Featured How to take care of your Hawaiian home, pets and plants when traveling to the mainland or other countries?
How To Take Care of Your Place, Pets, Plants While Travelling
Many of us who love to travel have a home that we care about, pets we love as if they were children and also plants that we nurture. All these things enhance our homes, but prove difficult to take care of while we’re away for an extended period.
Here are some tips on how to take care of your beloved 3Ps:
First, let’s assume that it’s not convenient to ask your friends or family to visit your home regularly enough to care for its ongoing needs while you’re away. Fortunately, there are now many solutions for your all too common situations.
If you are a home owner in Hawaii and want to use our services, please email: contact@hawaii.bio
Home Owner register ( it’s free) Hawaii Bio Inc
If you have the opportunity to be a “House Sitters” in Hawaii islands please fill out the form.
Be sure to add your original ID (passport or driver license).
Ready to get started ? House Sitters
Airbnb
If you have no pets, you can have somebody stay at your place and even earn money for it! And believe me, every host is comfortable with watering your plants, it’s only a little favor to ask for. If you can’t arrange meeting your guests in person, either leave a key somewhere safe and secret or ask a neighbor/friend to hand the keys over to them.
In case you’ve never heard of Airbnb, you can read about it here: Airbnb: What, Why, How? (more from a guest’s perspective)
—Airbnb in Hawaii: What’s Legal and What’s Not?
House-sitting
House-sitting comes in handy for when you’ve got pets. Be it cats, dogs, horses, chickens.. it doesn’t matter, there are always people who are comfortable caring for your pets and would like the opportunity to visit your city or village especially if the cost of accommodation is basically free. Some owners ask their house-sitters to pay the utilities bill, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much, it’s more hassle than worth. It’s common to ask for basic maintenance of the place (pool, garden) and to keep it clean. And of course your pets should be of the type that is comfortable with strangers.
Hawaii Bio Inc — We provide all the online tools for home owners and house/pet sitters to find each other from around the globe (or around the corner).
— Free to home owners
Need someone to look after your house or pets while you’re away? Home owners join for free.
Find a house sitter today. Need someone to mind your house and animals while you are away? Or perhaps you’re just sick of paying more for Fluffy’s holiday than your own. Join the club. Better still, join this club!
Home Owners Register now (it’s free)
Ready to get started ? House Sitters
Save money! Put your cheque book away – the service is free and the majority of our house sitters work for free too (they may also pay for their share of utility bills, depending on what arrangements you have made with them). Save a bundle on pet care fees while you’re at it prevent your home owner’s insurance premium from going through the roof.
Find exactly who you want
-Find your perfect person by searching our database of available nanny ads. We will send you a contact list upon your request.
- Create your own list of wanted nannies, and nannies will contact you through the empty “comment” form under your post or by email that you provided.
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One of the biggest problems in Hawaii is the homeless taking over your empty home!
Hawaii: One Of The Worst Homelessness Epidemics In The U.S
Homeowners in Hawaii are complaining that homeless people are breaking into empty homes and living there. Bringing unsanitary conditions into the house. There are also cases of theft of a personal car from a garage and theft of money and credit cards.
“The state has a huge homeless problem. In fact, there are homeless people living nearby, and they come into the neighborhoods every day, every day of the year and steal from them.”
Crime has increased in the Kahala area, especially house break-ins.
Homelessness has been a severe social issue in Hawaii for a very long time. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 report, the state has the second-highest rate of homelessness in the nation. 44.9 in every 10,000 Hawaiians were homeless as of 2023, when the national average was 17 people per 10,000. Homelessness in Hawaii results from both systemic and social barriers. Poverty, unemployment, rising rent, domestic violence, legal problems, drug abuse, and mental and physical illness are all significant factors.
Legal Problems
Prisoners awaiting trial often end up losing employment and housing, too. They have no choice but to settle for temporary shelters or drop-in centers.
Drug Abuse and Alcoholism
Drug addicts often face expulsion from their homes. Their problems with addiction make them unbearable for their family members. These individuals spend a lot on drugs, which leaves little behind for rent or mortgage. They will usually refuse to seek help with housing, despite their homelessness. Thus, their addiction problems continue without a roof over their heads.
Mental and Physical Illnesses
Victims of mental and physical illnesses face homelessness, too. Their families either can’t bear them or can’t afford treatment for them. Thus, such individuals end up living on the streets as well.
Tools galore
Membership has its privileges! As a member, you get your own password-protected account area. From here you can instantly create and update your sitter wanted listing, set up email alerts…the list goes on.
General hacks and tricks
Generally speaking, you should take some standard precautionary measures like turning off water supply and all power outlets. If you’ll be away for a considerable amount of time you should have someone collect your mail to prevent your mailbox from filling up too much. Also timed power outlets can turn lamps/TV on for a few hours a day to help make it look like the apartment is not empty.
If you’re travelling for less than 2 weeks, your plants should be able to survive quite easily. For a vegetable / herb garden that you might have outside on a balcony or a windowsill, you can use self-watering pots. For indoor plants, you can move them from their sunny spots into an area with less sun and water them well before your departure.
With the boom of social media, burglars are becoming more refined and can learn about your being away by your excited announcement of going for a vacation. If you have the need to let your circle of friends know, at least keep your profile accessible only to friends.
Do you have any other home care tips to add? If so, I’d love to hear about them!
Write your opinion and your recommendations in the comments. If you are a home owner in Hawaii and want to use our services, please email: conact@hawaii.bio
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What is the reason for the slow and expensive process of building houses in Hawaii?
There is something very telling in the fact that it’s taken almost half a year to see anything come from the governor’s emergency proclamation aimed at speeding up homebuilding in Hawaii.
