The terrible housing crisis on Maui demands that the state and county take immediate action to provide housing to Maui’s displaced people. Converting vacation rentals into residential housing is a way to immediately and significantly increase the supply of rental housing units available for Maui residents. This measure can provide shelter for our people in need and relieve the housing shortage that is causing rents to skyrocket.

It is not acceptable that Maui offers scarce housing units to tourists while Maui’s families have no place to live.

Our two unions call on the state and Maui County to take this urgently needed first step to put our displaced families back in real homes, and to take action to control rapidly increasing Maui residential rental rates.

We support the intent of the proposals for action on vacation rentals now under consideration by the state and county governments. A short-term solution is urgently needed, as hotels will increasingly be kicking out sheltering families in the new year.

But a short-term solution is not enough. We must be careful that short-term measures do not get in the way of long-term solutions. Because of this, we are concerned with the nature of the short-term solutions being proposed.

The state/county plan calls for large increases in the amounts the government is paying for the use of vacation rental units, along with property tax breaks to those vacation rental owners leasing to Maui families. The state and county are now proposing, in essence, to pay vacation rental owners much higher rents than Maui families can afford as an inducement to put their units into the residential rental pool.

There are several problems associated with this approach.

First, when government money dries up, Maui will be left with high rents locked into a housing market where rents are heavily impacted by vacation rental rates. Second, investors can still make far more profit by renting to visitors at short-term rates, and many will refuse to rent to local families despite the economic incentives. Third, vacation rental owners will interpret these efforts as confirmation by the government that they have a vested right to operate the houses they own as vacation rentals.

Whatever we do, we must not strengthen any claims by these speculators that they have somehow acquired vested rights to operate commercial lodging operations in residential-zoned districts. We have little sympathy for a business model operating in violation of our local zoning laws. Whatever we do, Maui must set strict rules to regulate short-term rentals, and vigorously enforce them. This is a necessary measure to reduce the impact of short-term rentals, control rent increases and ensure adequate residential housing for local people.

It is also a necessary measure to ensure Hawaii’s people continue to support tourism.

While this unprecedented post- wildfire situation is creating horrible problems for Maui people, it also offers a unique opportunity for Maui to redesign tourism. As Maui rebuilds its economic base, it can redesign its visitor industry to reduce the burden of short-term rentals on our neighborhoods and instead focus on operating a tourist industry that provides good-paying, secure jobs in properly designated resort areas.

Hawaii’s hotel workers call upon Maui County to take the lead in reinventing tourism. Preserve good jobs, stop tourism encroaching into our residential neighborhoods, protect our special places, and make sure Maui people can afford to live and work on Maui.

Hawaii needs tourism jobs. Let’s make sure tourism serves Hawaii’s people, not the other way around.

Cade Watanabe is financial secretary-treasurer of UNITE HERE Local 5, which represents 10,000 hotel, health care and food service workers in Hawaii; Chris West is president of the ILWU Local 142, which has 16,000 members, including many who live and work in West Maui.