Three amendments proposed by Maui County Council members would add 16 properties—some overlapping between proposals—to a list of apartment-zoned properties used as vacation rentals and slated for rezoning into newly created hotel-zoned districts. The move would further shrink the pool of units that the much-debated Bill 9 would convert to long-term housing, opponents of the resolutions argued.

The Housing and Land Use Committee, chaired by Council Member Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins, heard another nearly two and a half hours of public testimony Wednesday without voting on two resolutions that would refer the rezoning bills to the Maui Planning Commission.

The committee took up Resolutions 26-129 and 26-130 for a second time, continuing oral testimony that had recessed without a vote on Aug. 5. About half of Wednesday’s testifiers, drawn from a list still working through more than a dozen names, addressed the committee before it recessed again around noon.

Three amendments, 16 properties, some overlap

Coreen Baker, an owner at Nohonani, the 28-unit oceanfront condominium at 3723 Lower Honoapiʻilani Road in Honokōwai, told the committee that Council Chair Alice Lee has drafted an amendment to add the property to Resolution 26-129.

Council records show Lee’s amendment, noticed for the Aug. 5 meeting, would actually add nine properties: Makani A Kai and Maalaea Banyans in Māʻalaea; Kamaole One in Kīhei; and Kahana Reef, Nohonani, Makani Sands, Hoyochi Nikko, Noelani and Puunoa Beach Estates in Lahaina. Lee’s amendment summary gives a single justification for all nine: that they lie within the county’s sea-level-rise exposure area. At least eight Nohonani owners separately submitted written testimony asking that the property be added when the committee last met Aug. 5.

Baker testified that Nohonani sits entirely within the county’s 3.2-foot sea-level-rise exposure area, unlike neighboring properties already included in the resolution, and asked the committee to pass the amendment. She also told members that rising maintenance costs—including a recent closure and special assessment to repair concrete spalling—apply to shoreline properties regardless of whether they’re zoned as hotels, and asked the committee to weigh that in future rezoning decisions.

Two more amendments, also noticed for the Aug. 5 meeting, would add still more properties. Council Member Tom Cook’s amendment would add 10 properties—Kīhei Resort (also known as 777 S. Kīhei Road), Waiohuli Beach Hale and Shores of Maui in Kīhei; Polynesian Shores and Lahaina Roads in Lahaina; and Makani A Kai, Maalaea Banyans, Kamaole One, Kahana Reef and Makani Sands, all five of which are also named in Lee’s amendment.

Cook’s amendment cites the same sea-level-rise exposure area threshold as its justification. Several of the properties in Cook’s amendment — Kīhei Resort, Waiohuli Beach Hale and Noelani, which is also in Lee’s amendment — were the subject of written testimony asking for inclusion at the Aug. 5 meeting.

Council Vice-Chair Yuki Lei Sugimura’s amendment would add two properties: Kīhei Parkshore, a 0.516-acre parcel at 2037 S. Kīhei Road, and Kaleialoha, a 1.259-acre parcel at 3785 Lower Honoapiʻilani Road in Lahaina. According to Sugimura’s amendment summary, county mapping shows both properties’ sea-level-rise exposure-area parcel coverage as “most” and their building coverage as “full.”

The addition of Kīhei Parkshore would resolve an inconsistency raised in testimony at the Aug. 5 meeting, when attorney Rebecca Krill, representing the Kīhei Park Shore Association, told the committee the property is almost entirely covered by the 3.2-foot sea-level-rise exposure area while Kīhei Bay Surf and Kīhei Bay Vista—two properties already in the resolution—are only about 20% covered by the same mapping layer.

Among the three amendments, 16 distinct properties would be added to Resolution 26-129’s current eight if all were approved, though the overlap between Lee’s and Cook’s amendments means the committee would need to reconcile duplicate proposals for five of those properties.

Kevin Smith, an owner and board member at Waiohuli Beach Hale in Kīhei, asked committee members to include that oceanfront 52-unit complex in hotel district rezoning.

“We’re not asking for special treatment,” he said. “We’re asking that the same criteria already applied to other Kīhei shoreline properties be applied consistently to ours. Excluding us, while including similarly exposed properties on the same stretch of coastline, appears to be an oversight and not a deliberate choice.”

Opponents renew warnings about Bill 9’s intent

Lahaina Strong leader Paele Kiakona said the resolutions and proposed bill amendments are exempting properties from Bill 9 and creating “a very clear path of taking advantage of things in our home, the beauty of our home, taking advantage of our transient interests, completely drinking up our resources and exacerbating the housing crisis even further.”

