The Star-Advertiser’s April 14 article, “City fails to collect millions in rental fines,” lacks important context, including the nature of collections work, the evolution of short-term rental (STR) fines policy, and the lack of city Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) resources. Failure means one gave up or did not succeed, which is not the case. In fact, DPP is strongly pursuing and will collect these STR fines, despite these challenges. We are leaving nothing on the table.
The article implies an oversimplification of fines collection. The collection of fines is not simply knocking on a door or sending a letter to a violator who then pays the fine. It is a complicated and adversarial process. Many STR violators evade service of the fine order, refuse to pay their fines, fight the fines at the city Zoning Board of Appeals, and simply avoid taking responsibility for their violations. These factors require substantial efforts that result in extended recovery times.
Recent history of STR enforcement provides context for why violators are so resistant, and the ongoing evolution of illegal STR enforcement. For decades, Oahu experienced ineffective enforcement of illegal STRs. Fines were too low and it was extremely difficult to prove STR use violations, which required proof of less than 30-day rental. Moreover, the DPP policy was to automatically settle for 5% of the total fines, which further undermined DPP’s enforcement powers against illegal STRs, sending a message to STR violators that there are no consequences to violating the law.
This policy was easy, fast, nonadversarial — and ineffective.
In 2022, DPP fixed these defective policies by standardizing 100% fine payment, and put forth Bill 41 (Ord. 22-7) to increase fines tenfold to $10,000/day and to enable enforcement against illegal STR advertisements. With only three STR investigators for the entire island, the results of Ord. 22-7 have been the opposite of failure. Today, 99% of all STR issued violations are advertisement violations.
These fixes have resulted in an explosion of approximately $30 million in STR fines issued in each of the last three fiscal years — but our capacity to collect on these fines has not grown proportionately, and in fact, with a 50% vacancy rate, only three staffers prepare fine orders, liens and foreclosure, and submit cases to Aargon Agency, for not just STR, but building and zoning violations. The massive increase in STR fines has created a backlog that in part prevents DPP from referring more STR cases to Aargon, as well as making its own direct efforts to collect fines.
These are growing pains of an evolving policy within city government where resources are inadequate and antiquated. Much like DPP’s efforts to improve the building permit process, improvements in one area tend to shift or create backlog in later phases, where we then shift our efforts. DPP is filling positions and recently raised salaries of these positions to attract applicants. The new Clariti software will provide much-needed automation to replace current manual collections processes.
The April 14 article asked why “DPP’s collections of $1.04 million far surpassed the $45,051 taken in by Aargon for fiscal year 2024.” Aargon collected a lesser amount than DPP because DPP only referred 60 STR cases for collection during the period of March 2, 2023, and February 2025, a fraction of the total STR fines, due to the limited staffing.
DPP stands behind the work of Aargon, which has been very successful in its efforts with referred accounts, and is in the process of greatly increasing the rate of referrals.
Although these STR fines are not yet in city coffers, they are binding on and payable by the violators, and are within DPP’s sights. DPP, with help from Aargon, has not failed but is aggressively fighting, not just to recover these fines, but grappling with substantial changes in policy, adversarial and complex collections, and deficient resources.
Dawn Takeuchi Apuna is director of the city Department of Planning and Permitting.
