HONOLULU (KHON2) — With the legislative session underway, one of the bills that is making headlines proposes to outlaw foreigners from purchasing property in Hawaii under certain circumstances.
Governor Josh Green calls the bill “unconstitutional”.
“Everyone knows it’s unconstitutional from the standpoint of what real legislators do,” Gov. Green told Wake Up 2Day Monday morning.
“Those kinds of bills get floated because they’re very popular to talk about but the federal constitution doesn’t allow us to do that and that makes it difficult,” said Green.
To solve Hawaii’s affordable crisis, Green is looking at adding inventory to the market by cracking down on illegal short-term vacation rentals.
Green told us:
“I am going to do all that I can to transition short-term rentals to long-term rentals for our local people and that means taxing the heck out of them if people aren’t owners here and on property. We have 52% of our short-term rentals owned by mainland guys, I want them to divest so that local people can either rent or buy those properties. Because right now people are gouging others, they’re getting 400% of their earnings on short-term rentals mostly when they’re in the illegal kind of space as opposed to just regular rent for local families, so that’s the approach that thoughtful and cogent legislatures are taking. I appreciate big ideas, I always have, but we have to do things that are allowed by the constitution.”