How Mayor Bissen Crashed the Maui Real Estate Market in the Name of Affordable Housing — And Why Bill 88 Is His Attempt to Manage the Fallout

June 2026 | Maui County Housing, Zoning & Real Estate

Let’s be clear about what has happened on Maui over the last two years. A sitting mayor announced a plan to eliminate legally established property rights for thousands of condo owners. The real estate market reacted immediately and decisively — not when the bill passed, but the day it was announced. Property values collapsed at a rate not seen since the depths of the 2008 mortgage crisis. Hundreds of millions of dollars in private equity evaporated. Jobs tied to the vacation rental economy were put in jeopardy. And through all of it, Mayor Richard Bissen has expressed pride — framing the destruction of property values as a victory for affordable housing.

The problem? The units being stripped of their rental rights are not being converted to affordable housing. They’re being returned to a long-term rental market that most local families still can’t afford. There is no new construction plan. No funding mechanism for genuinely affordable units. No workforce housing initiative tied to this legislation. Just the political satisfaction of having taken something away from “offshore investors” — and in the process, taking it away from thousands of small individual owners who invested legally, paid their taxes, and played by the rules for decades.

This is the story of how we got here and what Bill 88 means for the people left picking up the pieces.

The Lahaina Fire Changed Everything — And Bissen Saw His Moment

On August 8, 2023, the deadliest American wildfire in over a century swept through Lahaina, killing at least 100 people and destroying more than 2,200 structures. More than 12,000 people were displaced overnight. The housing crisis on Maui — already serious before the fire — became an emergency.

Governor Josh Green initially floated a two-year ban on vacation rentals in West Maui to free up housing for displaced residents. He ultimately stepped back from that approach as more long-term rentals became available through FEMA and private owners. But the political groundwork had been laid. The fire became the justification for something Maui’s housing advocates had wanted for years: the elimination of apartment-zoned vacation rentals.

In the spring of 2024, the Hawaii State Legislature passed SB 2919 — a bill that gave counties explicit authority to regulate “the time, place, manner, and duration” of short-term rentals, including the right to phase them out entirely. Governor Green signed it into law on May 3, 2024.

Mayor Bissen didn’t wait a day.

May 2, 2024: The Announcement That Cratered the Market

The day before Governor Green signed SB 2919 — on May 2, 2024 — Mayor Richard Bissen held a televised press conference flanked by members of the Lahaina Strong grassroots advocacy group and Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez. He announced his intention to introduce legislation that would “phase out and repeal decades-old transient vacation rentals operating in the Apartment District.”

Bissen said: “My proposed bill will revert all apartment district properties to their intended long-term residential use by removing the exception provided to those properties built or approved prior to 1989.”

The targets were the approximately 7,000 properties on what is known as the Minatoya List — a roster of apartment-zoned condominiums that had been legally permitted to operate as vacation rentals under a county legal opinion dating back decades. These properties had paid higher real property taxes specifically because of their vacation rental classification. They had collected and remitted General Excise Tax and Transient Accommodations Tax. They had operated legally and openly for thirty-plus years.

Bissen’s message to those owners: your legal rights are being phased out.

The Maui real estate market heard that message loud and clear. It didn’t wait for the bill to pass. It started pricing in the damage immediately.

The Market Didn’t Wait for a Vote

This is perhaps the most damning part of the Bissen administration’s approach — the economic harm didn’t begin when Bill 9 was signed. It began the morning of his press conference.

By December 2025, before Bill 9 even passed its final reading, the median Maui condo sales price had declined 22.8% year over year, according to data from the REALTORS® Association of Maui. The University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO) — whose study was commissioned by the Bissen administration itself — projected condo price declines of between 20 and 40 percent depending on how the policy was ultimately implemented.

To put that in perspective: you have to go back to November 2009 — the very bottom of the Great Recession — to find a period where Maui real estate sales volume was as low as it has been throughout 2025. One local real estate broker wrote plainly in his April 2026 market update: “Mayor Bissen is most likely proud of the decline of the Maui real estate market, which he has been instrumental in orchestrating, even if it is affecting the equity that all local Maui homeowners have in their properties.”

And this was before a single vacation rental had actually been shut down. The phase-out dates don’t begin until January 1, 2029 in West Maui and January 1, 2031 elsewhere. The market priced in the damage anyway — because markets react to certainty of future loss, not just present conditions.

The economic damage doesn’t stop at property values. The vacation rental industry on Maui supports thousands of jobs in cleaning, maintenance, management, marketing, and hospitality. Individual owners asked publicly and repeatedly during council hearings: “What is the plan to replace jobs? What is the plan to replace revenue? What is the plan to fund affordable housing when all these revenue streams dry up? Is there a plan at all?”

There was no satisfactory answer.

