Is Hawaii really like apartheid-era South Africa?
Kauai creeps ever closer to election day, and things are heating up. Lots of little birdies singing in my ear. Allegations of corruption, incompetence. Whispers of multiple cases of marital infidelity. Does that matter to the local electorate? I could care less, though poor decisions in pursuit of pussy are always amusing. Sex and the City style blog posts making the rounds. Smart men doing dumb things.
Transient vacation rentals are a hot topic. State legislature is looking to hand AirBnB a serious windfall, passing a bill that allows the vacation home middle man to collect taxes on behalf of the state but removing language that would have required the company to ensure its members were in compliance with local laws.
Too onerous a requirement, according to AirBnB heads. How can they tell who’s legal and who isn’t?
Just look at Manhattan Beach, that affluent honky enclave that specializes in NIMBY politics. City outlawed short term rentals in 2015. Quick search still turns up a lot of illegal units.
California rental law is relatively tenant friendly. Wonder how long it’ll be until gutter punks start realizing they can book a day and refuse to leave? I’d imagine that pursuing a civil suit to recoup money lost in the commission of a crime might be difficult.
It’d be more or less impossible on Kauai, now that the planning commission and county council are playing election year politics and holding off-island TVR violators’ feet firmly to the fire. Money may buy favor in off-years, but election time means playing to the local crowd. Not a lot of sympathy present for off-island property investors. Large fines are being levied. Speculators are facing the hard fact that they can’t afford their properties without a steady stream of illegal tourist income.
So racist, so unfair! What about the economy?
Rumor has it that the current plan is to pursue fines sufficiently severe that they remove all profitability from ignoring zoning laws. Force people to sell, depress the local market. Open up housing for local families.
Maybe just chase out the millionaires, bring in the billionaires, as in the current situation at the Big Island’s Haulali Four Seasons Resort.
Definitely doesn’t benefit local families in the slightest, but it does deliver comedy.
It was poolside that he particularly felt the caste system at work. “You’d go to a pool and order what you want,” he says. “And then, when you make the mistake of sitting in the wrong seat, a Hualalai brownshirt basically comes over and says, ‘You can’t sit there.’ And there was literally no one else near the pool because it was kind of drizzling. It was just bizarre.”
Firestein writes dialogue for a living. Standing by the empty chaises longues, he didn’t hold back. “I said to them, ‘You know, this is weirdly like Jim Crow. You’re telling us we can eat here and not here, and there’s no one else around?’ ”
He didn’t stay the full week. Another family the Firesteins had rendezvoused with there—visitors, he notes pointedly, from South Africa—also left early. “I don’t want to exaggerate,” Firestein says, “but it really is an apartheid experience.”
rory, that scenario you describe about squatters refusing to vacate? not hypothetical.
http://www.businessinsider….
That’s great!
Dumb move threatening to shut off the power via text. If you’re gonna play fast and loose with the rules you’ve gotta make sure it ain’t in writing.
come on Rory! this is nimby writing about nimby politics. sign up. run for office. you and wifey find some big wig to share in sack. Move onto big P politics.
snout meet trough
County of Kauai’s credo has always been to have their cake and eat it too – they’ve always been meticulous about getting their transient vacation rental tax on “illegal” rentals, drinking in the property taxes on inflated values based upon “illegal” rental income, then cracking down on individual “illegal” rentals as whim suits them (“them” often being rogue planning dept individuals).
Not that there’s anything wrong with all that, I guess. Someone’s gonna get screwed no matter how the (quite small) pie gets sliced.
Fair enough from a resident point of view but from the states point of view tourism is still their biggest industry. I would’ve thought short term rentals would be preferable because when the joints are rented at least the people who live there have to fuck off somewhere else. Anyway. I was just curious. This conversation won’t change anything. Who gives a fuck?
from the government’s perspective, the hotel lobby is the 900 pound gorilla in the room. anything, including AirBnB that the hotel bigwigs are against is going to get the stinkeye
I don’t really understand Hawaii’s problem with short term rentals…. could you please explain the reason? Here if you have some cash laying around from say a recent Keta deal, you can lease 12 AirBnB apartments in a touristy area (with the landlords permission….. or not) and sub-let them for a decent enough profit to not really have to work a casual job. The only operating costs are paying the AirBnB fees and getting the Chinese tax evaders in to clean every now and then.
hotel industry hates it, they actually pay the taxes cause they’re like a giant hotel and AirBnB is like hearding cats. VRBO has been at it for a while but never put money into marketing so the hotels didn’t cry too much, it was all weekly rentals.
