Maui ponders its future as leaders consider restricting vacation rentals loved by tourists
The mayor of Maui County in Hawaii wants to stop owners of thousands of vacation properties from renting to visitors
HONOLULU — Alicia Humiston bought her condo in Lahaina after she visited Maui and fell for its rainforests, lava fields and the whales that gather offshore. She travels there about three times a year and rents out her unit for short periods when she's not in Hawaii.
“Maui was my dream place,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
But now Maui's mayor wants to make it impossible for Humiston and thousands of other condo owners to rent their properties to tourists. Instead, he wants them rented long-term to Maui locals to address a chronic housing shortage that reached a new crisis point after last August's deadly wildfire burned the homes of 12,000 residents.
The mayor's proposal faces multiple legislative and bureaucratic hurdles, starting Tuesday with a Maui Planning Commission meeting. Yet it has inflamed an already-heated debate about the future of one of the world's best-known travel destinations: Will Maui continue to cater to tourists, who power the local economy? Or will it curb tourism to address persistent complaints that visitors are overwhelming the island's beaches and roads and making housing unaffordable?
About one-third of Maui's visitors use vacation rentals. They tend to cost less than hotels and are easy to reserve on websites like Airbnb and VRBO. Many have kitchens, so families can prepare their own food.
They have also become a source of strife, particularly after last year's conflagration in Lahaina — the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century. The fire tore through the historic town, killing at least 101 people and leaving nothing
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