An 83-year-old Honolulu woman is suing the City and County of Honolulu after she was fined nearly $600,000 over an improper apartment listing.
In 2019, Sandra May needed a tenant. She had owned a home on Wilhelmina Rise since the 1970s, with a lower unit in the home available for rent by long-term tenants. But after her husband died in 2019, May, living on a fixed Social Security income, needed to make ends meet, but couldn’t find another tenant.
To broaden her search, May listed the unit on several online rental platforms. But May — who her attorney Loren Seehase said “struggles to utilize any kind of technology” — had inadvertently listed the unit as available for less than 30 days.
That same year, the City and County adopted an ordinance hiking up fines against property owners illegally hosting short-term rentals. Violators could be fined up to $10,000 for each day a violation persists.
In November 2019, May received a notice of a violation from the city regarding an online property listing. She promptly corrected the listing to show that the unit was only available for periods of 30 days or more, and believed the matter to be done.
Two years later, after the lifting of the Covid-era moratorium on evicting tenants for non-payment of rent, May again was in need of new tenants. Once again she listed the unit online, once again (in 2023) she received a notice of violation from the city, once again she corrected the listing, once again she thought the matter over.
In April 2024, it happened again. Only this time, because this was a recurring violation, the city informed May that she would incur daily $10,000 fines until the listings were corrected.
Unfortunately, May spent much of late March and April in and out of the hospital following a car crash and other medical procedures. By the time she learned of the violation and was able to correct it, 59 days had elapsed — and now she owed the city $590,000.
On the same day, the city also placed a $10,000 lien on May’s property stemming from the second violation.
“She’s like, ‘you know you’re going to put an old lady out on the street,’” Seehase told Aloha State Daily. “‘I can’t pay this, you’d have to take my home.’ And the city responded by saying ‘Well, I guess you’d better get an attorney.’ So, it was a very callous response. Poor Sandra was in tears about it, and there was no conversation, there was no negotiating, there was no listening to reason.”
May sought out attorneys, who referred her to the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm that focuses on property rights cases. Even better for May, the PLF works pro bono, Seehase said.
Seehase said the letter informing May of how much she owed the city did not mention any way to challenge the fines. Without a mechanism within ordinances to challenge the situation, Seehase said the only option is to challenge it on constitutional grounds, in federal court.
In particular, Seehase said the case could be argued to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That amendment most famously concerns “cruel and unusual punishment,” but also protects against excessive fines.
Seehase said other Eighth Amendment cases have attempted to determine whether particular fines are so ruinous they will destroy a person’s livelihood, weighed in proportion to the actual crime itself.
In this particular case, Seehase said, May’s mistake brought no harm to anybody other than herself.
“This is not the type of situation where we’ve got like a building code violation and lives are imminently in danger,” Seehase said. “This is an advertisement, so there was no harm done to anyone.”
On the other side of the coin, Seehase said the $10,000-per-day fines are the absolute maximum allowed by city ordinance, and that the city could have chosen to reduce those fines at their discretion. Because the city hit May with the $590,000 fines and the $10,000 lien on the same day, Seehase said that “it really kind of appeared that the city went on a vendetta … against poor Sandra.”
Seehase emphasized that, regardless of how the listings may have appeared online, May did not ever offer the property for periods of less than 30 days. If a person attempted to book the property for less than 30 days, May would cancel the booking.
May is seeking relief through the federal court, not monetary damages, Seehase said. Should they win, the court will determine an appropriate remedy, potentially including a partial or total reduction of the fines.
Seehase said the City and County has 21 days to respond once they have been served.
A spokesman for the Department of Planning and Permitting told ASD the department cannot comment on pending litigation.
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