Honolulu – An unprecedented proposal of the mayor of Maui to eliminate the elimination of holiday rentals would relieve a serious scarcity of housing aggravated by the forest fires of 2023, but would also reduce the economy, said the economists of the University of Hawaii on Monday in a published report.
Mayor Richard Bissen presented the idea of politics last year to boost Maui’s limited long -term housing supply after the fires annihilated more than 3,000 housing units in Lahaina.
Trey Gordner, one of the authors of the study and researcher of the Economic Research Organization of the University of Hawaii, said there are always compensation associated with decisions of this type.
“We found that politics would increase the affordability of housing at the expense of jobs, income and tax revenues,” said a press conference. Visitors’ expense is likely to decrease sharply, according to the report.
Bissen said the report was a valuable first step to understand the potential economic impact of his proposal. But he said that economic models do not reflect the lived experiences of crowded residents in multigenerational homes, traveling long distances and leaving Maui because they cannot pay housing.
“The most important thing is that they do not recognize the cultural loss we face when our people are forced to leave, when the generations of knowledge, tradition and Aloha are displaced from the same communities that shaped them,” Bissen said in a statement.
The Housing and Use of the Land of the Maui County Council can replace a bill that incorporates the mayor’s proposal in approximately 60 days, depending on the review of the budget and the deliberation schedule, said the president of the Council Alice Lee in a text message.
She said her concern is that the study does not address the legal implications and associated costs of politics.
“I understand that many owners (for rent in the short term) will choose to retain their units and not sell or rent their units and use them when they visit Maui,” Lee said. “The Council wishes to establish a fair and equitable solution that works for all parties.”
Around a third of Maui’s visitors use vacation rentals. They tend to cost less than hotels and are easy to book on websites such as Airbnb and VRBO. Many have work spaces and kitchens, so that people can work remotely and families can prepare their own food.
They have also become a source of tension in Maui, particularly after the forest fire of Lahaina, the deadliest in the United States in more than a century, destroyed so much home.
The report says that the mayor’s proposal was unique on scale because the holiday rentals in question represent 21% of the Maui County Housing Offer. In contrast, vacation rentals in Los Angeles affected 0.9% of local homes and those in Barcelona affected 2.6%, according to the report.
The policy would add 6,127 holiday rental units to Maui’s long -term housing actions, increasing the supply by 13%.
Because only about 600 new housing units are built in the county every year, this would be equivalent to a decade of new housing development. The prices of condominiums would fall from 20-40%, estimates the study.
The majority of the affected owners would not be residents of Maui because 85% of the owners of vacation rentals in maui apartments areas are from outside the state, particularly the state of California and Washington, as well as Canada.
Another benefit would be to change the units to long -term housing would not require the county to develop additional water sources, which are scarce in Maui.
At the same time, the study predicted that the policy would eliminate a quarter of the accommodation for visitors to Maui County and reduced the spending of visitors by 15%. Some 1,900 jobs or 3% of the county payroll would disappear.
The gross domestic product would be hired by 4% and property taxes would probably decrease by up to $ 60 million annually.
The report says that the county could achieve some of the desired housing impulse with less economic interruption if instead increases taxes in vacation rentals, taxed empty homes and zoning reform and adopted permits.
Taking the amount of vacation rental licenses and auction would be another approach.
Steven Bond-Smith, an assistant professor at the University and Co-author of Reports, said he was not aware of a community that has done it with holiday rentals, but it is a common practice for taxi medallions and is used to manage fishing.
The licenses auction would remove less profitable units from the vacation rental market because the cost would not justify the expense, according to the report.
The University conducted the study at the request of the foundation of the Hawaii community, a non -profit organization.
