Maui’s housing challenges are real, and meaningful solutions are needed. However, eliminating long-established, legally operating short-term vacation rentals is not the right answer. Our property is not a speculative short-term rental inserted into a residential neighborhood—it is a longstanding visitor accommodation that has legally operated for more than 40 years. Punishing legacy, purpose-built visitor properties will damage Maui’s economy, reduce tax revenue, invite litigation, and may do little to solve the housing crisis policymakers are trying to address.
Our complex has operated as a legal visitor accommodation since 1980. Owners purchased these properties with the clear and reasonable understanding that short-term rental use was lawful and permitted. Purchase prices, financing decisions, property taxes, HOA structures, and business planning were all based on that long-standing legal framework. To retroactively strip owners of those established use rights after decades of reliance is fundamentally unfair and economically harmful to individuals who acted in good faith. Government policy should not arbitrarily erase legally established property rights without serious consideration of the consequences.
Equally important, this proposal targets the wrong category of property. There is a meaningful distinction between investor-owned homes in residential neighborhoods that were converted into short-term rentals and properties specifically built, designated, and operated for visitor accommodations. These are not the same. Treating long-standing visitor properties like speculative short-term rental conversions is poor public policy that ignores the original purpose and zoning intent of these developments.
Beyond property owners, the economic consequences for Maui could be significant. Tourism remains a central pillar of Maui’s economy, and short-term rentals support far more than owners. Housekeepers, maintenance workers, landscapers, property managers, contractors, restaurants, retail businesses, and tour operators all benefit from this visitor ecosystem. Eliminating a substantial portion of legal lodging inventory risks harming local workers, small businesses, and the broader economic recovery.
Most importantly, there is no guarantee this policy will meaningfully solve the housing crisis. Will these units actually become affordable workforce housing? Or will they become expensive long-term rentals, second homes, or vacant investment properties? Many of these units carry high HOA fees and ownership costs that make them financially unrealistic for local working families. Reducing visitor lodging inventory may create economic pain without producing meaningful affordable housing supply.
The County must also consider lost tax revenue. Short-term rentals generate transient accommodations taxes, general excise taxes, and significant property tax contributions that help fund public services. A reduction in this revenue could create unintended budget pressures that affect the very community this policy aims to help.
There are also legal risks. Owners who relied on decades of lawful use may pursue claims related to vested rights, regulatory takings, or unequal treatment, creating costly litigation for taxpayers.
Any meaningful solution should recognize the important distinction between legacy visitor properties and newer short-term rental conversions, while carefully considering the broader economic, legal, and community impacts of such a sweeping change.
I strongly believe Maui County needs clearer and more modern zoning classifications for longstanding visitor accommodation uses that have legally existed for many years. Right now, there is too much confusion and uncertainty within the current zoning code, and Bill 88 is an important step toward fixing that.
This bill is not about any specific property or complex. It is simply about creating proper zoning alignment and bringing more clarity and consistency to the County’s land use system.
Having zoning that accurately reflects longstanding lawful uses is important for property owners, residents, businesses, and the County alike. Clear rules and modernized zoning help everyone better understand what is and is not allowed moving forward.
I respectfully ask the Committee to support Bill 88 and move it forward.
I strongly believe Maui County needs clearer and more modern zoning classifications for longstanding visitor accommodation uses that have legally existed for many years. Right now, there is too much confusion and uncertainty within the current zoning code, and Bill 88 is an important step toward fixing that.
This bill is not about any specific property or complex. It is simply about creating proper zoning alignment and bringing more clarity and consistency to the County’s land use system.
Having zoning that accurately reflects longstanding lawful uses is important for property owners, residents, businesses, and the County alike. Clear rules and modernized zoning help everyone better understand what is and is not allowed moving forward.
I respectfully ask the Committee to support Bill 88 and move it forward.
Chair and Members of the Housing & Land Use Committee,
I am writing in support of Bill 88.
I strongly believe Maui County needs clearer and more modern zoning classifications for longstanding visitor accommodation uses that have legally existed for many years. Right now, there is too much confusion and uncertainty within the current zoning code, and Bill 88 is an important step toward fixing that.