The Affordable Housing Illusion

Mayor Bissen consistently framed Bill 9 as a housing solution. The administration claimed it would return more than 6,000 units to long-term residential use, “significantly expanding Maui County’s housing inventory without the need for new construction.”

That last phrase deserves scrutiny: without the need for new construction.

That’s not a housing plan. That’s a rezoning exercise dressed up as a housing plan.

Here’s the reality: the properties on the Minatoya List are mostly oceanfront and resort-adjacent condominiums in South Maui and West Maui with market values that put them well beyond the reach of working-class Maui families. The UHERO study — again, commissioned by Bissen’s own administration — noted that most of these properties would likely be sold or converted to long-term rentals by the investors and out-of-state owners who hold them. Market-rate long-term rentals. Not affordable housing. Not workforce housing. Not units for Lahaina fire survivors.

If the goal was truly affordable housing, the policy path would have involved:

• New construction of deed-restricted affordable units funded by the economic activity these rentals generate
• Tax incentive programs to encourage long-term rentals at below-market rates
• Public-private partnerships to develop workforce housing on county-owned or underutilized land
• A defined affordability mechanism tied to the converted units

None of these exist as part of Bill 9. The bill simply eliminates TVR rights and trusts that the market will somehow produce affordable outcomes — despite every market signal pointing the opposite direction.

What Bill 9 actually accomplished — so far — is collapsing the property values of middle-class owners, many of whom used vacation rental income to offset their mortgages and costs of ownership. These are not all “offshore investors” with multiple properties, as Bissen’s rhetoric implied. Many are retirees who purchased a Maui condo as their retirement investment. Many are small Hawaii-based owners who depend on that income. The broad-brush “offshore investors” framing was politically effective and factually misleading.

The “Taking” Problem Bissen Chose to Ignore

Legal scholars and property rights attorneys raised alarm bells about Bill 9 from the start. The concern is fundamental: when a government eliminates a legally established property use, it may constitute a “taking” under the Fifth Amendment — requiring just compensation to property owners.

Bissen, a former judge, was well aware of this risk. He said so publicly. He acknowledged that legal challenges were expected and essentially dared property owners to sue. The county has already been hit with its first constitutional challenge — filed days after he signed the bill — raising exactly these vested property rights arguments.

The legal path Bissen chose — eliminating rights through amortization rather than creating new housing through construction or properly funded programs — is the path most likely to result in prolonged, expensive litigation that will cost Maui County taxpayers for years. And even if the county ultimately prevails legally, the human cost to individual property owners in the interim — lost income, collapsed values, uncertainty about their financial futures — is already real and already happening.

The politically harder but legally cleaner path would have been to fund and build new affordable housing. That requires finding money, making hard budget decisions, and doing the slow unglamorous work of actual housing development. Instead, Bissen chose the path that let him stand at a podium in front of Lahaina Strong and declare victory — while the real economic consequences landed on the people who couldn’t afford lobbyists or press conferences.

December 15, 2025: Bill 9 Passes and Is Immediately Signed

After 19 months of hearings, testimony from hundreds of residents, a commissioned economic impact study that the county struggled to find anyone willing to conduct, and a Temporary Investigative Group process that recommended significant modifications, the Maui County Council passed Bill 9 on a 5-3 vote on December 15, 2025. Mayor Bissen signed it into law the same day.

The three dissenting council members raised concerns that the bill would damage the economy and undermine tax revenue without adequate safeguards, worker protections, or a clear pathway to affordable housing conversion. Council Member Tom Cook, who introduced Bill 88, wrote publicly that his “no” vote was not opposition to addressing Maui’s housing challenges — it was opposition to doing so in a way that weakened the economy without a plan to replace what was lost.

As signed, Bill 9 phases out TVR use in apartment-zoned properties by January 1, 2029 in West Maui and January 1, 2031 in the rest of Maui County. Lawsuits have already begun.

Enter Bill 88: The Damage Control Legislation

With Bill 9 signed into law and the real estate market in freefall, the question became: what happens to the thousands of property owners who had been legally operating vacation rentals and suddenly faced an uncertain future?

Bill 88 is the answer — and it was introduced by Council Member Tom Cook, one of the three who voted against Bill 9. That context matters.

Bill 88 creates two new hotel zoning designations — H-3 (for former A-1 properties) and H-4 (for former A-2 properties) — that allow qualifying apartment-zoned properties to continue operating TVRs legally under a new classification. It’s a grandfather clause built into the zoning code, and it’s the mechanism the Temporary Investigative Group had recommended before Bill 9 even passed.

The fact that this companion legislation had to be introduced separately — after the fact, by an opponent of Bill 9 — rather than being built into the original framework is itself a significant indictment of how Bill 9 was constructed. Property owners were left in legal limbo for months while this separate legislative process worked its way through planning commissions and council committees.

