It’s well past time for residents and public officials to turn up the heat on so-called monster houses that look like apartment buildings in the middle of modest single-family homes.

“They’re just huge, and they disrupt the fabric and character of our neighborhoods,” said Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, director of the city Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP).

She spoke at a hearing on an appeal by developer Christy Lei, whose building permits for three two-story homes on a single lot in Kaimuki were rejected by DPP.

Lei’s travails are among the latest highly publicized examples of how the city is justifiably losing patience with developers who skirt or violate land-use ordinances to build what they want. Between April and July, DPP halted at least three projects after determining that they violated the city’s monster-home ordinance. The agency also suspended review privileges for two third-party reviewers for approving drastically oversized projects that should have been rejected.

It’s a welcome and necessary hardening of the city’s stance. The proliferation of monster homes has come to symbolize developers taking advantage of DPP’s long history of weak enforcement and willingness to compromise with scofflaws.

The latest effort is City Council Bill 44, a measure that would punish anyone who knowingly makes a “false statement” to “any city employee who, in the normal course of the employee’s duties and responsibilities, conducts investigations or inspections, or both, to ascertain compliance with any city ordinance, rule or regulation.”

The penalty would be a $2,000 fine, up to one year imprisonment and community services not to exceed 80 hours.

It’s a good start, but Bill 44 needs work.

For one thing, it may be preempted by state law. Section 710-1063 already prohibits lying to government authorities. It was amended in 2019 to include county inspectors dealing with monster homes and illegal vacation rentals, according to committee reports. The bill should not conflict with state statutes, and it may need to be modified to distinguish a lie from an honest mistake.

In her defense, Lei said that she relied on the work of a draftsman — an unlicensed, part-time worker — and the architecture firm that employed him to calculate the correct floor area ratios, which the city says was done improperly. Lei “tried to follow the guidance in good faith, to follow the law that applies,” said her attorney, Elijah Yip.

Further, some Councilmembers want Bill 44 strengthened, to include a teardown component. They are right, but it needs to be done properly.

“All we need to do is demolish one home, and it’s going to wake people up and they’re going to think, ‘Oh my God!’ If we make them take it down, I think that’s going to have the desired effect and stop people from doing this,” said City Council Chair Tommy Waters, who cosponsored Bill 44, at a Council committee hearing July 25.

But Takeuchi Apuna warned that it’s not so simple.

“As far as saying you need to just tear the whole thing down, that would be difficult to do based on how the law is currently written based on the restrictions on what is or isn’t a monster home,” she said.

The full Council is scheduled to hear Bill 44 on Wednesday. It should beef up the measure with further restrictions on monster homes, as well as expansion of the tools available to DPP to compel compliance — including demolition. Also, developers shouldn’t be allowed to dodge responsibility by claiming ignorance; they must bear more accountability for the work of those they hire. Some of that could come in the form of Bill 6, also on Wednesday’s agenda, which reforms the self-certification review process.

The bottom line: The City Council and DPP must remove the incentives for developers to cheat. Enforcement, not forgiveness, should be the rule.