Plumbing rules update among signs of progress on Maui

from Grassroot Institute

The enactment of a measure aimed at modernizing Maui County’s outdated plumbing rules is among signs that Maui County lawmakers are taking the county’s housing crisis seriously.

Joining H. Hawaii Media radio host Johnny Miro this past Sunday, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii policy researcher Jonathan Helton said other signs include the Maui County Council considering multiple housing-related bills, including one aimed specifically at making it easier for older buildings to be rebuilt after the 2023 wildfires.

Bill 105, which Helton recently wrote about in The Maui News, would help churches and businesses in particular rebuild by waiving the county’s nonconformity rule for several years, rather than the current one year, so that structures can be rebuilt as they were before the fires rather than according to modern zoning regulations. 

Helton said Grassroot is also a big proponent of Bill 103, which would legalize more homes per lot. 

“If we allow people to maybe put one or two backyard cottages behind their home, if they want to, they could use them as rentals,” he said.

Then there’s Bill 104, which would allow homes to have more than one kitchen. 

“We want to allow people to have flexible housing options,” Helton said. “Maybe you’ve got a big house, you want to remodel some of it, put it in an extra kitchen, and then rent out that part of the house to someone. The bill would allow you to do that.”

Helton, who co-wrote Grassroot’s 2024 report “How fixes to Maui’s water-fixture policy could ease its housing crisis,” said the plumbing update is the result of the Council unanimously approving and Mayor Richard Bissen signing Bill 146. 

The measure, which Helton also wrote about in Maui Now, directs the Maui Department of Water Supply to update the county’s regulations for water-using appliances for the first time since 1995. 

Helton said that after the new rules take effect, anyone looking to put in an extra bathroom in their house or maybe build a backyard cottage will be subject to rules “that are a little bit more friendly toward actually building some of this much-needed housing.”

TRANSCRIPT

2-9-25 Jonathan Helton with host Johnny Miro on the H. Hawaii Media radio network

Johnny Miro: Great to have you along on a Sunday morning once again. Time for the public access programming on our H. Hawaii Media radio stations on Kauai, Oahu and on Maui. 

I’m Johnny Miro. Joining me once again, a member of the Grassroot Institute team, Jonathan Helton. He’s the policy researcher over there. And topic today, dealing with Maui County as they go through the process of trying to make things work post 8-8-23, as far as the wildfires, the devastation that caused that area, Lahaina, and portions of the Kula area.

So they have struggled with providing housing for years. The wildfires, Jonathan, have made it — the shortage is even more severe. There is hope though, that things will change, and a handful of bills of the Maui County Council could make a difference for people struggling to afford rent or even a down payment. 

So once again, a researcher at Grassroot Institute of Hawaii joins me this morning to discuss this matter, and he also put an editorial at mauinow.com. Very insightful editorial on that. 

Jonathan Helton joining us. Good morning to you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Helton: Good morning, Johnny. It’s always a pleasure to be here.

Miro: All right. Couple of articles published recently about Maui’s housing situation. So let’s start with that one about the plumbing rules. People don’t really think about this, but these are — this is very important. Can you give the listeners some background?

Helton: Typically, when we think about housing rules, you know, we think about, oh, you know, where houses are allowed to be built, how tall they’re allowed to be, we don’t think about the plumbing. But, you know, it turns out that plumbing rules are really important, and especially on Maui, where they hadn’t updated their plumbing rules since the 1990s. And so, they did update them. And so, I’ll talk a little bit about that story.

So, on Maui, anytime you want to hook up to the county water supply, you’re going to have to get a water meter from the water department there. And that’s pretty normal, but in Maui, there’s a special rule that if you get a county water meter, you have to abide by something called the fixture-unit limit. 

And so what’s the fixture unit limit? In a nutshell, the fixture unit limit says you can have only so many water using appliances — like sinks, toilets, the like — hooked up to your water meter.

And so, the way that they calculate the number of sinks and toilets and showers, pot fillers, etc. that you can connect to your water meter is through a fixture-unit count. And the fixture-unit count, it is a really old methodology that was created in the 1940s. And basically it says, “Hey, if you’ve got a sink, you know, we estimate this is maybe the probability that it will be on at the same time as the shower and the same time as the toilet, and so based on some of this math and some charts, you get a limit.”

So, you know, OK, right off the bat that is a little bit confusing, which was one of the challenges with this policy. 

But one of the bigger issues with the policy is that, as I mentioned, it hadn’t been updated since the 1990s. And so, water-using appliances have gotten a lot more efficient since the 1990s. 

You know, you think about, maybe if you’ve gotten a new toilet, that new toilet is going to use a lot less water when it flushes than an older one. And that’s just, that’s based on, you know, some, maybe some efficiency standards and just the fact that people want to use less water in their appliances. You know, that’s good for utility bills for sure.

Miro: So those are a couple of problems. Any other problems with this fixture-unit policy besides sounding to be outdated?

Helton: Yeah. You know, the other problem, again, as I mentioned is the fixture units are based on the number of water-using appliances. It’s not based on the amount of water that your house uses. 

So there was somebody who was talking about this issue in Maui County, and they pointed out, you know, it doesn’t matter how many toilets you have in your house, you only have one butt.

So, you know, you might have four different bathrooms, but if there’s only two people living there, the odds that, you know, you’re going to have all of those toilets being used at the same time and that they’re going to strain the water meter — which is the whole idea of having a limit is to protect the water meter from being strained or you experiencing low water pressure — you know, that’s, you know, if you only have two people, that’s probably not going to happen — even if you have a lot of toilets or a lot of sinks in your house at the same time, because they’re not going to be all using water at the same time.

Miro: You would think I had to come to a realization, yeah, that’s the case. So what’s the news on this bill, Jonathan, at the Maui County Council.

