Is housing sacrificed to attract more tourists?

“Priced Out of Paradise,” a recent report by the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice, estimates that there are 23,000 VRUs in Hawaiʻi, a number nearly double the one reported by the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority (HTA). The number itself is staggering, since it means a reduction in actual housing supply, increased competition for local residents seeking to rent, and upward pressure on rental rates.

HTA’s inability to get a handle on the state’s visitor infrastructure inventory is troubling. So is the fact that it’s less interested in considering tourism’s broader impact than in promoting the message that “Hawaiʻi is open for business!”

The Hawaiʻi Appleseed VRU estimate is equivalent to over 4 percent of the housing units in Hawaiʻi, with 52 percent of the VRUs owned by nonresidents. Owning a VRU can be quite profitable—the report quotes a 2015 calculation that the revenue from an average Airbnb unit is about 3.5 times higher than what a long-term rental unit generates.

From 2009 to 2017, the number of housing units in Hawaiʻi increased by just over 25,000, or 4.8 percent. That number differs little from Hawaiʻi Appleseed’s estimate of current VRU capacity. During the same period the combined increase in resident and average daily visitor census was 102,000, a number which points to how big a task, and arguably an opportunity, awaits Hawaiʻi.