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Prices increased over the years. By 2012, a five-night stay cost $1,675, although the minimum stay was reduced to three days for $1,1,00 plus the cleaning fee. A week during Christmas or Easter that year cost $2,400 plus the cleaning fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In November 2018, Hawai\u2018i County adopted an ordinance restricting where transient vacation rentals could occur on the island. However, the new rule allowed for existing operators whose properties are outside designated areas to apply for a nonconforming use certificate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to state tax records Arai and Lusher submitted to the county as part of their application for a certificate for their property, \u2018Ili\u2018ili House generated about $258,229 in income just between 2015 and the end of 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arai noted in his letter that when he initially attempted to submit his nonconforming use application to the county in person last August, he was told he needed to contact the Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands (OCCL). The county has referred applications for properties in the Conservation District to the OCCL, which has then been pursuing maximum fines for the illegal rentals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By phone and in an email, OCCL staff informed Arai in late August that vacation rentals are prohibited on his property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis was extremely shocking news. It destroyed our vision for the property,\u201d Arai wrote, adding that he has stopped doing rentals there and had only family and friends stay since September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even so, he submitted his nonconforming use certificate application to the county by the September 28 deadline, hoping to secure the certificate and figure out later how to \u201ccorrect the situation with the DLNR.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt that time, I had no idea how difficult that would be and I was still under the hope that this could be rectified. I was not planning to continue renting with the [certificate] alone,\u201d Arai wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arai\u2019s explanation came in response to the OCCL\u2019s recommendation at the Land Board\u2019s March 13 meeting that the board impose not only the maximum $15,000 fine for the illegal vacation rental and $2,000 in administrative costs, but an additional $5,000 for filing for a county nonconforming use certificate after the OCCL informed Arai that rentals were prohibited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur position was they were notified and they seem to have gone ahead anyway,\u201d OCCL administrator Sam Lemmo told the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Arai, in his letter, asked the board to reduce all of the fines, the couple\u2019s attorney, Onaona Thoene, testified that they were willing to accept the fines for the vacation rental violation and administrative costs. However, she argued that DLNR rules don\u2019t allow the board to impose a fine simply for submitting an application to the county.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She explained that Arai and Lusher had only submitted the application to preserve their rights while they researched the state\u2019s district boundary amendment process, \u201cwhich they thought would then allow them to continue the transient rental of the property.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thoene added that the couple is pursuing claims with their title company. Although the CDUP for the home was recorded in the Bureau of Conveyances, \u201ctitle didn\u2019t pick it up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Land Board member Chris Yuen recommended approving the OCCL\u2019s recommendations, except for the $5,000 fine for filing the county application. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t sound like they were just trying to do an end-run,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the rest of the board agreed with Yuen\u2019s recommendation, board member Sam Gon said he was glad the OCCL had included the $5,000 fine recommendation. \u201cEvery case has to be considered independently,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Teresa Dawson<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Had Christopher Arai and his wife been made aware that short-term renting was not allowed at their beachfront house in South Kona, they wouldn’t have bought it, he wrote in a letter to the Board of Land and Natural Resources … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[467,13],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-12325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-april-2020","category-board-talk","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12325","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=12325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}