Federal Judge Blocks Honolulu’s 90-Day Minimum Rental Rule (October 2022)

From the record. This is a look back at October 2022. The desk wrote it on 11 October 2026 from sources published at the time; Stay Gazette opened in July 2026 and did not report this as it happened.

On 13 October 2022, ten days before it was due to take effect, a federal judge in Honolulu blocked a central part of the city's new short-term rental law: the rule raising the minimum stay in homes outside resort districts from 30 days to 90. U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson granted a preliminary injunction to the Hawaii Legal Short-Term Rental Alliance, whose members are owners and property managers renting homes for 30 to 89 days.

The order barred the City and County of Honolulu and its Department of Planning and Permitting from enforcing Ordinance 22-7 insofar as it prohibited home rentals of 30 to 89 days, or the advertising of them, in any district on Oahu. The ordinance carried fines of up to $10,000 per day. The rest of the ordinance stood, and a week later the mayor said the city would enforce it.

What Ordinance 22-7 changed

Honolulu ordinances of 1980, 1986 and 1989 confined home rentals shorter than 30 days to resort zones and to some apartment zones near them. About 800 homes outside resort districts kept the right to rent for shorter stays under certificates from that period. Because the old rules covered only stays under 30 days, the court noted, renting a home for 30 days or longer had been legal in any Honolulu zoning district, and the city had acknowledged as much in signed agreements in 2016 and 2019.

Bill 41 was introduced on 19 October 2021, passed on 13 April 2022 after public hearings and signed on 26 April as Ordinance 22-7, to take effect on 23 October. It changed the definition of a transient vacation unit to a home rental of less than 90 days. Owners already renting for 30 to 89 days got a 180-day phase-out and nothing more. It also barred advertising a home outside a resort district with daily or less than three-month rental rates. Rentals in resort districts stayed lawful under a new annual registration with an initial fee of $1,000.

The council's stated findings were that short-term rentals disrupt residential neighborhoods and raise the price of housing by taking homes out of the for-sale and long-term rental markets. Civil Beat reported that as many as 10,000 short-term vacation rentals were operating on Oahu at any given time by the late 2010s.

Why the judge blocked it

The first ground was state law. Hawaii counties get their zoning power from Hawaii Revised Statutes section 46-4(a), which says no zoning ordinance shall prohibit the continued lawful use of a building for the purpose it serves when the ordinance takes effect. A county may phase out an existing use only in commercial, industrial, resort and apartment zoned areas, and never where a building is used for residential (single-family or duplex) or agricultural purposes. The judge read that as a plain bar on a law that ends a previously lawful use, and found Ordinance 22-7 likely violated it.

The city argued that 30 to 89 day rentals were commercial uses, closer to resorts and hotels, with frequent turnover and speculative investment behind them. The court disagreed. “Whether a use is residential depends much more on what is being done at a residence than for how long,” Watson wrote. He listed who uses those rentals as housing on Oahu, among them residents between homes, off-island families traveling for medical care, traveling healthcare workers and military families in transition.

The second ground was constitutional. The court held that 30 to 89 day rentals outside resort districts were a vested property right, and that an ordinance outlawing them within 180 days, with no process to compensate or accommodate owners, likely amounted to a taking. The city said the owners' injuries were purely economic. The judge answered that the loss of a constitutional right cannot be repaired afterward with damages, and cited the alliance's evidence that many owners would have to sell their homes.

On the balance of interests, the city asked the court to honor the results of the democratic process. “It is no harm for the City to be compelled to comply with the constitutions and statutes that bestow and restrict its power,” Watson answered. The injunction, he added, would hold only until the city set up a process to protect existing uses, as Honolulu did in 1986 and as Kauai and Hawaii counties did after their own restrictions in 2008 and 2019. He declined in advance to stay the order during any emergency appeal.

How many rentals were at stake

The alliance filed its complaint on 6 June 2022 and asked for the injunction on 7 July. After a hearing on 7 September the court sent both sides to a magistrate judge to explore a settlement. In those talks the alliance reported about 1,000 properties on Oahu operating as established 30 to 89 day rentals, 525 to 550 of them owned or managed by its members. No negotiated resolution was reached before the effective date.

