When the young family who had been renting the two-bedroom, first-floor unit of her Kaimuki home moved back to California last year, Georgietta Chock had trouble finding long-term renters who could pay the $2,400 monthly rent and meet financial qualifications.

Then Chock’s husband died unexpectedly in August and the 79-year-old retiree suddenly had to worry about how she would pay her $2,226 monthly mortgage and avoid losing her house.

At her grandson’s suggestion, Chock began renting her first floor as a vacation unit in February at about $150 a day and she’s received a steady stream of renters since. Now she’s booked through August.

She’s not compliant now, but the latest version of Honolulu City Council Bill 89 (2018) — which is up for a final vote Wednesday — would allow Chock to apply for one of an estimated 1,715 new vacation rental permits because she lives in part of the home she’s renting and she has a homeowner exemption on the house.

But thousands of other Oahu residential short-term vacation rentals would not be eligible for such a permit because they are not “hosted,” characterized as whole-home vacation rentals and therefore would remain illegal under the current draft which includes other language that would make it more difficult to stay around.

Airbnb, Expedia Group (which owns VRBO and HomeAway, among others) and other vacation rental booking and hosting companies are warning of dire consequences for the Oahu economy if the current draft is adoptedand are fighting to allow whole-home rentals to be permitted.

On the other side of the debate are those living in neighborhoods adversely affected by vacation rentals and want the Council to steer clear of allowing any new permits until the Department of Planning and Permitting can show it is able to crack down on the existing illegal ones.

The opponents argue that residential vacation rentals have ruined neighborhoods by taking up street parking and allowing strangers to replace long-term residents. They believe the rentals have also taken away much-needed housing from Oahu’s families.

Councilwoman Kymberly Pine, whose West Oahu neighborhoods have been seeing a surge in vacation rentals, told her colleagues that their decision on vacation rentals will have the most far-reaching consequences of all the issues that come before the Council.

Pine said the Council needs to spend more time studying how to handle new vacation rental permits, especially because there have been a flurry of different drafts, including some that would allow for whole-home vacation rentals.

“It shouldn’t be done in a chaotic way where no one knows what is in the final legislation until the last minute,” Pine said. “It’s not fair to the public, which has a lot at stake in these bills.”

Also up for a final vote Wednesday is Bill 85 (2019), which includes provisions that help DPP clamp down on illegal operators but offers no language to allow the issuance of new permits.

Councilman Ron Menor, who wrote the latest drafts of both bills that advanced out of the Planning Committee on April 29, said he included the language from Bill 85 into Bill 89.

Save Oahu’s Neighborhoods, a community group that opposes legitimizing vacation rentals, supports Bill 85.

But Councilman Ikaika Anderson, who heads the Planning Committee, has repeatedly said he will only support a bill that both tightens up enforcement of illegal units while allowing more to become legitimate.

No new vacation rentals have been permitted outside the Waikiki hotel-resort district (where they are legal) since 1989. Currently, DPP has a list of 816 operators with nonconforming use permits that are allowed to operate in residential zones. They would be allowed to stay legal under a “grandfather” clause and would not count toward the totals in each district.

The widow’s tale

Chock, the Kaimuki widow, said those who rent a part of their house to vacationers shouldn’t be placed in the same category as other local residents who want to rent out a second home, continental U.S. owners or foreign investors.

“I think they should all be treated differently,” Chock said. She’s trying to keep her house with the rental income and, because she’s staying in the same house, she would be accountable and responsive to any neighborhood concerns that arose, she said. “Nobody knows my people are here because they’re quiet.”

Chock pays general excise and hotel room taxes as required by the state so she is not taking advantage of the system, she said.

Meanwhile, she’s been coping with the loss of her husband, in part by meeting the visitors who stay in her first-floor unit, some from as far away as South Korea and Germany. The one thing they have in common is “they don’t want to live in hotels, they don’t want to be stuck with thousands of tourists,” she said.

The money they save by staying with her — which includes free parking and a kitchen to cook meals — allows them to spend more money on other attractions they otherwise would not be able to experience, she said.

Driven to homelessness

While Chock’s bed-and-breakfast operation helps her stay in her house, Koolauloa activist KC Connors said vacation rentals have driven at least a dozen families she knows into homelessness.

An after-school teacher who’s worked at several schools in Kahuku, Kaaawa and Hauula, she estimated about 20 of her students and their families are now living in tents or cars because they’ve been evicted by landlords who can make more by renting short term to tourists.

“It’s really been rabid over the last five or six years,” said Connors, who’s also active with the Windward Homeless Alliance. “North of Kaneohe all the way up the coast, it’s mini-hotel after mini-hotel after mini-hotel.”

She believes most of the vacation rentals are owned by out-of-town investors who are in it for speculation only. “It’s not just a noise issue,” Connors said. “We’re losing our culture.”

A March 2018 study by the Hawai‘i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice estimated there are 23,000 vacation rental units and that as many as 93% of them are whole-home operations.

‘Really going to hurt’

Haleiwa resident Ann Otteman, a member of the Oahu Short Term Rental Alliance, is a caretaker for seven vacation rentals but does not have any herself.

She and her husband own a three-bedroom condominium unit in Whitmore Village that they rent on a long-term basis for $1,800 a month because they and their five children cannot afford to live there. But she thinks the city should give her the right to rent it as a vacation rental, a move that would allow her family to earn more than they do now.

Otteman said the Council’s bill as written is a big overreach that would have huge economic ramifications.

Most of the vacation rentals she’s aware of are whole-home rentals, not just rooms or parts of houses. Vacationers “don’t want to share a house with a family,” she said. “Privacy is one of those things that are expected out of our lodging. We’re going to lose at least 80% of our market.”

“This is really going to hurt us,” she added, noting that she contracts cleaners, plumbers, landscapers, electricians and others trying to eke out a living — and all of whom are paying taxes. “It’s not going to open up houses for people like me. It’s just going to make them less affordable.”

Many local families who rent out their houses to vacationers do so because they can’t afford to live in those homes. “It’s the home they grew up (in) and they’re trying to hang on to it,” she said.

Taking away that opportunity means “they’re going to sell them to more mainland families.” Often, she said, they will opt to leave them as second homes that will stay empty when they’re not in town.

Expedia Group says it believes the short-term rental industry is responsible for 11,000 jobs and more than $1 billion in business activity on Oahu.

BY THE NUMBERS

Short-term rental bill:

1,715

Number of new bed-and-breakfast permits allowed

1,000 feet

Miniumum distance between bed-and-breakfast homes

5 people

Maximum number of guests

KEY PARTS OF BILL 89

Bill 89 (2018), the omnibus short-term rental bill, is up for a final vote Wednesday. Key parts include:

>> An additional 1,715 short-term rentals would be eligible for new permits.

>> Only “hosted” short-term rentals would be eligible. Applicants must live on the property and must be on the property at night. “Whole home” vacation rentals, where the owner lives in another location, would not be permitted.

>> The city will determine (likely by lottery) who would get permits. A permit would cost $100 the first year and $2,000 annually to renew.

>> New permitted short-term rentals could not be within 1,000 feet of another permitted short-term rental.

>> No more than two rooms, with a total of five people, could be rented short-term.

>> Advertisements for a short-term rental must include either the permit number or street address of the rental.

>> One off-street parking stall must be provided for each guestroom.

>> Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway and other hosting advertising platforms would need to disclose information about the host to the city Department of Planning and Permitting.