The governor’s order, announced in July 2023, established a 36-member Beyond Barriers Working Group to guide the hastening of housing construction, but it wasn’t until late December that it was able to approve its first application.
This highlights the challenges faced by the governor’s attempt to remove government barriers to housing construction and the severity of the problem.
The first application to be approved by the working group was a request to waive the state-mandated school impact fee for a project in downtown Honolulu involving the conversion of an office building into 52 affordable rental apartments.
The request was submitted by the project builder about two weeks before the working group’s Dec. 20 meeting, and had the support of the state Department of Education.
But the seemingly minor request actually has called attention to a major issue.
According to Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter Andrew Gomes: “A couple members of the working group, which had difficulty establishing a quorum for the recent meeting, expressed frustration over spending what ended up being nearly 30 minutes assessing the school fee waiver request instead of five or 10 minutes.”
Sterling Higa, executive director of Housing Hawaii’s Future and a member of the Beyond Barriers Working Group, told Gomes there is no good reason to charge downtown projects a school impact fee at all.
“The schools in this area have shrinking student populations,” he said, “so whatever impact fee would be paid by the residents of this building isn’t actually going to help them get new schools in the area.”
To make matters worse, the state Office of the Auditor has sharply criticized the DOE’s administration of impact fees, even questioning whether they violate Hawaii’s constitutional requirement that there be a “nexus” between the proposed new units and the need for more classroom capacity.
Not surprisingly, some housing advocates say the Legislature should abolish or reform school impact fees, since they have not proven to be particularly useful in addressing education needs.
They also can add up to be quite costly. The downtown area has a school impact fee of $3,864 per unit, which would have amounted to $200,928 for the 52-unit project that sought the exemption.
My hope is that the 2024 Legislature will take a hard look at school impact fees and align them with our modern realities.
More important, we must remember that the slow, expensive process of constructing homes in Hawaii isn’t caused by just one regulation or fee — it’s due to an endless web of regulations, mandates, fees, approvals and permitting delays that we have been forced to endure for many decades.
Further proving my point: Gomes reported that this downtown conversion project has been proceeding under a 2019 city law intended to create 500 affordable rental units a year through financial incentives and regulation and fee waivers. Yet, as of November 2023, only two projects have been completed under the program.
But don’t let that get you down. Resolving Hawaii’s housing crisis is possible, and there are numerous simple fixes available to lawmakers now that could make a big difference at no cost to taxpayers.
You can learn about many of those possible fixes in a new report from the Grassroot Institute Hawaii titled “How to facilitate more homebuilding in Hawaii,” which you can read or download for free at the Grassroot website.
Reforming school impact fees would remove one brick from the wall that stands between us and more affordable housing. Our goal must be to remove many more so we can resolve Hawaii’s housing crisis once and for all.
E hana kākou! (Let’s work together!)
Keli’i Akina, Ph.D.
President / CEO
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
The publication was taken from the official newsletter Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
Existing short-term Hawaii rentals may remain in operation, judge rules
The ordinance that made levies heavy fines on short-term rentals in Honolulu remains in effect, however, for any new rentals beginning operations after the ordinance was put in place.
by Candace Cheung, Court House News, December 21, 2023
HONOLULU — Despite a 2022 ordinance that made short-term rentals illegal, a federal judge ruled Thursday that members of a group of property owners running these rentals can continue renting as they have done for years.
U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson sided with a group of short-term rental owners in his ruling, granting summary judgment to them and allowing existing short-term rentals to continue operations and advertisement.
The Hawaii Legal Short-term Rental Alliance first contested the April 2022 passing of Ordinance 22-7 as it would redefine “short-term” from a minimum of 30 days to 90 days for residential properties — a change that meant any rental period from 30 to 89 days would be prohibited and subject to thousands of dollars in fines.
Watson had granted the group a temporary injunction allowing for them to operate under the 30 day minimum just before the ordinance was set to go into effect on October 2022, but his new ruling grants them a permanent injunction, though it doesn’t apply to any short-term rentals that didn’t exist before the ordinance was put in place.
The alliance — made up of existing property owners and managers, some of whom had been operating these short-term rentals since the establishment of the city’s first rental restrictions in the 1980s — said in their June 2022 complaint that this new ordinance would violate their grandfathered rights. They also said it would result in significant financial losses and that eliminating their rentals meant eliminating necessary visitors like traveling contractors and health care workers.
The alliance had argued that the ordinance violates a state zoning law restricting counties from passing zoning ordinances that conflict with usages prior to the ordinance.
Watson emphasized that the law is “plain and unambiguous” as to new ordinances.
“There is nothing to suggest that HRS § 46-4(a) does not mean exactly what it says — that a county is barred from passing any law that would eliminate existing lawful residential uses,” he wrote.
Though the city had argued that the ordinance should be considered a rent control regulation rather than a zoning regulation, Watson dismisses the idea, writing that “the city drafted and passed Ordinance 22-7 as part of the Land Use Ordinance of the City and County of Honolulu. Though the placement of the ordinance is not, by itself, determinative, its location and characterization belie the city’s current attempts to call it something it is not and never was—even according to the city.”
Watson did refuse, however, to do away with the ordinance completely, keeping it in place for short-term rentals outside of the scope of the alliance.
Honolulu City Council originally passed the ordinance to address the proliferation of these short-term rentals— often owned and operated by out-of-state landlords — that detractors say drive up housing costs for already struggling residents and disrupt local way of life.
Short-term rentals have received renewed attention as thousands displaced by the Maui wildfires face possible housing insecurity again as the short-term market has refused to become long-term housing, prompting Governor Josh Green to threaten the “nuclear option” on short-term rentals, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.
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