This bill is not about any specific property or complex. It is simply about creating proper zoning alignment and bringing more clarity and consistency to the County’s land use system.
Having zoning that accurately reflects longstanding lawful uses is important for property owners, residents, businesses, and the County alike. Clear rules and modernized zoning help everyone better understand what is and is not allowed moving forward.
I respectfully ask the Committee to support Bill 88 and move it forward.
We have owned out condo since the early 90's. The complex has always been a vacation/short term rental in Kihei. The original planning documentation spelled it out that this was going to be a vacation resort property and it was approved in that context. It has tennis courts and pools. We are are hoping that you will either allow it to remain a short term rental or let our complex rezone to hotel.
Thank you for your consideration.
I support Bill 88, which follows what was outlined in the TIG report and voted on by Maui County Council. The Mayor supported this proposal and concurred that he did not need all of the units oulined on the Minatoya list. Council voted 8-1 in support of it.
I strongly believe the county desperately needs the tax dollars from these short term rentals in its revenue stream. With devatating fires and rain and the loss of tourism due to bad weather and bad publicity, Maui is suffering. Restaurants, tour operators and retail are struggling. Locals are losing jobs and revenue due to the downmarket.
Support to Bill 88 is simple: Do the residents want their tourism industry and associated industries decimated? There won't be any housing debate or requirements after the residents have to leave Maui as their livelihoods that rely on tourists' dollars are taken away. This Bill will be a compromise to support both tourism and the housing needs of the local people as only approx 50 percent of the number of units (Exhibit 2) will be made available to the short term rental tourists. Let's face it Maui relies on tourism income to support the social safety net enjoyed by the local residents.
The zoning as it currently exists has been flawed from the very beginning. Setting up two new zones allows the county to resolve the existing problems. This Bill starts the process of setting zoning correctly. It also shows all tax payers that the county can be fair minded in their policies.
Opposition to Bill 88 is simple: Maui County already passed Bill 9 to phase out transient vacation rentals in apartment districts, and now the County is creating a new hotel zoning loophole that will consume years of taxpayer-funded hearings, rezonings, legal battles, and political favoritism instead of enforcing the law and focusing on real solutions for housing and revenue stability.
This is a colossal waste of time. let the court decide if bill 9 is legal, focus on how to offset the minimal loss of revenue the county may experience.
This is a colossal waste of time. let the court decide if bill 9 is legal, focus on how to offset the minimal loss of revenue the county may experience.
Aloha HLU Committee. When you hear testifiers say they are tax payers and homeowners please ask the follow up if they are residents in A1 or A2 zones. 6% of residents own in these zones and do you know how many are residents? Please do not strip away hope from these residents who just want to see their homes return to what a normal home should be. Don't let the continental investor/extractors monopolize the conversation. Please see who is testifying about their residence. HOA and AOAO change their documents regularly. Just because they want to extract thaose absurd TVR profits does not seem to compare to the residents. People of Profits. There is no shortage of visitor accommodations. Please keep visitors out of our residential areas. Please.
This proposed rezoning framework is legally defectivensofar as it contemplates continued transient condominium activity for properties with known unresolved and ongoing wastewater compliance deficiencies, including abject failures relating to NPDES permit obligations and associated regulatory requirements applicable to transient occupancy uses in all ten condo facilities in Ma’alaea, none of which have the required NPDED permits as mandated by the SCOTUS decision on the Lahaina WWRF injection wells.
Advancing new zoning entitlements to such brazenly uncaring human beings under such dire circumstances will expose Ma’alaea condo owners to foreseeable regulatory, civil, and citizen-enforcement exposure immediately, planned upon ANY committee advancement of this measure, with notice-of-intent-to-sue actions under the Clean Water Act as the only logical next step to interrupt this catastrophic legislation.
Equally concerning, the legislative process underlying this proposal reflects a corresponding failure of due diligence and public health governance, including the apparent recent discovery by WAI Committee Chair also advancing this bill that effluent discharging from the Kīhei WWRF was not being meaningfully disinfected or sanitary.
Government’s first obligation is the legally required protection of public health and environmental integrity, not the acceleration of legally indefensible rezoning measures tied to units discharging into nearshore wastewater discharge systems operating outside full compliance.
