Zoning on Maui - Trying to Make Sense of It

Zoning on Maui seems to be like the weather. You can’t really do much about it, and everyone has an opinion. Zoning underpins Maui real estate, affecting what one can and can’t do with a given parcel of land.

I’m no expert on real estate, but here’s my stab at MSU (making stuff up)*, because this is my letter Z post for the A to Z Challenge.

Basic zoning on Maui includes:

Agricultural lots

Residential lots, including categories R1, R2, R3
Rural - usually "rural half acre"
Conservation land

Resort zoning

Business and commercial zoning

The size of one’s residential lot affects whether one can build an ohana, a secondary and smaller house, or the size of the ohana (often 600 – 800 square feet). Where I live, “out in the jungle,” some people ignore building and zoning codes the way pedestrians disregard jaywalking signs. Often, they get away with it, especially the more difficult it is to reach their house.

True Story: DH and I considered renting a place that required parking on a side road, and hiking down a hill across a muddy field – at least a ¼ of a mile from the car. He says it was more like a mile. This could make stocking up at Costco rather difficult, and no building inspector is eager to make that trek.

The problem is when the house goes up for sale, and has “illegal dwellings” or permitting violations, or when a neighbor reports your illegal construction to the county. It’s like pre-WWII Germany out here – hostile neighbors reporting on you…

One legal “work-around” is that Maui’s building codes do NOT include the outdoor deck in the size of an ohana. One can have a TINY building with a HUGE roofed deck and enjoy Maui style indoor/outdoor living and still have running water and electricity. One friend showed me his 600 square foot ohana with his even bigger covered deck. It’s deck, what were you thinking?

Tiny House, Big Deck.
 If you're into Tiny Houses, check out Tiny House Hawaii.

Agricultural zoning is also kind of different from what one might expect. Agricultural land can be a zone of contention. Ha, ha, trying to keep myself amused at 1 in the morning.

Maui farms are really tiny, minuscule, compared to the size of farms on the mainland. A few people might have 5 or 10 acres or more, but there are many ag lots that are merely 2 acres. (English purists, take note, I am not going to spell out the number 2.)

2 acres for a working farm! Well, not exactly. Of the agricultural 2 acre lots, most of them look indistinguishable from big residential lots, and are even located on the same street, or intermixed with residential lots.

So, what’s my point? A 2-acre ag lot is like a regular house lot with a really BIG yard. Neighbors are farther away, and there’s more room and privacy.These 2 acre ag lots are expensive and highly desired by investors and well-heeled newcomers or oldtimers to the island. They are NOT affordable for most true farmers. Ideally, they would be used for sustainable agriculture on Maui, but they are mostly “residential lots with BIG yards” with a little bit of agriculture to satisfy the county.

People do a “farm plan,” plant a couple of coconut trees or bananas and put a “fruit stand” in front of their house. Maybe they borrow a couple of goats for the county inspection, but maybe that’s just a story I heard. Some people go farther and raise chickens, goats, and plant vegetables on their ag lots and have a hobby farm. On Maui, we call these 2-acre ag lots “gentleman farms.” Gentlemen don’t want to get Maui’s red dirt under their fingernails. I found an interesting article, written in the 90s I think, about the policy shift to create 2-acre ag lots.

Typical Maui Farm Stand, probably in front of a 2 acre ag lot. 

Now it makes sense. A real estate friend told me that houses on ag land are taxed at a higher rate than houses on residential land. The ag land itself is taxed at a lower rate, but not the houses. The county realizes that most people on ag lots are not really farmers, just people who can afford to buy the land.

Having said that, I know of some true farmers who really grow food and farm their 2-acre ag lot. Maybe it is possible to produce $100,000 of food on a 2-acre lot in a year, but one has to have some experience as a farmer, know how to market farm products, and be able to run a business. Ironically, the true farmers on 2-acre ag lots are usually supplementing their income – by working in real estate, teaching golf, or doing some other non-farm vocation. Clever farmers could try to operate farm tours, so even if they don’t make much money by farming, they are making money through eco-tourism or ag tourism.

One solution is to create affordable farm land trusts on Maui, which would allow people who truly want to farm, to be able to lease farm land inexpensively and even to buy farm land eventually, like a “rent-to-own” program. There is also a fledgling program for apprentice farmers on Maui.

By the way, this is a hot development issue that surfaced this week. The lots look pretty big, so I presume they are zoned as ag:

NORTHSHORE OPEN SPACE LOVERS UNITE!Friday April 24th was the deadline for Maui County Council Members to add funding...
Posted by Erik Blair on Monday, April 27, 2015

The other touchy area with zoning, especially with agricultural land, is that the County is afraid that people will turn an extra house into a vacation rental. This is also the reason why ag zoning limits the number of homes or buildings. For a true working farm, it would be ideal to have extra houses for farm workers to live on the farm. But if you’re a vacation rental owner, hmmm, it’d be nice to have extra houses to rent to tourists. Since Maui has a housing shortage due to various factors and probably a lack of planning, the vacation rental issue is really touchy. The County doesn’t want to open a floodgate to vacation rentals on ag land.

The other crazy side of agricultural zoning, and this may be total MSU “making stuff up” is that one can let farm animals do anything they want on one’s agricultural land, which may be next door to you (since ag lots are mixed in with residential lots). So, if your neighbors’ pigs are oinking at you, or peeing on the fence line and it stinks, or their 18 roosters are crowing all morning and night (cause yeah, roosters don’t just crow at 6 am), you can’t legally make your neighbor get rid of the pigs or roosters or duct tape their oinkers or beaks. Apparently, court cases were tried, and ruled in favor of the ag land owner.

So…zoning on Maui, does it make sense? Maybe not, but I’m having a good time envisioning someone chasing a rooster with duct tape. 

Here's another link on land and zoning issues on Maui by Maui Tomorrow.

Just checking to see if anyone is still reading. Can you read what it says?
This spray painted graffiti was spotted in the resort zone of Wailea.

(By the way, while I have your attention, two friends are running interesting projects:

The Aloha Project: Words, Music and Compassion

44 Children Are Filming Their Message From the Earth)

Phew! Glad to be done with this year’s A to Z Challenge. (Except I still have some "minion" duties to finish for my A-Z team.)

Here's a shortcut to the archives for the A to Z Challenge and other blog posts. 

The theme of this year’s A to Z Challenge is Living on Maui: A Beginner’s Survival Guide. While I can’t include everything in only 26 short blog posts, this is my foolish attempt.

If you are participating in the A to Z Challenge, please use either Disqus or Facebook to comment below. Please include your link so that I can visit you back, but it might be as late as May!

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*MSU - Making Stuff Up. Borrowing this phrase from a teacher on Hawaiian plant medicine, David Leonard.