What Bill 88 Does — And Who It Actually Helps

The H-3/H-4 zoning designation applies at the building or complex level. The entire parcel either qualifies or it doesn’t. But even within a qualifying building, not every unit is automatically protected. TVR rights are capped at the number of units documented as operating TVRs as of January 7, 2022 — creating a two-layer test: the building must qualify, and your specific unit must have been documented.

To qualify, a property must meet all four of these criteria — missing one disqualifies it entirely:

1. The 1989 Building Age Test — The building must have had a valid permit on or before April 20, 1989. Post-1989 buildings are categorically ineligible.
2. Proven TVR History Before September 2020 — Active, legal TVR use before September 24, 2020, provable through real property tax records or GET/TAT payment documentation. No paper trail, no protection.
3. Unit Count Freeze at January 2022 — No new TVR units can be added. The count is frozen at whatever was operating as of January 7, 2022. The final version of the bill removed the word “expanding” specifically to prevent renovation loopholes.
4. Current Tax Compliance — Active GET and TAT licenses, fully current on all taxes and fees. Any outstanding issues are an automatic disqualifier.

The List Problem: What Happens If You’re Not On It

Attached to Bill 88 as Exhibit 1 is a list of approximately 130 properties — around 7,167 units — that the Department of Planning has identified as potentially qualifying. But the bill itself warns that this list “does not grant any entitlement” and “is subject to error.”

More critically: the bill’s final amendment removed the only defined pathway for unlisted properties to make their case.

The original version of Bill 88 included a notification requirement — if your property wasn’t on the list, you could notify the Planning Department, document your TVR use, and get confirmation before the ordinance took effect. The FD1 amendment eliminated that mechanism, stating the goal was to apply criteria “fairly to all properties.” In removing it, however, the amendment left unlisted properties with no clear route to eligibility — a legal gray area that will almost certainly produce its own round of disputes and litigation.

For owners not on the list who believe they qualify, the realistic options are: approach the Planning Department directly, hire a land use attorney, challenge any denial through the Board of Variances and Appeals, or wait and see how the department interprets the bill — none of which are the clear, fair administrative process this situation demands.

The Bigger Picture: A Policy Failure With Real Human Costs

Step back and look at what has actually been accomplished.

Maui’s condo market is experiencing its worst sales environment since the bottom of the Great Recession. Property values in affected segments have declined 20 to 40 percent — a number that the county’s own economic study projected. Thousands of property owners who purchased legally, operated legally, and paid taxes dutifully are now navigating a maze of uncertain zoning, pending litigation, and a real estate market that has priced in their losses already.

And affordable housing? The units being stripped of vacation rental rights are not being converted to deed-restricted affordable housing. They are being returned to a long-term rental market that most Maui families still cannot afford. There is no new construction. No affordability mechanism. No plan.

Mayor Bissen got to stand at a podium with community advocates and declare that he took on “powerful interests.” He got a political win. The property owners, the hotel workers, the cleaning staff, the rental managers, and the local economy absorbed the cost of that win — and are still absorbing it today.

Bill 88 is an important and necessary piece of legislation. For owners who qualify, it offers a genuine lifeline. But it is, at its core, damage control — an attempt to repair some of what Bill 9 broke for some of the people it hurt. It doesn’t fix the market. It doesn’t create affordable housing. And it leaves a significant number of qualifying owners in legal limbo because of a poorly drafted amendment.

The story of Bill 9 and Bill 88 is not a story about solving Maui’s housing crisis. It’s a story about what happens when political ambition outruns policy planning — and who ends up paying the price.

What You Should Do Right Now

If your property is on the Exhibit 1 list: Get your documentation in order. Tax filings, building permits, GET/TAT records. Confirm your specific unit’s status directly with the Department of Planning. Don’t assume the list alone protects you.

If your property is not on the list but you believe it qualifies: Don’t wait. The window between now and full implementation is critical. Consult a Maui land use attorney as soon as possible.

If you are a buyer or investor: Verify zoning before you make any assumptions about rental income. The market is still digesting Bill 9, and the legal landscape will continue to evolve as lawsuits work their way through the courts.

If you are a Maui voter: Ask your elected officials — including Mayor Bissen — what the actual plan is to convert these units to genuinely affordable housing. Ask what the plan is to replace the tax revenue and jobs that Bill 9 puts at risk. Ask why this was done before the H-3 and H-4 zoning framework was in place. Those are reasonable questions that deserve real answers.

This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For guidance specific to your property, consult a licensed Hawaii land use attorney and the Maui County Department of Planning.

As of June 22, 2026 the mayor still needs to sign it into law, but it is anticipated that he will.