The ocean, downstream communities, and the public deserve competent stewardship, not sad, confused, catastrophically incompetent elected officials who would sooner sustain indefensible illegal discharges, which the same STR owners are hocking to even sadder tourists who probably have no idea that they are going straight from condos with unpermitted nearshore effluent discharges in places like Ma’alaea, into ocean waters with pathogens galore and reefs that have collapsed to effectively deceased and states just in recent decades. It’s dystopia on top of a zombie apocalypse on top of the film Idiocracy. Scary, disgusting and hard to watch.
The people of Maui are tired of grotesque examples of public failures and flops like this bill.
People who are suffering wish to see even small evidence that our leaders give a flying flip about citizens’ wellbeing or even survival. P
We have no idea who these leaders are playing to, but it certainly is not the people, who are suffering, getting sick or even dying.
Please, have some dignity and withdraw this bill. Rezoning properties that are wildly noncompliant with wastewater permit requirements, when fines that can top $25K, it’s just about the most dim-witted, tone deaf action a government can take when good people are forced onto the streets, while tourists spend 14 hours on a plane to visit Maui to swim in their own doo doo. Speechless. Horrified. Scared. Words cannot capture the sad debacle of human blunder that is this bill.
Thomas Cook is a truly cringe person to bring this forward. Human suffering seems to mean nothing to this man, and they don’t take debit in the afterlife.
As soon as leaders wake up, the madness will cease. Until then, we all live in the fever dream of this confused elder who does not seem to know his arse from a hole in the ground, literally.
Pass this bill out of committee and the only logical next step is to hit send on intent-to-sue letters for every condo in Ma’alaea.
This mass hysteria must end. Keep us safe, or face the consequences.
I support Bill 88 for zoning classifications for visitor accommodation use
Thank you
Susan Fereira
I write in Support of Bill 88
Maui’s housing challenges are real, and meaningful solutions are needed. However, eliminating long-established, legally operating short-term vacation rentals is not the right answer. Our property is not a speculative short-term rental inserted into a residential neighborhood—it is a longstanding visitor accommodation that has legally operated for more than 40 years. Punishing legacy, purpose-built visitor properties will damage Maui’s economy, reduce tax revenue, invite litigation, and may do little to solve the housing crisis policymakers are trying to address.
Our complex has operated as a legal visitor accommodation since 1980. Owners purchased these properties with the clear and reasonable understanding that short-term rental use was lawful and permitted. Purchase prices, financing decisions, property taxes, HOA structures, and business planning were all based on that long-standing legal framework. To retroactively strip owners of those established use rights after decades of reliance is fundamentally unfair and economically harmful to individuals who acted in good faith. Government policy should not arbitrarily erase legally established property rights without serious consideration of the consequences.
Equally important, this proposal targets the wrong category of property. There is a meaningful distinction between investor-owned homes in residential neighborhoods that were converted into short-term rentals and properties specifically built, designated, and operated for visitor accommodations. These are not the same. Treating long-standing visitor properties like speculative short-term rental conversions is poor public policy that ignores the original purpose and zoning intent of these developments.
Beyond property owners, the economic consequences for Maui could be significant. Tourism remains a central pillar of Maui’s economy, and short-term rentals support far more than owners. Housekeepers, maintenance workers, landscapers, property managers, contractors, restaurants, retail businesses, and tour operators all benefit from this visitor ecosystem. Eliminating a substantial portion of legal lodging inventory risks harming local workers, small businesses, and the broader economic recovery.
Most importantly, there is no guarantee this policy will meaningfully solve the housing crisis. Will these units actually become affordable workforce housing? Or will they become expensive long-term rentals, second homes, or vacant investment properties? Many of these units carry high HOA fees and ownership costs that make them financially unrealistic for local working families. Reducing visitor lodging inventory may create economic pain without producing meaningful affordable housing supply.
The County must also consider lost tax revenue. Short-term rentals generate transient accommodations taxes, general excise taxes, and significant property tax contributions that help fund public services. A reduction in this revenue could create unintended budget pressures that affect the very community this policy aims to help.
