This 2023 image provided by Amy Chadwick shows where her home used to stand after a wildfire in Lahaina, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Chadwick moved to Florida where she could stretch her homeowners insurance dollars. She’s worried Maui’s exorbitant rental prices, which she blames in part on vacation rentals hogging up limited housing supply, will hollow out her tight-knit town by similarly forcing others to leave.
“You’re pushing out an entire community of service industry people. So no one’s going to be able to support the tourism that you’re putting ahead of your community,” Chadwick said by phone from her new home in Satellite Beach on Florida’s Space Coast. “Nothing good is going to come of it unless they take a serious stance, putting their foot down and really regulating these short-term rentals.
Lahaina neighborhoods spared by the fire have a much higher ratio of vacation rentals: About half the housing in Napili, about 7 miles north of the burn zone, is short-term rentals. In 1992, Maui County explicitly allowed owners in these buildings to rent units for less than 180 days at a time even without short-term rental permits. Since November, activists havein front of Lahaina’s biggest hotels to push the mayor or governor to use their emergency powers to revoke this exemption.State Rep.
Lawmakers also considered trying to boost Hawaii’s housing supply by forcing counties to allow more houses to be built on individual lots. But they watered downShort-term rental owners said a phase-out would violate their property rights and take their property without compensation, potentially pushing them into foreclosure. Some predicted legal challenges.
One housing advocate argues that just because a community allowed vacation rentals decades ago doesn’t mean it still needs to now.