{"id":12181,"date":"2020-01-30T23:49:04","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T23:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=12181"},"modified":"2020-09-24T17:30:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T17:30:45","slug":"board-talk-board-imposes-maximum-fine-for-illegal-vacation-rental-in-kona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=12181","title":{"rendered":"Board Talk: Board Imposes Maximum Fine For Illegal Vacation Rental in Kona"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On January 24, the Land Board fined Caroline Killeen and her family trust $17,000 for using their oceanfront home in South Kona as a vacation rental for the last decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rules for the state Conservation District, in which the home was built, prohibit the rental of single family residences for a period of less than 180 days. In addition, the Conservation District Use Permit for this home includes a condition barring any kind of rental or commercial use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DLNR\u2019s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands initially proposed fining only Caroline and her husband, Gary. However, at the Land Board\u2019s meeting, Caroline\u2019s son, Bill Wedemeyer, informed the board that Gary died in 2010. Also, OCCL administrator Sam Lemmo reported that the trust is actually the current property owner. It also owns the lots on either side of the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were searching some alleged illegal transient vacation rentals in Kona. This just came up in our search,\u201d Lemmo said. The home had been listed on the VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owner) website for an average of $250 a night with a minimum stay of three to seven nights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know transient vacation rentals are an issue all over the state,\u201d Lemmo told the board. \u201cGenerally, these types of activities sort of can alter the nature of a residential community in a bad way [with] a lot of traffic coming in and out of these places and create quite a nuisance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wedemeyer testified on behalf of his mother, who lives in Arizona. \u201cShe\u2019s 83 with a heart condition. … This was their home that they loved. This was their primary residence. When Gary had cancer in 2009, they went to the mainland. I was the only one here to keep an eye on the house,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wedemeyer and his wife, Carol, were listed on the VRBO website as the owners and managers of the property. Renting the house out part-time was his mother\u2019s way of keeping it in the family, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m here to apologize. I\u2019m not here to say she was wrong on her behalf. She felt we had no choice,\u201d he said, adding that he wasn\u2019t aware that the house was in the Conservation District.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that the family has had to cease using the home as a vacation rental, \u201cwe don\u2019t know what to do. … She can\u2019t rent the house out. We can\u2019t all be down there watching the place,\u201d Wedemeyer said, adding that while his siblings often vacation there, none of them live nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carol Wedemeyer said the house may be sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy family\u2019s been here since the 1600s. I\u2019m a Wedemeyer. This is my home. Sad to say, this precious piece of property … now is being taken away because of the situation,\u201d said Bill, whose father, Herman, was a former Honolulu city council member, state representative, professional football player, and actor in the original Hawai\u2018i Five-O <\/em>series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Land Board member Chris Yuen said that the Conservation District Use Permit was recorded in the Bureau of Conveyances and would have shown up in the title search when the family bought the property. (According to Carol Wedemeyer, her husband purchased the property first, then transferred it to the Killeen Trust.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what you personally know, but the mechanisms were there that any buyer after the original permittee should be aware [that] rentals were prohibited,\u201d Yuen told Bill Wedemeyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t meant to be a rental. They loved that home. They lived in it for 15 years as a primary residence,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI understand what you\u2019re saying. At some point, it was used as a rental,\u201d Yuen said. The board approved a motion by Yuen to accept the OCCLs\u2019 recommendationto impose the maximum fine for a singleviolation \u2014 $15,000 \u2014 plus $2,000 in administrative costs.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey rented this out for quite a number of years and probably earned considerably over $15,000,\u201d Yuen said. He added that while he understood the decision the family made and the dilemma they are in, the Land Board is obligated to enforce the conditions of its permits and its rules, regardless of the circumstances of the individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OCCL\u2019s Lemmo pointed out that the family could petition the state Land Use Commission to take the land out of the Conservation District, or ask the Land Board to approve an amendment to the Conservation District Use Permit, so that long-term rentals, at least, would be allowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuen said the former option was a tougher road, but amending the permit conditions to allow a long-term rental \u201cis not a huge process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Board member Tommy Oi, a former DLNR land agent from Kaua\u2018i, complained that illegal vacation rentals were too common and supported the maximum fine. \u201cThis is happening too much. Don\u2019t tell me you never know was Conservation when you bought the place. … You would know what you could do. We gotta set examples,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 24, the Land Board fined Caroline Killeen and her family trust $17,000 for using their oceanfront home in South Kona as a vacation rental for the last decade. Rules for the state Conservation District, in which the home … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,464],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-12181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-board-talk","category-february-2020","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}