There are also legal risks. Owners who relied on decades of lawful use may pursue claims related to vested rights, regulatory takings, or unequal treatment, creating costly litigation for taxpayers.
Any meaningful solution should recognize the important distinction between legacy visitor properties and newer short-term rental conversions, while carefully considering the broader economic, legal, and community impacts of such a sweeping change.
I am writing in support of Bill 88.
I strongly believe Maui County needs clearer and more modern zoning classifications for longstanding visitor accommodation uses that have legally existed for many years. Right now, there is too much confusion and uncertainty within the current zoning code, and Bill 88 is an important step toward fixing that.
This bill is not about any specific property or complex. It is simply about creating proper zoning alignment and bringing more clarity and consistency to the County’s land use system.
Having zoning that accurately reflects longstanding lawful uses is important for property owners, residents, businesses, and the County alike. Clear rules and modernized zoning help everyone better understand what is and is not allowed moving forward.
I respectfully ask the Committee to support Bill 88 and move it forward.
John Lanza
Aloha,
I am writing in support of Bill 88.
I strongly believe Maui County needs clearer and more modern zoning classifications for longstanding visitor accommodation uses that have legally existed for many years. Right now, there is too much confusion and uncertainty within the current zoning code, and Bill 88 is an important step toward fixing that.
This bill is not about any specific property or complex. It is simply about creating proper zoning alignment and bringing more clarity and consistency to the County’s land use system.
Having zoning that accurately reflects longstanding lawful uses is important for property owners, residents, businesses, and the County alike. Clear rules and modernized zoning help everyone better understand what is and is not allowed moving forward.
I respectfully ask the Committee to support Bill 88 and move it forward.
Thank you very much.
Toni Spence
Chair and Members of the Housing & Land Use Committee,
I am writing in support of Bill 88.
I strongly believe Maui County needs clearer and more modern zoning classifications for longstanding visitor accommodation uses that have legally existed for many years. Right now, there is too much confusion and uncertainty within the current zoning code, and Bill 88 is an important step toward fixing that.
This bill is not about any specific property or complex. It is simply about creating proper zoning alignment and bringing more clarity and consistency to the County’s land use system.
Having zoning that accurately reflects longstanding lawful uses is important for property owners, residents, businesses, and the County alike. Clear rules and modernized zoning help everyone better understand what is and is not allowed moving forward.
I respectfully ask the Committee to support Bill 88 and move it forward.
Mahalo for your time and consideration.
Vanina
Hawaii
We have owned out condo since the early 90's. The complex has always been a vacation/short term rental in Kihei. The original planning documentation spelled it out that this was going to be a vacation resort property and it was approved in that context. It has tennis courts and pools. We are are hoping that you will either allow it to remain a short term rental or let our complex rezone to hotel.
Thank you for your consideration.
I support Bill 88, which follows what was outlined in the TIG report and voted on by Maui County Council. The Mayor supported this proposal and concurred that he did not need all of the units oulined on the Minatoya list. Council voted 8-1 in support of it.
I strongly believe the county desperately needs the tax dollars from these short term rentals in its revenue stream. With devatating fires and rain and the loss of tourism due to bad weather and bad publicity, Maui is suffering. Restaurants, tour operators and retail are struggling. Locals are losing jobs and revenue due to the downmarket.
Thank you
Tara Wells
#3320 Maui Vista
Support to Bill 88 is simple: Do the residents want their tourism industry and associated industries decimated? There won't be any housing debate or requirements after the residents have to leave Maui as their livelihoods that rely on tourists' dollars are taken away. This Bill will be a compromise to support both tourism and the housing needs of the local people as only approx 50 percent of the number of units (Exhibit 2) will be made available to the short term rental tourists. Let's face it Maui relies on tourism income to support the social safety net enjoyed by the local residents.
Please pass Bill 88. As a long term homeowner, resident, & taxpayer of Maui this bill is needed to rectify the mistakes made in Bill 9.
The zoning as it currently exists has been flawed from the very beginning. Setting up two new zones allows the county to resolve the existing problems. This Bill starts the process of setting zoning correctly. It also shows all tax payers that the county can be fair minded in their policies.
Opposition to Bill 88 is simple: Maui County already passed Bill 9 to phase out transient vacation rentals in apartment districts, and now the County is creating a new hotel zoning loophole that will consume years of taxpayer-funded hearings, rezonings, legal battles, and political favoritism instead of enforcing the law and focusing on real solutions for housing and revenue stability.
This is a colossal waste of time. let the court decide if bill 9 is legal, focus on how to offset the minimal loss of revenue the county may experience.
This is a colossal waste of time. let the court decide if bill 9 is legal, focus on how to offset the minimal loss of revenue the county may experience.
Aloha HLU Committee. When you hear testifiers say they are tax payers and homeowners please ask the follow up if they are residents in A1 or A2 zones. 6% of residents own in these zones and do you know how many are residents? Please do not strip away hope from these residents who just want to see their homes return to what a normal home should be. Don't let the continental investor/extractors monopolize the conversation. Please see who is testifying about their residence. HOA and AOAO change their documents regularly. Just because they want to extract thaose absurd TVR profits does not seem to compare to the residents. People of Profits. There is no shortage of visitor accommodations. Please keep visitors out of our residential areas. Please.
Aloha Members,
This proposed rezoning framework is legally defectivensofar as it contemplates continued transient condominium activity for properties with known unresolved and ongoing wastewater compliance deficiencies, including abject failures relating to NPDES permit obligations and associated regulatory requirements applicable to transient occupancy uses in all ten condo facilities in Ma’alaea, none of which have the required NPDED permits as mandated by the SCOTUS decision on the Lahaina WWRF injection wells.
Advancing new zoning entitlements to such brazenly uncaring human beings under such dire circumstances will expose Ma’alaea condo owners to foreseeable regulatory, civil, and citizen-enforcement exposure immediately, planned upon ANY committee advancement of this measure, with notice-of-intent-to-sue actions under the Clean Water Act as the only logical next step to interrupt this catastrophic legislation.
Equally concerning, the legislative process underlying this proposal reflects a corresponding failure of due diligence and public health governance, including the apparent recent discovery by WAI Committee Chair also advancing this bill that effluent discharging from the Kīhei WWRF was not being meaningfully disinfected or sanitary.
Government’s first obligation is the legally required protection of public health and environmental integrity, not the acceleration of legally indefensible rezoning measures tied to units discharging into nearshore wastewater discharge systems operating outside full compliance.
The ocean, downstream communities, and the public deserve competent stewardship, not sad, confused, catastrophically incompetent elected officials who would sooner sustain indefensible illegal discharges, which the same STR owners are hocking to even sadder tourists who probably have no idea that they are going straight from condos with unpermitted nearshore effluent discharges in places like Ma’alaea, into ocean waters with pathogens galore and reefs that have collapsed to effectively deceased and states just in recent decades. It’s dystopia on top of a zombie apocalypse on top of the film Idiocracy. Scary, disgusting and hard to watch.
The people of Maui are tired of grotesque examples of public failures and flops like this bill.
People who are suffering wish to see even small evidence that our leaders give a flying flip about citizens’ wellbeing or even survival. P
We have no idea who these leaders are playing to, but it certainly is not the people, who are suffering, getting sick or even dying.
Please, have some dignity and withdraw this bill. Rezoning properties that are wildly noncompliant with wastewater permit requirements, when fines that can top $25K, it’s just about the most dim-witted, tone deaf action a government can take when good people are forced onto the streets, while tourists spend 14 hours on a plane to visit Maui to swim in their own doo doo. Speechless. Horrified. Scared. Words cannot capture the sad debacle of human blunder that is this bill.
Thomas Cook is a truly cringe person to bring this forward. Human suffering seems to mean nothing to this man, and they don’t take debit in the afterlife.
As soon as leaders wake up, the madness will cease. Until then, we all live in the fever dream of this confused elder who does not seem to know his arse from a hole in the ground, literally.
Pass this bill out of committee and the only logical next step is to hit send on intent-to-sue letters for every condo in Ma’alaea.
This mass hysteria must end. Keep us safe, or face the consequences.
Aloha 🐲💋🔥