HomeMy WebLinkAboutLandi, Rocco and Yoko
Tsuneda, Kaci
From:Rocco L <roccohawaii@gmail.com>
Sent:Monday, September 14, 2026 12:00 PM
To:Council Testimony
Subject:Testimony on Bill 147
Aloha.
After reading how important this bill is to me, you may wonder why I didn't testify sooner.
The answer is simple: when I was assured, over and over, that if I was renting legally now I would still be
renting legally after the changes, I believed it. However, the current form of the bill drastically limits my
ability to continue and severely threatens my family's financial security.
My home is unusual. It is a five-bedroom house, however four of the bedrooms have private entrances
and bathrooms, making them effectively into studios. This was the configuration of the home when I
bought it six years ago, and it is fully permitted.
We felt comfortable taking out what was to us a huge loan based on the potential income, and we have
been renting four of those spaces as STVRs for about 4 years. During that time, we have always provided
designated off-street parking for every guest and have enforced occupancy limitations and quiet hours,
which has been easy because we live here, and we have never had a single complaint from our
neighbors. We have paid a huge amount in various taxes and poured resources back into the community
- everything from tens of thousands of dollars per year to housekeepers to donations of used sheets,
towels, and food directly to the unhoused community.
Now we see that we will not be allowed to rent each space to a different group, supposedly so that we
will be "good neighbors". Franky, due to the huge amount of work, reinvestment, and taxes involved with
STVR now, we were strongly considering switching to long-term for at least two of the spaces, but under
the new rules not only would we have to convert three of the four to long-term, the minimum lease for
each of those would have to be at least 180 days, effectively making it impossible for us to rent to the
overwhelming majority of the traveling medical and other professionals who our community relies on.
To add insult to injury, we are also being told that we, who did get flagged for having failed to pay proper
real property tax, will see no relief after registering as required under the new rules, while people who
were fortunate enough to not get flagged by the system yet will simply be forgiven. There is no scenario in
which this can be considered equitable governance.
None of this feels like a good-faith effort to solve the various challenges faced by our community. It feels
punitive, over-reaching, and appears to fly in the face of the promises we heard over and over that the
new rules would protect true community members and their hosted rentals.
My first request is, please grandfather our home to continue as we have been. We have tried to do
absolutely everything right and will continue to.
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Failing that, please allow rentals as short of at least 90 days to be outside the realm of short-term
vacations.
Regardless of the answers to either of the above, please either reimburse us the additional taxes we paid
because of our rental status, or have everyone who was in our situation pay. This is just basic fairness.
I apologize for the somewhat disjointed nature of this email and for any grammatical errors - I found out
at 11:33 that I had until 12 to send this, and it's 11:59 now so I'll conclude.
Thank you for the opportunity to participate.
Rocco and Yoko Landi
No Surprise Home Inspections
808-990-1125
RoccoHawaii@gmail.com
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