Farm dwellings as vacation rentals: Judge overturns county ban on short-term rentals in ag district
heleninwonderlustmyid June 7, 2022Extra family vacation rentals may perhaps be popping up on farmland, centered on a current ruling by a Kona choose.
The long term of Hawaii County’s authority to prohibit shorter-expression trip rentals in agriculture districts hangs in the balance, soon after the 3rd Circuit Courtroom choose overturned a state Land Use Commission ruling upholding the county’s correct to do so.
The commission filed a see of appeal Thursday with the Intermediate Courtroom of Appeals and designs to focus on its appeal at a Wednesday assembly in Honolulu and by using Zoom. Data about taking part and publishing public testimony is readily available at https://luc.hawaii.gov/wp-articles/uploads/2022/05/Agenda-for-JUNE-8-2022.pdf .
Circuit Judge Wendy DeWeese, in a May 2 buy, denied a petition by the county and state to uphold the county STVR rules while granting a petition by a team of household trusts — dubbed the “Rosehill Petition” — who very own land in the agriculture district and want to pursue small-phrase rentals.
State law requires residences to be farm dwellings and have a relationship to agriculture if they are constructed on land classified below the point out process as becoming in the agricultural district. The farm dwelling need took impact June 4, 1976, primary the county Scheduling Office to make it possible for nonconforming use permits only for STVRs on lots designed ahead of that day.
Farm dwellings are defined in condition legislation as solitary-relatives dwellings positioned on and utilized in relationship with a farm or the place agricultural exercise supplies income to the family members occupying the dwelling. Attorneys for the county and the land use commission argued that profits from holiday vacation rentals wasn’t effectively agricultural activity and consequently disallowed.
The choose agreed with the petitioners, represented by Honolulu lawyer Cal Chipchase, that state land use law doesn’t specify the allowable period of leases of farm dwellings.
The 20 Kailua-Kona, Waimea and Captain Cook dinner landowners contend that the county’s ban on the rentals of a lot less than 30 days in agriculture districts was in mistake and an abuse of the commission’s discretion. In addition, they billed, the county’s zoning ordinance was an unconstitutional taking of private assets without just compensation.
DeWeese agreed with the 1st two contentions but said the takings argument was not correctly ahead of the fee and for that reason wasn’t viewed as by the court.
“As neither the basic language of (state land use legislation) regulated any of the three certain factual components of a limited-term holiday rental as of June 4, 1976, the County’s interpretation of Condition legislation, as contemplated in the language of the Ordinance, is incorrect,” DeWeese said in her order. “The simple language of the clause does not discuss to how prolonged the loved ones is occupying the dwelling. In fact, no provision of HRS Chapter 205 controlled the period for which a farm dwelling may perhaps be rented.”
The final ruling will have far-reaching ramifications. Some 1.2 million acres on Hawaii Island — just about 50 percent of the land mass — is categorised as agriculture. Additional than 1,500 of the county’s around 4,000 STVR programs all through the 1st yr of the software in 2019 had been for nonconforming use certificates, mostly for agricultural land.
About 50 owners of residence in the agriculture district have appealed the county’s denial of their short-expression family vacation rental and nonconforming use programs to the county Board of Appeals. All those appeals have been on hold though the Rosehill scenario proceeds by means of the lawful system.
