The city has issued over $100 million worth of fines for short-term rental violations over the past three fiscal years but has collected less than $2 million — or barely 2% — even after hiring a collection agency in 2023 that was tasked with bringing in every dollar owed to the city.
“This is not just some grandma renting out a room,” Council member Tyler Dos Santos-Tam told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “This is people who are gaming the system. We have to send the signal to these persistent offenders that the game is over.”
Dos Santos-Tam considers the amount of fines collected by the city’s Department and Planning and Permitting and the Aargon Collection Agency unacceptable in response to ongoing complaints from Oahu neighbors that rotating groups of tourists continue to take up street parking, generate loud parties on school and work nights and produce excessive amounts of garbage.
Most of the money collected from illegal vacation property owners has come in from DPP, which has far outperformed Aargon.
The company was hired in 2023 to crack down on owners of short-term vacation rentals who flaunt the city’s law mandating that visitors stay no fewer than 30 days in nonresort areas.
Both DPP and Aargon “have been much more aggressive lately, which is positive,” Dos Santos-Tam said. “But this report is really troubling.”
It also sends the message to owners of illegal vacation rentals that their “scofflaw behavior” will be tolerated, Dos Santos-Tam said.
Among his many questions, Dos Santos-Tam wants to know why DPP’s collections of $1.04 million far surpassed the $45,051 taken in by Aargon for fiscal year 2024.
From July 1 to Dec. 31, DPP had issued $28,916,342 in fines.
During the same period, Aargon collected $77,437 in fines but was still outperformed by DPP, which collected $361,398.
From 2022 to Friday, the city had issued 2,243 notices of violation, adding up to about $43 million in fines just for the current fiscal year, DPP Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna told the Star-Advertiser in an email.
By the end of February, Aargon had collected a total of $217,700, she said.
In fiscal year 2023 the city issued $29,742,748 in short-term rental fines but only collected $152,986.
In fiscal year 2024 the city issued $29,822,748 in short-term rental fines and DPP did much better in collecting $1,049,589. During the same period, Aargon brought in another $45,051 in fines, according to DPP.
To Dos Santos-Tam, DPP and Aargon “are leaving money on the table,” he said.
Prior city administrations had taken the position that they wanted owners of short-term vacation rentals to comply with city laws.
But in November 2022, then-newly elected Mayor Rick Blangiardi took a stronger position by focusing on enforcement and pledged that a new collection agency would bring in 100% of all fines, except in rare cases, including daily penalties of up to $10,000 a day.
The city does not pay Aargon for its services. The company, instead, can keep 18% of all fines it collects, Takeuchi Apuna wrote in her email.
She did not respond to questions on why the amount of DPP’s collections far exceeds Aargon’s, which advertises itself as a national collection agency.
The lack of enforcement and collection of fines in Honolulu means violators are still generating income on their illegal rentals, leading Dos Santos-Tam to wonder whether the relatively small financial penalties Oahu landlords do pay are now included as part of the overall cost of running an illegal vacation rental.
Even worse, Dos Santos-Tam said, a backlog of owner appeals before the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals means owners can continue earning illegal rental income for years before their cases are even heard, perhaps ending with a negotiated settlement that’s far lower than their initial fines.
There are currently 225 short-term rental appeals before the volunteer board, which meets twice a month.
The result, Takeuchi Apuna told the Star-Advertiser, means “appealing your STR violation today, based on the current backlog and without any cases settled or withdrawn, your appeal may not be scheduled for four years.”
DPP continues to work to streamline appeals board cases by possibly having hearings officers review “minor motion hearings,” Takeuchi Apuna said.
Dos Santos-Tam has gotten years of complaints about a multistory, nine-bedroom unit on Aulii Street in Alewa Heights that has been fined $953,650 in short-term rental violations leading to a lien on the property and upcoming foreclosure proceedings.
The property at 2154 Aulii St. belongs to the revocable living trust of Diana Tsui Hung Lee that’s based on the mainland, Takeuchi Apuna said without providing a more specific location.
Neither Diana Tsui Hung Lee nor the property’s representative, Anson Lee, could be immediately reached for comment and Takeuchi Apuna said that DPP also has had difficulty getting responses.
No one answered a knock on the front door of the property from the Star-Advertiser last week.
A key lockbox was mounted on the wall just to the right of the front door.
The rental property “represents an extreme case of scofflaw Anson Lee, who continues to violate the STR (short-term rental) law, including STR use and STR advertisement violations,” Takeuchi Apuna wrote in her email. “Since 2019, DPP has issued several STR Notices of Violation, Notices of Orders with fines currently amounting to $953,650 on the property. We have placed liens on the property for these fines.”
DPP also has prepared a City Council resolution to foreclose on the property, which Takeuchi Apuna attached to her email.
“The property is under a trust located on the mainland, which makes it more difficult to cite, serve notices, and to have direct communications with the violator,” Takeuchi Apuna wrote.
“In regards to whether this is a typical or unusual case, this is a highly unusual case for someone to continually disregard our enforcement Notices, rack up significant fines, and to continue to violate the STR laws, thereby requiring DPP to exercise the full extent of our enforcement powers, which includes foreclosure of the subject property.
“Our collections agency pursued collection with the violator, but a proposed settlement was too low for DPP, which intends to fully recover the fines that have built up over time by the violator’s continued neglect for the law.”
Neighbors told the Star-Advertiser that new groups of occupants continue to rotate in and out of the property every seven to 10 days despite fines, the lien and upcoming foreclosure.
The turnstile of tenants twice this year already has led to fights that spilled out onto Aulii Street.
“It’s not a good situation,” neighbor Mason Stibbard, 85, told the Star-Advertiser, “especially when there’s fighting on the street.”
His family has lived on Stibbard’s property since 1904.
Several neighbors around 2154 Aulii St. have placed boulders and orange cones on the narrow strips of grass in front of their houses to discourage street parking.
The property, at least at one point, was divided into three units of four-, three- and two-bedrooms, according to Kamehameha Realty, which rented it out to what it called legal, long-term tenants until the arrangement ended in 2017.
Kamehameha Realty declined to provide the Star-Advertiser with the name and contact information of the owner it had represented to respond to the city’s actions and to neighbors’ complaints.
The property represents one example of what’s playing out across Oahu to the frustration of neighbors, said KC Connors, one of the administrators of the Facebook group, “Enough Tourists Already.”
Collectively, she said, illegal vacation rentals help drive up housing costs that increasingly leave local residents — especially Native Hawaiians — homeless and priced out of Hawaii, Connors said.
They also take up valuable housing inventory on Hawaii’s most populated island where county and state legislators continue to push for ways to provide more affordable housing to keep local residents from joining the exodus to cheaper communities on the mainland.
“People don’t understand that illegal vacation rentals are a crime and not a victimless crime,” Connors said. “It’s dramatic the number of working people that have been pushed out. It’s working people, security guards, public school janitors, cashiers, food services workers and lots of Native Hawaiians that are moving away. It’s sad it’s not being taken more seriously.”
She regularly monitors appearances by DPP officials at neighborhood board meetings who continue to send the message that “we just want people to come into compliance,” Connors said. “But people are making tens of thousands of dollars while the whole community is being priced out and becoming homeless. It’s white-collar crime and they’re getting away with it.”
Connors agreed with Dos Santos-Tam that the fraction of total fines that have been collected so far sends the message to illegal rental owners that violations are tolerated on Oahu.
She called the situation “horrible. This is just ridiculous.”
“They’re making money and they’re breaking the law.”
By the numbers
3,510
Requests for investigations of short-term rental violations from 2022 to Friday.
2,243
Short-term rental violations issued by the City Department of Planning and Permitting for the same period.
$43 million
Short-term rental fines issued so far in fiscal year 2025 as of Friday.
$361,398
Fines collected by DPP from July 1-Dec. 31.
$217,700
Fines collected by the end of February by the Aargon Collection Agency.
$29,822,748
Fines for short-term rental violations issued by DPP in fiscal year 2024.
$1,049,589
Fines collected by DPP in fiscal year 2024.
$45,051
Fines collected by Aargon in fiscal year 2024.
$29,742,748
Fines for short-term rental violations issued by DPP in fiscal year 2023.
$152,986
Fines collected by DPP in fiscal year 2023.
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Source: Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting
