#short-term vacation rentals

Mayor Richard Bissen today signed Bill 9 into law after Maui County Council approved the measure on second and final reading, marking what he calls “a historic step toward restoring housing availability for residents” and “realigning zoning policy with its original residential purpose.”

The Maui County Council members passed Bill 9 on second and final reading Monday by the same 5-3 vote that advanced the controversial measure earlier this month. Later Monday, Mayor Richard Bissen signed the bill into law. Bissen introduced the measure to phase out transient vacation rentals in apartment-zoned districts in May 2024. While the […]

The Maui County Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee deferred action Thursday on recommendations for phasing out thousands of apartment-zoned short-term vacation rentals, shifting its focus instead to a proposal that would allow more than 4,500 current vacation rental units to continue operating legally. The committee plans to advance legislation to establish H-3 and H-4 hotel zoning […]

Lahaina Strong, a community group that arose in the wake of the Lahaina wildfire disaster, is calling for the Maui County Council to take expeditious action on Bill 9, which would phase out short-term vacation rentals in apartment-zoned districts. “We are still awaiting confirmation of dates for the two full Council hearings required before Bill […]

Citing Maui’s severe post-wildfire housing crisis, the Bissen administration presented its formal case to a County Council committee to phase out approximately 6,000 short-term vacation rentals mostly in West and South Maui. “We simply can’t build fast enough to meet the scale of demand we’re facing,” Mayor Richard Bissen told members of the Housing and […]

The contentious debate over the future of thousands of short-term vacation rentals in Maui County is heading to a much-anticipated public hearing Monday, June 9, before the Maui County Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee. The committee posted an agenda for a meeting beginning at 10 a.m. Monday in the Council Chambers on the eighth […]

The deadly Maui wildfire disaster displaced 5,000 people and has now left Hawaiʻi with the dubious distinction of having the nation’s highest rate of homelessness, according to a report released today by the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization. The UHERO report also underscores that the wildfires aggravated Maui County’s already acute shortage of housing. […]

Closings of condominium sales have dropped by double-digit percentages in the three months since Mayor Richard Bissen announced a proposal to phase out thousands of short-term rentals in apartment-zoned districts, according to monthly statistics from the Realtors Association of Maui.

A vacation rental advocacy group has released a statewide poll it says shows that Mayor Richard Bissen’s proposed ban on short-term rentals is “unpopular” with most Hawai‘i registered voters.

Gov. Josh Green held a news conference Wednesday at the state Capitol to detail some of the 253 bills he signed out of 260 bills passed during the 2024 legislative session.

A study funded by a group representing “travel technology innovators,” including short-term rental platforms, is forecasting vast amounts of tax income losses for Maui County if Mayor Richard Bissen’s proposed bill to phase out 7,000 vacation rentals in apartment districts were enacted out to make way for resident housing.

Thousands of short-term vacation rental apartments could begin switching to long-term housing for residents as early as July 1, 2025, for West Maui, and Jan. 1, 2026, for the rest of Maui County in a proposed measure announced today by Mayor Richard Bissen.