Kamohai and Tristyn Kalama owe the City and County of Honolulu $40,000 in fines for two illegal short-term rentals. One is a waterfront property in Kāneʻohe, listed at $1,000 a night with a three-night minimum.
After Civil Beat called the property owner for comment, the listing was quietly changed to a 30-day minimum. The fines remain unpaid.
Readers new to the Kalamas may need a brief introduction. Alongside their rental properties, they run three businesses. The first is fixing and flipping: they buy old houses, renovate them, and sell them. The second is a television show on HGTV, "Renovation Aloha," which shows the work. The third is a learning group called Flip Tribe, where they teach their methods through workshops, mentorship, and conferences.
Kamohai handles the numbers — purchase analysis and contractor management. Tristyn handles the design. They are husband and wife, and their "Renovation Aloha" episodes make for compelling viewing.
The Kalamas say they create jobs for locals, support the skilled trades, and keep families housed. There is truth in this. Old houses need renovating. Their work creates real jobs for contractors and tradespeople. Most homeowners cannot manage routine upkeep on their own house. That is part of why these properties fall into disrepair. Renovating a home requires financing, contractor management, and a tolerance for risk. It is real work.
There is a difference between running a business and teaching others how to run one. Competence is enough for the first. The second asks for mastery, the kind that earns the right to teach.
The Le family bought one of the show’s first houses — a Kalihi home with a tree growing through the roof. The renovation, as televised, cost $425,000. It involved major structural work. One house was jacked up and joined to a second to create a single-level home. The permits filed with the city only covered some windows and a carport, with a value of $80,000.
After moving in, the Le family noticed mold in their son’s room. When they ripped off the drywall, they found cracks in the concrete siding wide enough for daylight to pass through.
Civil Beat reporter Christina Jedra found the same pattern on every property in the show’s first season: Construction began before a permit was issued. The fines totaled about $20,000 across four projects. The show claimed $1.3 million in profits. Season 2 continued the pattern of unpermitted work.
Some business models start work before permits issue and treat the resulting fines as a budget line. The people running these businesses may not be ready to teach others. The fines, in that arrangement, are not overhead, they are the cost of not yet knowing the trade.
The Kalamas, in this, are part of something larger. A popular television show and a few hundred thousand Instagram followers do not, by themselves, demonstrate competence. They demonstrate celebrity. We have begun to confuse the two. A whole industry has grown up around the confusion. The Kalamas sell three-day workshops at $3,000 a seat. They also sell membership in a mentorship community, promising students their first flip in six months.
There used to be a clearer line between apprentice and master. You learned a trade by serving under someone who had practiced it. Mastery was slow and quiet, and it was the only kind of mastery there was. We have replaced it, in much of life, with a short course — three days, six months, your first flip. It promises the result without the formation.
The appetite is common to all of us. We prefer to be slightly more than we are, slightly sooner — and we prefer not to wait. The writer of Proverbs saw the pattern long ago: wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.
The Kalamas do not put their faith forward on air the way Chip and Joanna Gaines do. But they do mention it often on their social media. Their company is named Stand Firm Developments. The phrase is one of Paul’s recurring themes, a call to endure, to hold one’s ground.
A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, the Proverbs say. The question is not whether renovating old homes has value. It does. The question is whether the people most visible doing the work are the right people to teach it — and what the rest of us are buying when we sign up for the course.
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Author Sterling Higa can be reached at hello@sterlinghiga.com.