Yeah okay. I understand the tax side of it, but if the governments had a bit more foresight they would push legislation through to be able to tax unique new business ideas before they are prevalent enough to rape their current income stream. It all seems pretty similar to the taxi industry versus Uber. The government want to support the one they can tax despite the fact the one they tax offers a crappier product.
well, the taxi industry might say “we’ve over-regulated” too. they are exactly in the same position as the hoteliers. they are paying for insurance and permits/utility commission licenses while Uber gets the consumer what they want without any of that overhead. everyone is fine that Uber isn’t regulated until their driver rapes em and then its “where is the regulation? where are the background checks?” and instead of “innovators” Uber looks like they want to operate outside the law. technology has solved the “dispatcher problem” but has it solved the safety issue? is there a safety issue? Uber says there isn’t, taxi companies say there isn’t, so why do they have to lay out cash because they chose to comply with the regulations for common carriers that have existed for 100 years? if you’re from Silicon Valley, you call it “disruptive” and if you’re from NYC, Uber is just a gypsy cab with a bigger brand.
I agree, they are over-regulated in comparison to Uber or AirBnB and further hindered by their bricks and mortar approaches as opposed to commissioning a Ritalin den full of neck beards in California to create an app. In Australia, as far as I’m aware we’re yet to have a significant issue using Uber. My ex-girlfriend when I was about 25 has had two incidents in taxis. Once she was asked to suck the guy off for the fare (she told me she didn’t do it but who knows) and the second one the driver drove her and a friend down a side street and got out of the car and pulled his dick out in front of them in the headlights. Weird shit. I got run over by a taxi when I was a young kid and ended up fighting the driver when he got out and told me it was my fault. A couple of by-standers walking by thought I was bashing a taxi driver and ending up giving me a pretty bloody decent beating. I think my point is, incidents will happen regardless of background checks.
indeed. with any regulation the issue is whether its more safety than the public/market would otherwise demand. fuck, i know contractors that lose half the jobs they bid to unlicensed guys. for a public that demands all of these consumer protections, we sure as fuck don’t like paying top dollar for anything. only guys getting a pass on this approach is the medical field, because they bamboozle us with monthly payment for coverage and some bullshit deductible but other than that we don’t really see what each procedure is costing us. otherwise we’d go with Docs with Cayman Island medical degrees too.
Yeah exactly. Not entirely relevant and I could well be wrong, but I’m of the understanding that minimum medication prices are set by the Government and part of the equation is the cost it will incur if people are living longer. It’s all a balancing act but ultimately it is about the Government having money in their hands (which they then waste). It cost the Government $12m to fix a boom-gate issue at a train crossing near my old house. Private contractors rort them because they see the state as a bottomless money pit. At least we don’t live in Pakistan or Brazil mate!
my expat buddy is loving NZ
Jerren?
no. must be two seppo expats there then
Wouldn’t have thought there would be anymore than that in Negaland. All of the Kiwi’s are here.
There might be one less pretty soon if that fucker circles his helicopter over the lineup again.
ritalin dens full of neckbeards are fucking the world.
It pisses me off more that dweebs like Zuckerberg are probably fucking chicks.
Many moons ago before Uber I used to take great joy in screwing illegal cabs out of fares in London. Leave the door open on the opposite side of the cab and doing a runner or simply call the police and say they offered you a lift and now they are demanding cash. Poor fuckers used to get rather angry and I was pretty much always to pissed to feel guilty.
Investors buy up property and live there one week a year and Airbnb for the rest. They add nothing to the community. They take business away from any local guest houses or family owned resorts that can provide employment for locals. They do this under the disguse of being a home while dodging all the loop wholes and taxes other legit businesses have to go through. This isn’t good practise of tourism or what’s called Eco tourism.
Thanks Brian. Makes sense.
Plumbers, electricians, lawn care,, handy men, carpenters and hardware stores get some benefit for maintenance of all the ghost ownership houses but I’m against
It also takes the minimal housing on an island away from a local who could long term rent it. Using residential areas for an investment property doesn’t help maintain or build a community, it destroys it.