What, exactly, is going on in Hawai\u02bbi County? Its own laws and rules specifically forbid the operation of vacation rentals on properties that lie within the state Agricultural District.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It passed an ordinance in 2018 that limits these uses to very clearly defined zones that do not<\/em> include Ag land \u2013 except when the rental is on a lot that existed prior to June 4, 1976. The Planning Department\u2019s Rule 23, promulgated in response to that 2018 ordinance, also says clearly that short-term vacation rentals are allowed only in the \u201cPermitted Zoning Districts\u201d \u2013 which, again, do not include any land in the state Ag District, excepting those lots that were in existence nearly half a century ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heck, the county even won a ruling from the Land Use Commission, upheld by the Supreme Court, validating its position that under Hawai\u02bbi Revised Statutes Chapter 205, short-term rentals were not a permitted use in the Agricultural District.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Short-term rentals of properties in the state Agricultural District continue to be allowed and even encouraged \u2013 with the county claiming in a court filing in July that the Supreme Court ruling applied only to non-hosted<\/em> rentals; with the former planning director \u201cinterpreting\u201d a family to include one family of however large a size plus four unrelated individuals; and with a deputy corporation counsel arguing before the Board of Appeals that a home in the Ag District that rents for multi-thousands of dollars a night is not a commercial use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our cover story looks at the fraught history of just one of the many short-term rentals of homes on Ag lots in Hawai\u02bbi County. But a random check of records available on the county\u2019s EPIC website shows Kona Kai is far from the only one where neighbors of vacation rental properties have lodged complaints with the Planning Department about parties, traffic, loud guests, and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After many queries to the Planning Department and permittees to get to the bottom of this issue, we were given two documents that go far to explaining \u2013 if not justifying \u2013 the county\u2019s policies on both hosted and unhosted vacation rentals on Ag land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To say the least, they are bewildering. The determination of what counts as a lot pre-existing in 1976 covers probably every lot in every subdivision created since the demise of sugar, thanks to counting as a \u201clot\u201d every portion of a Land Court award, or a remainder, or a grant, regardless of how these may have been absorbed into discrete parcels in the county\u2019s property tax records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The use of \u201cfarm dwellings\u201d for both hosted and unhosted vacation rentals runs contrary to common sense, but common sense flew out the Planning Department window decades ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As to former planning director Zendo Kern\u2019s \u201cinterpretation\u201d of what constitutes a family as it relates to the use of dwelling units \u2013 what can be said? It would be laughable but for the consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frankly, what is occurring in Hawai\u02bbi County with respect to short-term vacation rentals in the state Agricultural District is tragic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Should the county not ultimately prevail in the litigation now before the Intermediate Court of Appeals, it could well face several difficult choices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It could require the owners of vacation rentals to petition to have their land placed in a different state district classification (Rural or Urban), where the county allows short-term vacation rentals. The county has the authority to redistrict parcels of less than 15 acres, but spot-zoning is not allowed. And the prospect of the county filing a petition with the LUC to move whole neighborhoods now in Ag into Rural or Urban would be an uphill climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It could invalidate all the existing permits or indulgences granted to operators of vacation rentals. That would seem to invite legal claims of damage, since for years the county had allowed such operations to continue unhindered and owners, such as Eisert, had made investments in the belief that the vacation rentals were blessed by the county.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It could, finally, ask the state Legislature to amend Chapter 205 to include vacation rentals as one of the listed allowed uses in the state Agricultural District. This, however, might well put paid to any dreams that the state might have of moving in the direction of agricultural self-sufficiency. If it is more profitable to have a vacation rental on an Agricultural parcel than it is to raise crops or livestock, then that parcel might never be put to productive agricultural use again. One need only look at the fate of former sugar land in Launiupoko, Maui, to see what happens when Ag lands are converted to gentleman estates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, the Hawai\u02bbi County Council received a report it had commissioned on the economic impact of short-term vacation rentals. The report, from Hunden Partners, concluded that in 2024, lodging revenue from STVRs amounted to around $710 million, a sum comparable to revenue generated by island hotels. It went on to report that around a quarter of all STVR users \u201cwould not travel to Hawai\u02bbi Island if this lodging option were unavailable.\u201d Losses to the county\u2019s portion of the state Transient Accommodations Tax would amount to between $3 million and $5 million annually, while some 12,000 full-time jobs and 30,000 part-time jobs would be lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does the fear of revenue loss lie behind the decisions that compromise the island\u2019s agricultural potential?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report does not state how many of the existing STVRs are on land in the state Agricultural District, so it is impossible to know or even estimate the potential cost to the county of eliminating STVRs on Ag land. Yet the loss of revenue would appear to be the only reason for the county\u2019s adoption of convoluted and bizarre policies that allow and even encourage their proliferation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hawai\u02bbi County at one point seemed resolute in its determination not to allow the gentrification of Agricultural lands. Now that that has changed, the result is a hopelessly confused mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (For further background on this subject, see the cover article in our September issue, \u201cHawai\u02bbi County Presses ICA to Allow Vacation Rentals on Ag Land.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What, exactly, is going on in Hawaiʻi County? Its own laws and rules specifically forbid the operation of vacation rentals on properties that lie within the state Agricultural District. It passed an ordinance in 2018 that limits these uses to … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,338,543],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-16799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agriculture","category-land-use","category-november-2025","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16799","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=16799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}