A proposed new Hawaii County registry could help crack down on squatters staying on vacant properties.
Squatters are a perennial problem in neighborhoods across Hawaii Island, with vacant homes often being turned into squalid drug dens or hazardous firetraps after months or years of illegal occupation. But despite the problem’s impact on public health, it is one that county authorities have very limited recourse against.
When people illegally occupy private property, police need to confirm whether they are, indeed, on that property illegally before they can take actions to remove them. In order to get that confirmation, they need to contact the property’s owners.
But those owners often have no contact information beyond a mailing address — frequently off-island — which may not elicit any response at all.
Puna Councilwoman Ashley Kierkiewicz will propose a solution today at the County Council’s Policy Committee on Health, Safety and Well-Being. Bill 110, she said, will establish a registry of contact information — mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers — of property owners or their agents to allow county agencies to notify them of the state of their properties.
According to the measure, property owners would be required to submit their information to the county or face a fine of up to $100. Owners residing outside of the county would need to designate an agent who lives or maintains a permanent office on the island and submit the agent’s information instead.
Once that information is obtained, the county will attempt to contact a property owner if it becomes aware of “any potential or existing impacts to any property stemming from factors such as vandalism, immediate hazards (or) any emergency or disaster.”
Keita Jo, assistant administrator for the county Real Property Tax Division, said roughly 40% of the mailing addresses in the division’s records are located off the island — 12% on neighbor islands, 26% on the mainland and 2% in other countries.
However, Jo noted that mailing addresses do not necessarily establish where a given owner resides, and some of those mailing addresses could apply to multiple parcels, or other parcels could have multiple associated addresses, a level of ambiguity that makes contacting owners all the harder.
“Often these owners are banks or foreign owners, and it can be tough to get them to respond,” Kierkiewicz said. “Some folks haven’t been able to reach these owners for years.”
Kierkiewicz said there will be an outreach campaign to inform owners about the registry if the bill is passed, such as including a flyer in the next real property tax assessment in March.
“This is a more measured approach than just passing a bill requiring owners to file for vacant homesor install security measures,” Kierkiewicz said. “This lets us assess the situation and figure out where to go from there.”
While the measure will help the county respond to squatters, Kierkiewicz said it also could be useful in the event of disasters.
For example, she said, the county needed to reach out to property owners in the wake of the 2018 Kilauea eruption to let them know how to apply for federal disaster aid, a task which was made more difficult by the fact that the only contact information for many of those owners was a mailing address buried under fresh lava.
Kierkiewicz emphasized the registry will not be publicly accessible and will only be available to county agencies.
The council committee will discuss the measure at 3 p.m. today.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
