Honolulu Civil Beat reports this exclusive "Obama's Winter White House an Illegal Rental" (complete CB stories are usually behind a paywall, but they've posted this one in its entirety). According to the Civil Beat story:
President Barack Obama's two-week stay at his Hawaii Winter White House was illegal under a long-standing Honolulu ban on short-term rentals.Obama did not break the law by staying at the house, but the property owner who rented his house to the Obamas does not have the permit that would allow a stay of fewer than 30 days.
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"They were here for about two weeks, approximately, but I don't want to get into the contractual issues," Weinberg said. "They don't have to rent it for 30 days but you have to leave a 30-day window. I had to make sure that during that period, either 15 days after them or 15 days before them, I can't rent it. And that was the case with (the Obamas)."
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Weinberg's explanation is one that's commonly offered, but that still represents an illegal renting practice. Since the 1980s, Honolulu's land-use ordinance has required anyone renting property for a period of "less than 30 days" to obtain a permit to do so. The law was crafted to discourage a spike in short-term vacation rentals, which had residents in many communities complaining of wild parties and other neighborhood disruptions. The city hasn't issued any new permits in two decades. For years, the question of whether the city should again issue permits has generated controversy.
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“When someone takes the 30-or-more-days contract but ‘leaves early,’ and rents it for 15 days, they can’t do that," Friedel told Civil Beat at the time. “It’s not legal. And they’re doing it all the time. They’re lying through their teeth, and it's what makes enforcement so difficult."
This issue has hit the press before, as noted in the San Francisco Chronicle story ("Obamas staying at Kailua Beach on vacation"), and in this piece from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin ("Obama's rental home in Kailua is legal, city says").
The short-term rental (aka "transient vacation rental") issue is not quite so simple, and may not lend itself to obvious answers. For example, despite the City now apparently asserting that the rental to the Obamas is "illegal," in the Star-Bulletin article, the then-Deputy Director (now Director) of the Department of Planning and Permitting asserted otherwise:
As it turns out, Obama's beachfront rental is legal, according to the city.Obama's rental is "a typical, albeit luxurious, single-family home in a residential zoning district," said David Tanoue, deputy director for the city Department of Planning and Permitting, which oversees rental units.
"This particular residence has never been cited by the DPP for illegal transient vacation unit rentals," Tanoue said.
And despite a change of ownership of the property earlier this year, it does not appear that the situation has changed all that much from that recounted in the article.
So what is the City's position? Here's about as "official" as you can get, a Position Statement filed by the City in the Zoning Board of Appeals in a 2007 case, which states:
Petitioners properly obtained an agreement from [the tenant] to occupy the dwelling for the minimum thirty (30) days, thus complying with the [Land Use Ordinance]. However, the Director's interpretation of the TVU restriction is that no other persons may occupy the dwelling within the same thirty (30) days including family and friends regardless of the [tenant]'s leaving before the thirty (30) days is completed.See page 3 of the Position Statement appended to the ZBA's written order (page 8 of the pdf). The ZBA upheld the Director's policy, concluding that when the property owners' families occupied the houses after the tenants abandoned them, the property owners violated the restriction on rentals less than thirty days term. A few pages later, the Director clarified further:
The Director interprets the LUO to preclude the occupancy of a residential dwelling for less than thirty days when the property owner is receiving some sort of compensation. Because Petitioners choose to receive compensation from others for occupancy of their property, they must comply with the minimum thirty days. Thus, the LUO allows a land owner to rent their property for thirty (30) day blocks, and theoretically, may rent their property to separate individuals or party twelve times per year. The Director further interprets the LUO as not requiring that those renting for thirty (30) days be required to actually occupy the dwelling for the full thirty (30) days. Because there is no way of forcing a person or party to stay the full thirty (30) days, the Director's interpretation is that no other person or party occupy the property for that same thirty day.
See page 6 of the Position Statement.
