Council must be forceful to reduce illegal short-term rentals

The Honolulu City Council is now weighing seven bills that aim to corral and then stamp out the parasite—namely, the illegal home-sharing operation. This problem dates back to the late 1980s, when Oʻahu banned new bed & breakfast (B&B) operations, and limited additional un-hosted transient vacation units (TVUs) to hotel-resort zones.

In subsequent decades, the parasite problem festered as weak city laws and enforcement were outmatched by strong demand for short-term vacation rentals. In recent years—spurred by online platforms that are not currently required to vet the legality of a Hawaiʻi home-sharing operation seeking to advertise—the inventory of outlaw operations has exploded.

For example, a few years ago, when Honolulu’s official vacation rental inventory included 41 B&Bs and 775 TVUs, online booking sites featured a whopping 4,400 “individually-advertised units” across two-dozen communities on Oʻahu, according to the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice.