The Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting has improved the way it reviews, permits, inspects and thwarts large detached dwellings from being illegally built on Oahu, a city audit found.
In a follow-up audit released Wednesday, the Office of the City Auditor concluded that DPP now handles so-called monster homes more effectively than it had previously, when a 2019 city audit uncovered DPP’s failure to stop large, nonconforming building projects without city-issued permits from going into construction around the island.
Structures flagged as potential monster homes might exceed a floor-area ratio more than 57% of the lot size, and might feature more than the planned number of bathrooms, kitchens and parking spaces, the audit notes.
The 2019 audit, conducted under then-Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration, determined DPP needed “to more effectively manage data from permitting and inspection to properly review and regulate” monster homes.
“The lack of assembled information led to administrative difficulties and
delays in researching, reviewing, and monitoring construction projects systemically or individually,” the 2019 audit found. “The department also fell short in assessing the risks of complaints received and violations issued concerning large detached dwellings.”
Since it was not effective in identifying emerging risks, the auditor noted DPP “could not adequately address how building permits for large detached dwellings were issued, buildings were inspected, or land use/illegal uses were investigated.”
The 2019 audit also determined that “DPP did not identify potential issues during the permit review stage and subsequent monitoring, but dealt with complaints from the public that emerged during or after construction. These conditions made the department less able to ensure orderly development according to land use policies, zoning, and maintain designation of certain uses within the residential zone.”
The auditor offered 15 recommendations to improve the department’s performance, which included:
>> DPP should assemble information regarding qualifying large detached dwellings to enable its use in permitting, inspection, and use enforcement operations.
>> It should develop
lists of at-risk large detached dwellings now considered nonconforming or subject to additional requirements for monitoring and enforcement purposes;
>> DPP should develop at-risk criteria derived from complaints and violations throughout its permitting, inspection, and enforcement actions based on observed problematic issues and their effects.
>> And it should amend current policies and procedures to establish response priorities for complaints based first on individual complaints from the public followed by other complaint sources.
Other recommendations included applying existing law to “expire” plan review on building permits that have exceeded a year; pursue applicants for renewal
of plan review fees; and use existing laws to revoke building permits that have exceeded their validity with no satisfactory progress.
The audit also recommended DPP create policies and procedures to implement a periodic inspection program for properties with temporary certificates of occupancy; and increase fees for violators with no building permits, not following plans, or constructing unplanned internal alterations or partitions, among others.
The latest audit — largely conducted between January 2024 to April 2024 — determined DPP dealt with a
majority of these recommendations.
“In this follow-up audit, we found that 7 recommendations are completed, 2 are resolved, 5 are in-process, and 1 recommendation is dropped,” acting City Auditor Troy Shimasaki wrote in a message to the Honolulu City Council.
Those “in process”
recommendations included DPP amending its current policies and procedures over “individual complaints from the public followed by other complaint sources.”
“We found that the department has continued prioritizing complaints from the Office of the Mayor, followed by those from other sources such as the Honolulu City Council and the public. This has been a practice since the original audit,” the new audit states.”Additionally, complaints from the Office of the Mayor have consistently been resolved within two weeks. The department provided a draft policy that identifies timelines for addressing all complaints.”
But the audit asserts the draft policy “has not yet been formally adopted.”
“By formally incorporating complaint priorities and timelines into its operating procedures, department staff, the City Council, and the public will have reasonable expectations for when DPP will respond to public complaints,” the audit states.
The audit also notes DPP resolved applying “existing law to implement criminal enforcement options for residential covenant use violations” in the form of an enacted June legislation,
Ordinance 13.
That law “strengthened administrative enforcement options for violations related to large detached dwellings,” the audit states. “This ordinance introduced increased penalties, including a $25,000 initial civil fine and up to $10,000 per day for each violation. It enables the department to hold violators accountable and allows the department to recover costs related to audits, revocations, and defense processes at the Building Board of Appeals.”
The auditor found DPP
resolved increasing fees for violators with no building permits.
“Ordinance 20-18, which was adopted on June 3, 2020, increased the double fee penalty to triple the fee for construction that started or proceeded without an authorized building permit,” the new audit states. “The department confirmed that for violators who were given a Notice of Violation, the permit fees would be tripled as necessary.”
Another “in process” recommendation involves DPP imposing liens and foreclosure on violators — deemed the final step in the department’s enforcement efforts.
“Our sample review did not identify any instance where a large detached dwelling continued construction or occupancy, despite enforcement actions,” the new audit states. “Although we did not identify any instances where the department should have taken steps to pursue liens and foreclosure, the department remains open to pursuing such action when all other enforcement actions have been exhausted.”
But one recommendation — to assess fines for violations from the initial day of violation, rather than the time after a notice of order — was dropped entirely. “The department did not implement this recommendation because of the legal requirement to provide reasonable notice prior to issuing fines,” the audit states.
Overall, Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration generally agreed with the follow-up audit’s findings.
In a March 24 written response, DPP Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna wrote: “To address the public outcry against the proliferation of … ‘monster homes,’ DPP developed systems to prevent the permitting of monster homes and implemented comprehensive enforcement actions upon monster homes under construction.”
Still, she “respectfully” disagreed with one finding — that DPP did not act quickly enough to assess fines for violations on the initial day of violation.
DPP has issued formal notices of violations, stop work orders and notices of revocation “for a long list of monster homes violations, which halted the construction of these monster homes,” she asserted.
