Windward Planning Commission defers Bill 147 on vacation rentals

Farmstay operators in South Kona and across the Windward district won a temporary reprieve Friday when the Hawaii County Windward Planning Commission unanimously deferred Bill 147, a rewrite that would have sharply changed when a stay counts as a short-term rental. The proposal would have stretched the short-term threshold from 30 days to less than 180 consecutive days, a shift that alarmed hosted-rental owners, neighbors and residents worried about how the county would enforce the new rules.

Bill 147 would have gone far beyond the rental-length change. County planning materials said it would repeal the current definitions for bed-and-breakfast establishments and short-term vacation rentals, then replace them with new categories for B&B, Host, STVR and TVR. It also would have created a new enforcement fund and set escalating penalties, starting at $5,500 for a first violation and rising to $10,000 for third and subsequent violations.

The commission’s delay came after strong pushback from local farmers who run farmstays and from other hosts who said the draft could disrupt legitimate small businesses in rural parts of Hawaii Island. Written testimony included South Kona farm and hosted-rental operator Heather Korotie, who said she has a small fruit and vegetable farm, and B&B host Rachelle Onaka, who urged commissioners to grandfather existing approved operations and argued that a 30-day minimum would be more workable than 180 days. Other testimony warned that redefining TVRs to cover stays shorter than 180 days would create uncertainty for operators who have relied on the existing framework for years.

Commission chair Louis Daniele asked for more time to digest the bill and to offer additional recommendations and amendments. The panel sent the measure back to the calendar for July 2, leaving open the central fights that have shadowed the proposal for months: how to distinguish hosted stays from unhosted vacation rentals, where hosted rentals should be allowed, and how aggressively the county should police properties that appear online but are not properly registered.

Those questions have been building since the Hawaii County Council committee forwarded the bill on April 7 to the planning director and the two planning commissions for review. The county adopted Ordinance No. 18-114, also known as Bill 108, in November 2018, and planning staff have said Bill 147 is meant to update that older system because rental activity spread into residential and agricultural areas and became harder to regulate. County officials also hired Hunden Partners in 2025 to examine the economic impact of short-term rentals, and staff have said several parts of Bill 147 generally match that study’s recommendations. The next hearing will test whether the county can tighten enforcement without undercutting farmstays and other rural operators that depend on visitors to stay afloat.