2018-09-20 Leeward Exh B (Bill 108 re Short-term Vacation Rentals)

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Association today, but previously I was the tourism specialist in the Department of Research and Development first under Mayor Kim’s administration previously and then under Mayor Kenoi’s administration. This process has been a long time in the making. There has been a lot of work that has gone into it. And while sometimes we can get caught in a minutiae of how do we administer something, the fact that we need to have something in place is evident from anyone that you speak to. So I’m here to say we are in full support, the Kohala Coast Resort Association is in full support, of this moving forward. But I also want to share because of my previous role as a tourism specialist, also as the former executive director for the Visitor Aloha Society, or VASH, who helps visitors who have crisis, I’m on the board of directors for the Safety and Security Professionals Association of Hawai‘i, there are a lot of issues related to this bill that we need to address. The first of those is that I completely understand the need to have regulations for all of our vacation rentals, but the fact that we are putting a different process in place for hosted versus un-hosted vacation rentals, I have a challenge with. Even if we just could know who is hosting a vacation rental in their home. I’m not worried about registration fees; what I’m worried about is when Mayor Kim or Hawai‘i Tourism Authority or Talmadge Magno as head of Civil Defense will say things like how many visitors do we have on island right now? There is not a clear way of getting that information, that data. Hawai‘i Tourism Authority has a list of vacation rentals that they took from Airbnb and VRBO and platforms. But a vacation rental can be posted on multiple platforms, and right now we don’t have a clear understanding of who our vacationers are, how many are there at any one time. And so when we have emergencies, as we’ve had with the lava flow, as we’ve had with recent hurricanes, the resorts that I represent get a letter from Civil Defense that say tell us your current occupancy, how many rooms do you have available, how many people are you hosting. We have had a huge segment of our population currently as vacation rentals that they are not getting outreach. There is no one saying to them who are you, what do you need. So that does need to be cleared up. I believe that every vacation rental should at least be registered. Secondly, I think that this helps protect affordable workforce housing. I know that it is the decision of a private property owner whether they choose to rent their house long-term to a resident or they choose to rent it as a vacation rental. I understand a lot of those decisions are based on the economics. But we have big challenges with affordable workforce housing. The resorts I represent employ more than 5,000 people and it’s hard for those people to find places to live. I also think that it’s important in terms, as I said, of the safety and security, the equitability. The resorts that I represent are, they have OSHA inspections, they are told when they are not in compliance with something. Yet, we’ve had testifiers at previous hearings who talk about their tree houses that they are renting on Airbnb that I wonder how did they ever get a building permit, and I doubt that they did. So they need to have some equitability in terms of this. The resorts that I represent along the Kohala Coast collectively pay more than 20 million in GET annually, 20 million in TAT annually and ten million in property taxes annually, and employ more than 5,000 Hawai‘i Island residents. So we just ask you to please consider continuing to move forward with all of the hard work and effort that has gone into this bill, and recognize it won’t be perfect out of the gate, there will be things that need to be addressed as time goes on, but it is long past time for us to get this done. Thank you so much. 24 EXHIBIT B