It’s increasingly unlikely that Mayor Richard Bissen’s plan to convert more than 7,000 short-term rentals into long-term housing on Maui will be implemented this year.
As proposed, the exemptions that allow many apartment-zoned units on the island to operate as vacation rentals would expire July 1 for 2,200 units in West Maui, and on Jan. 1 for the remaining 5,000 such units, mostly located in South Maui.
But that can’t happen without approval by the Maui County Council, which has yet to take the matter up for a vote.
Bissen put his bold plan forward last May, in large part responding to the need to quickly create additional housing for some of the 12,000 people displaced by the August 2023 wildfires but also to increase inventory on an island with a longstanding housing crisis…