If sea-level rise does not affect some of the properties now being considered for hotel zoning, then they should be taken off the rezoning list and remain as long-term, apartment-zoned residential housing, he said.

Kiakona noted falling condo housing prices—some as low as $300,000, “which seems pretty affordable.”

Nara Boone, who testified on behalf of Maui Housing Hui afterward, spoke in opposition to both resolutions. She told the committee that continuing to add apartment-zoned properties back onto a path toward hotel zoning undercuts the intent of Ordinance 5909, formerly Bill 9, which was written to move those units into the county’s long-term housing inventory.

“The idea of building ourselves out of the housing crisis we’re in was already shown to not be an adequate solution. There needs to be multiple solutions to this problem,” she said, citing earlier information presented to the Council by Matt Jachowski that—with Maui’s current pace of building housing—it would take several decades to build enough housing to meet current demand.

Boone argued that Maui doesn’t have a shortage of dwellings, but a shortage of housing residents can live in, saying there are already more than enough hotel rooms, short-term rentals and vacation listings to accommodate visitors.

“What we need is to take care of our community,” she said.

Boone said she believes rent stabilization is needed because it would “keep more money in people’s pockets so they can build up their credit, so they can build up their savings, and then they can purchase homes.”

Testifier disputes county’s sea-level mapping

Testifying independently, Johann Lall told the committee he had mapped all eight properties in a Resolution 26-129 against the county’s sea-level-rise exposure area and found only four are entirely within the zone; the other four are only partially within it. He said his analysis also identified 11 additional parcels entirely within the exposure area and 44 more partially within it that appear on neither resolution.

Lall said the county’s underlying GIS analysis should be reviewed for accuracy, arguing that if similarly situated properties are excluded from the list, the county could face legal challenges. He said he supports evaluating properties case by case through the Planning Commission process but said any criteria the county applies “needs to be consistent, and it needs to make sense.” He agreed to submit his GIS data to the committee.

The question of whether a property must be entirely or only partially within the exposure area to qualify for rezoning was left open at the Aug. 5 meeting, when Planning Department staff said they had asked the Council to clarify the standard. That clarification had not been made as of Wednesday.

Sales data cited on both sides

Caitlin Miller, representing the Maui Vacation Rental Association in support of the resolutions, presented the committee with sales data for Minatoya-list properties sold between Dec. 1, 2025, and Aug. 14, 2026.

Of 162 sales in that period, Miller said Multiple Listing Service and title records cross-referenced against real property tax records confirmed only 12 sales, or 7.4%, as owner-occupied by Maui residents. Adding nine more sales where supporting information suggests likely owner occupancy, but where tax records haven’t yet caught up, brought the total to 21 of 162 sales—13%—as the high-end estimate.

Miller argued that even at that generous estimate, the data suggests roughly 87% of sales are going to buyers who may continue short-term rental use, and said the Council should weigh that against the visitor spending, jobs, and tax revenue the county’s own analysis projected the phase-out would cost.

“If owner-occupancy continues anywhere near the rate we are seeing today, we have to ask whether the economic and community cost is producing the housing outcome that was anticipated,” she said.

Later, Boone cited the same 13% figure to reach the opposite conclusion, telling the committee it shows Bill 9 “is working.”

Some legislative background

The two resolutions pending before the committee are the latest step in implementing exceptions to Ordinance 5909, earlier known as Bill 9.

Mayor Richard Bissen signed that measure into law on Dec. 15. It phases out transient vacation rentals in apartment districts, beginning Jan. 1, 2029, for West Maui, and Jan. 1, 2031, for the rest of Maui County.

After Bill 9 came Bill 88, now Ordinance 6008, which created the H-3 and H-4 hotel districts in June to maintain hundreds of apartment-zoned units as vacation rentals but in outright hotel zoning.

More amendments pending

Council Member Gabe Johnson said during questioning that the committee has “at least two or three amendments from other council members” pending that would add properties to the resolutions, including one raised in testimony Wednesday for El Dorado, a Kīhei property not previously named in Council discussion of the resolutions.

Johnson, who has expressed skepticism about expanding hotel zoning in past meetings, said he had not yet reviewed the pending amendments but was inclined to weigh properties against criteria such as on-site staffing and shared laundry facilities rather than treat rezoning as a blanket policy.

What’s next?

The committee plans to reconvene at 9 a.m. Aug. 27, this time in person at Council chambers on the eighth floor of the Kalana O Maui Building, 200 S. High St. in Wailuku, with the Microsoft Teams option also available. Uʻu-Hodgins said the committee expects to finish remaining public testimony before moving into substantive discussion. That would include possible amendments to add or remove properties from either resolution.