Having barred single-family TVRs outside visitor designation areas, what’s next for the County Council?

Bed and breakfast/”homestay” units.

At least that’s the indication from the Findings and Purpose section of the famous, or infamous, depending on your views, March 7, 2008 ordinance originally barring TVRs outside visitor designation areas. It hasn’t gotten much, if any public attention, but there the council states

This bill does not apply to a bed and breakfast unit (“Homestay”). It is the intention of the Council to address these units as a separate matter after establishing a regulatory framework for sing-family transient vacation rentals.

Kauai Bill No. 2204, Ordinance No. 864 (Mar. 7, 2008).

The Ordinance goes on to define homestay as “an owner-occupied dwelling unit in which overnight accommodations are provided to transient guests for compensation, for one hundred eighty days or less [fewer? -ed], within the same dwelling unit in which the owner or lessee resides or in a guest house.”

Since this is the first ever mention of “homestay” in the county code, I would be inclined to say that homestays at present are unregulated. However, immediately following the indented quote above from the Findings and Purpose, the ordinance states that “Homestays are presently regulated through the use permit process.

That would seem to indicate that the county expects that homestays are presently operating under use permits. Will that be the assumption for grandfathering those outside the VDA when and if they are ultimately barred there? Or, as in the TVR ordinance, will operators be given the opportunity to apply for use permits. And what about homestays on agricultural lands? Does the TVR bill provide the template for what might become a new homestay bill?