Alicia Humiston bought her condo in Lahaina after she visited Maui and fell for its rainforests, lava fields and the whales that gather offshore. She travels there about three times a year and rents out her unit for short periods when she’s not in Hawaii.
“Maui was my dream place,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
But now Maui’s mayor wants to make it impossible for Humiston and thousands of other condo owners to rent their properties to tourists. Instead, he wants them rented long-term to Maui locals to address a chronic housing shortage that reached a new crisis point after last August’s deadly wildfire burned the homes of 12,000 residents.
The mayor’s proposal faces multiple legislative and bureaucratic hurdles, starting Tuesday with a Maui Planning Commission meeting. Yet it has inflamed an already-heated debate about the future of one of the world’s best-known travel destinations: Will Maui continue to cater to tourists, who power the local economy? Or will it curb tourism to address persistent complaints that visitors are overwhelming the island’s beaches and roads and making housing unaffordable?
Then it’s time to pressure hotels to start catering to what people want vs states allowing private equity and private out-of-state ownership of housing in Hawaii.
Having access to a holiday domicile will never outweigh the need for year-round housing for residents and Native Hawaiians. Remember almost 50% of Native Hawaiians now live elsewhere, primarily due to the cost of living and lack of available/affordable housing in Hawaii.
I totally agree that housing for locals takes precedence. 30 years ago families were content to just cram into a hotel and deal with that annoyance, or spend a lot of money on vacation rentals found through classified ads. The market has changed, and hotels have not changed to keep up. And local jurisdictions are not pushing hotels to adapt to help out.