City lacks resources to enforce rental rules
The vacation rentals controversy has been put on the back burners of the public consciousness in recent months. But away from the media glare, a full-pitched battle is occurring in some O'ahu neighborhoods.
This social tension suggests this is not the time to expand the number of permitted vacation rentals, particularly in residential neighborhoods.
Since last summer, the number of citations issued against illegal "transient visitor units" — vacation rentals and bed-and-breakfast establishments — has spiked.
It reflects the frustration in several communities with what they perceive as an intrusive number of these units. Clearly, many things will need to change before the city will be ready to even consider legalizing those that have no permit now.
In the past three months alone, the city has issued 25 notices of violation, eight of them progressing to fines.
This may not seem significant, but it's a substantial increase over the enforcement activity of a year ago. Two things have changed:
And that workload surely would skyrocket if the city opens the door to vacation-rental operators who want to legally permit their businesses. The City Council resolved last year to create a permitting system for B&Bs, but politicians in control of the purse strings will have to hire more inspectors before that can happen successfully.
Even if the city did have the inspection muscle, this may not be the ideal time to entice homeowners to pull more units off the long-term rental market. The island faces a shortage of rental units as it is, and given the growing homeless population, it's unwise to shrink the inventory further.
Vacation rentals are an important facet of our visitor industry, one that — with controls — could be carefully expanded. But if that expansion is rushed, visitors seeking out this experience will be greeted with something less than aloha.