Gregory Kugle, the alliance's attorney, told Civil Beat the talks had covered a plan to grandfather properties already doing 30-day rentals and apply the 90-day minimum to new ones. He set his estimate of about 1,000 qualifying properties against the 14,000 short-term rentals the mayor had cited.

What the city did next

Mayor Rick Blangiardi answered on 20 October. He said the city would use new technology and a bigger team of inspectors against rentals of fewer than 30 days in residential neighborhoods and would impose the $10,000-per-day fines. He said the city would keep fighting for the 90-day minimum and was conferring with its lawyers. “We’re prepared to take this as far as we have to take it,” he said, as Civil Beat reported. That week, backers of the 90-day minimum filed papers to intervene in the lawsuit.

The city began enforcing the rest of the ordinance on 24 October and opened its registration website the same day, Avalara reported. Kugle said the timing could leave owners of condo-hotel units unregistered and facing fines if registration ran slowly, and that it could be hard to tell whether a guest had rented for fewer than 30 days.

The Gazette Verdict, looking back

Honolulu lost this round because it tried to end a lawful use without grandfathering it, and the judge was right to stop it. The city had acknowledged that a 30-day rental was legal, twice in signed agreements. Ordinance 22-7 then gave established rentals, about 1,000 by the alliance's count, 180 days, followed by fines of up to $10,000 per day. The state statute that hands the city its zoning power, as the judge read it, forbids that in residential districts. Another path was on the table: certificates for existing rentals, as Honolulu issued in the 1980s, with the 90-day rule for everyone new. By the account of the alliance's attorney, that plan was discussed in settlement talks. The talks failed, and the city got an injunction instead. The lesson for a host anywhere: when a rule changes, the paperwork showing that a rental was lawful and operating before the change is worth real money.

The other side

The council did not act on a whim. It passed Bill 41 after public hearings, on findings that short-term rentals raise housing costs and disrupt neighborhoods, and a coalition of neighborhood, environmental and labor groups backed it. The 30-day line had been hard to hold: as many as 10,000 vacation rentals operated where roughly 800 were grandfathered, and the owners' own attorney said it could be hard to tell whether a guest had stayed fewer than 30 days. A 90-day minimum is harder to get around with a monthly lease. On that view one federal judge, before any trial, set aside an elected council's answer to a housing problem to protect about 1,000 rentals.

What it meant for hosts

For an owner on Oahu in late October 2022, what the order meant depended on the rental.

Established 30 to 89 day rentals outside resort districts could keep operating and advertising while the injunction stood. It was a preliminary order, and the mayor said the city would keep fighting for the 90-day rule.
Rentals of fewer than 30 days outside resort districts stayed illegal unless the home held one of the roughly 800 certificates from the 1980s. Fines ran up to $10,000 per day, plus the money received from the rental while they applied.
Owners in resort districts had to register on the city's new website, which opened on 24 October. The ordinance set an initial registration fee of $1,000.
Taxes stayed the host's job. Avalara noted that Airbnb and Vrbo were not allowed to collect for hosts in Hawaii, so operators had to register, file and pay the transient accommodations tax and the general excise tax themselves.

Since then

On 21 December 2023 the same court granted the alliance summary judgment on its state-law claim and made the injunction permanent for 30 to 89 day rentals that lawfully existed when the ordinance took effect. It declined to strike down the rest of Ordinance 22-7.

Sources

U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii (via govinfo.gov), Hawaii Legal Short-Term Rental Alliance v. City and County of Honolulu, Order Granting Plaintiff’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction (13 October 2022).
Courthouse News Service, Hawaii judge halts ban on short-term rentals (14 October 2022).
Honolulu Civil Beat, What Happens Now That A Judge Has Blocked Honolulu’s New Short-Term Rental Law? (18 October 2022).
Honolulu Civil Beat, Mayor Vows To Enforce New Law Against Short-Term Rentals (20 October 2022).
Avalara MyLodgeTax, Judge rules against part of new Honolulu short-term rental regulations (25 October 2022).
U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii (via govinfo.gov), Hawaii Legal Short-Term Rental Alliance v. City and County of Honolulu, Order (1) Granting in Part and Denying in Part Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment; and (2) Denying as Moot Defendants’ Motions for Summary Judgment (21 December 2023).

Federal Judge Blocks Honolulu’s 90-Day Minimum Rental Rule