Lahaina Strong is calling on the Maui County Council to pass Bill 9 in its “clean form—without carve-outs, amendments, or delay,” and has launched a petition detailing their request.

Bill 9, which passed out of the Maui County Council Housing and Land Use Committee on July 24, 2025, would transition short-term vacation rental (STR) units in apartment-zoned districts—once homes for local families—back into the long-term housing pool for residents.

The measure passed out of the Housing and Land Use Committee on July 24 by a 6-3 vote. In August, the Maui County Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee voted to form a Temporary Investigative Group to investigate policies and procedures for vacation rentals in apartment-zoned districts.

The coalition, which consists of fire survivors, working families, and community members across Maui, reports that the devastation of the Aug. 8, 2023 wildfires, exposed the dual crises of housing and water on Maui.

“For too long, offshore investors and real estate speculators have commodified these limited resources for profit at the expense of local families,” the coalition said in a news release. The group says “half-measures or exemptions would betray the people most impacted by the wildfire and ongoing displacement.”

“Bill 9 affirms that housing in Maui is for residents first and foremost,” Lahaina Strong said. “Every delay, every loophole, every exemption allows our limited housing and water resources to be siphoned away. The only legally sound and effective path forward is to pass Bill 9 clean and return these units to local families.”

Opponents of the measure, including the Maui Vacation Rental Association, have said that removing short-term rentals in apartment districts “would create a significant legal risk and undermine the integrity of the County’s own historical land use decisions.”

In March the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization released a report on the matter saying the “bold attempt to rebalance Maui’s housing market” also risks widespread economic disruption, including 1,900 job layoffs and a $900 million loss in visitor spending.

Mayor Richard Bissen and his Communications Office provided point-by-point responses to the release of the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization’s analysis saying that while economic models are important, “they fail to acknowledge the cultural loss we face when our people are forced to leave — when generations of knowledge, tradition, and aloha are displaced from the very communities that shaped them.”

The coalition wants council members to advance Bill 9 to the Council floor without delay, urging members to keep it “in clean form” through final passage, and “return housing,” to the people of Maui.