations, but other property usage issues, Sokugawa told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

The three new hires joining the permanent staff will work exclusively on short-term rental complaints and violations, Sokugawa said.

Unless specifically permitted to do so, rentals of 30 days or less are illegal on Oahu except in hotel-resort zones. The city stopped issuing approvals for such units in 1989. 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.

Ordinance 19-18, formerly Bill 89 (2018), makes it illegal to advertise a vacation rental of less than 30 days that isn’t permitted to operate. It also upped the fines for advertising or renting an unpermitted vacation rental to a maximum of $10,000 a day instead of $1,000 daily.

In late July, DPP announced that it sent out approximately 5,000 “courtesy” warning letters to owners of properties where illegal vacation rentals may be operating. DPP relied on “pin drops” on street maps used by online vacation rental hosting platforms to identify the owners who received the letters.

But the pin drops show only approximate locations, and DPP received hundreds of complaints from people who said they were sent the letters by mistake. DPP officials encouraged them to identify possible vacation rentals around their neighborhoods.

Sokugawa said that the ordinance appears to be having an impact on the number of illegal rentals, at least the ones being advertised. While DPP staff counted 5,000 illegal ads on July 19, they counted only about 3,200 illegal listings on Tuesday, she said.

“The good thing is we’ve already made a difference on this industry based on the kinds of calls we’re been getting and the decreased level of ads on the World Wide Web,” Sokugawa said. “We’ve already made a significant impact on the illegal short-term rental industry … without even issuing a single (violating notice).”

She added: “I’m hopeful that once we do issue (violation notices), the number will go down further.”

DPP is expected to issue its first violation notices soon, Sokugawa said.

Recently, DPP issued four violation notices on vacation rentals. But those were for violating longtime occupancy laws, not the new vacation rental ordinance.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson was scheduled today to hear a request for the court to issue a temporary restraining order blocking the city from enforcing the ordinance.

The Kokua Coalition, which filed the lawsuit, is arguing that renters were allowed to operate so-called 30-day rentals under an agreement reached with the city. Coalition representative said renters should be allowed to continue renting to a single tenant every 30 days, regardless of how long the tenant actually stays.

Opponents call such agreements sham contracts and point out that it’s difficult to determine if there is actually only one tenant in any 30-day period.