Vacation Rentals Turn Kauai Neighborhoods Into Resorts
06/29/2010
Michael Levine/Civil Beat
WAINIHA — Past the idyllic surf haven of Hanalei town, Kauai's two-lane highway winds and dips before it stops abruptly at Kee Beach, the "end of the road."
Shiny new Mustangs, Sebrings and Jeeps — and other typical rental cars — are packed into the small parking lot at the base of the Kalalau trail into the Na Pali coast. They overflow into the nearby dirt parking area and Haena Beach Park a little further down the road and back up on both sides of one-lane bridges. And with increasing regularity, they are parked in front of beachfront homes.
Kauai is the smallest and least populated of the main Hawaiian Islands, but draws more than its fair share of tourists who come to see its natural beauty. According to preliminary 2009 visitor statistics, some 60,000 Kauai residents hosted an average of nearly 19,000 visitors every day. The island has a higher ratio of tourists to locals (about 0.31) than Maui (0.29), the Big Island (0.13) and Oahu (0.09).
It wasn't always this way. The Garden Isle prides itself on being the Separate Kingdom, the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands, the first to be settled by the Marquesans and the last to be conquered by Kamehameha the Great. The defiant attitude lingers in the form of bumper stickers that demand Kauaians "Keep The Country Country" and the common refrain that Kauai does not want to follow in the footsteps of Oahu and Maui, considered by locals here to be commercialized and crawling with too many tourists.
"We used to have a community here with families and kids," said 30-year Wainiha resident Caren Diamond as she walked along the beach fronting the Wainiha II Subdivision Sunday morning. She pointed out one massive multi-story vacation rental after another. They've become so numerous that the single-story faded plantation-style houses stand out. "Now our neighborhood is lost. It's all transients."
Diamond — whose name graces a 2006 Hawaii Supreme Court decision pertaining to certified shorelines — has teamed with former Kauai Planning Commission Chair Barbara Robeson to create Protect Our Neighborhood Ohana. The two have hounded the commission, Planning Department and Kauai County Council, demanding restrictions on the proliferation of transient vacation rentals.