Helton: So good news is the Maui County Council decided, you know what, it’s time for an update on this fixture-unit count. And so back in January, they passed Bill 146. The mayor has signed it, so that’s law. 

So what Bill 146 did is essentially it said, “Hey, water department, we want you to come up with a new calculation for, you know, assessing fees to people for water usage. And it needs to be based on estimated daily water usage, not this fixture-unit limit.” 

So the Department of Water Supply has this year to come up with a new calculation. And then, you know, anyone who’s looking to put in an extra bathroom on their house, maybe they’re looking to build a backyard cottage, an ADU and they’re going to need to run water to that, they’re going to be, you know, subject to rules that are a little bit more friendly toward actually building some of this much-needed housing.

Miro: All right. Policy researcher with Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, Jonathan Helton, joining us this morning. 

Jonathan, let’s move to your other article about rebuilding in Lahaina. You wrote about a rule that’s making rebuilding harder. But they were trying to make things easier.

Helton: Yes. This was an article I had placed in Maui News. They were nice enough to publish that, try to share it with the community. And in this article, I told a story, and I’ll share it with anyone who’s listening to this program. 

So while the church is a very historic church in Lahaina, it was severely damaged in the wildfires, and the congregation there is planning to rebuild. But, you know, there’s a couple of rules that are going to make rebuilding for Lahaina’s churches and temples a little bit harder, and in that article, I talk about one, and that rule relates to non-conformity. 

So what’s a non-conformity? A non-conformity is a fancy word for if your building or the event that you are hosting in your building doesn’t match up with the zoning code. 

And so where this comes into play with the church, with Waiola Church, is its zoning. The church is very old. It’s been there for hundreds of years, you know, different buildings have been there for hundreds of years. But it’s on a parcel of land that is zoned for residential use. And in the Maui County code, you cannot have a church on a parcel zoned for residential use. But because the church was already there, it would be considered non-conforming, a non-conforming use. It doesn’t match the current zoning code.

Miro: Yeah.

Helton: Now the problem is that when the church was destroyed by the wildfire, there’s a rule in the Maui County code, again, that says if you had a non-conforming use that has ceased to be a use for one year, you can’t continue with doing that. 

And so in the example of the church, you know, obviously it burned down, so people weren’t able to meet there and use it as a church for over a year. And so for the church to rebuild, they would need to go to the planning commission, and they would need to apply for what’s called a special use permit in order for the permission to rebuild their church and then actually use it as a place for meeting. 

And, you know, they’re not the only ones who are in this situation. The Lahaina Jodo Mission is another example. Same situation where the mission was severely damaged by the fires and it’s in a residential area, residentially zoned land. So they’re going to have to go to the planning commission to get this permit. 

And, you know, in normal times, going to the planning commission and getting a special use permit can take quite a while. 

There’s, you know, there’s applications at the planning commission now for special use permits that have been pending for months because it takes a while to get all of your documents together, you have to get a public hearing scheduled, you have to go through the public hearing, and if someone objects to your use permit, that’s going to make it take even longer.

So I guess I say all that to say this non-conformity rule is going to make rebuilding in Lahaina a lot harder. And it’s not just for the churches and temples. But I used that to tell the story of [how] this rule might make it harder for anyone who had an older building to rebuild.

Miro: Because they have to have used it within a one-year span, correct? Not just ..

Helton: Yes.

Miro: OK. Boy. So what are the prospects, Jonathan, for changing this law?

Helton: I’m very thankful that there’s a good chance that this is going to get waived. 

So the Maui County Council has introduced a bill — for anyone who’s interested, that’s Bill 105 — and they actually had a hearing on it last week. They were, I think they decided not to vote on it, but they postponed it to get some more information. So we’re hopeful it will come up for a hearing again this week.

But what Bill 105 would do is it would say, “Hey, if your building had a non-conformity, so if it was a non-conforming use like with the example of the church, or if it was a non-conforming structure” — and I’ll give you an example of a non-conforming structure — it would be maybe you’ve got a business, business has been there for 100 years, 75 years, and maybe it doesn’t have the number of parking spaces that the county code requires now. Right?

So if that building were destroyed and you wanted to rebuild, the county would say, “Hey, that structure was nonconforming, so you’re gonna have to rebuild it with more parking spaces.” So that’s another example. 

But what Bill 105 would do is it would basically, it would waive those rules for people looking to rebuild. And that’s, you know, that’s the ideal situation. I think it would waive them for four or five years just to give people time to get some of their other approvals in order and get all the financing together and actually get their businesses in their homes and their churches rebuilt. 

So we’re very hopeful that this bill will pass.

Miro: All right. Jonathan, are there any other housing-related bills at the Maui County Council that listeners should know about this time?

Helton: Yes, I will mention two real quickly. 

At first, there is Bill 103, and what it would do is it would allow more homes per lot. And so at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii where I work, we’ve talked a lot about why we need to legalize more homes per lot. 

And the simple answer is: Hawaii’s in a housing crisis, and if we allow people to maybe put one or two backyard cottages behind their home, if they want to, they could use them as rentals for maybe someone who’s looking to move back from the mainland or someone who just, you know, can’t afford rent maybe somewhere else, so they need a place to stay. We’re a big proponent of this.

The second bill is Bill 104, and it would allow, it would basically allow more than one kitchen in your home. 

So typically Maui County rules say you can have one kitchen in your home. This bill would say, “Well, you’d be allowed to have a smaller kitchen in your home as well.” 

And the idea is the same where, you know, we want to allow people to have flexible housing options. Maybe you’ve got a big house, you want to remodel some of it, put it in an extra kitchen, and then rent out that part of the house to someone, the bill would allow you to do that.

Miro: All right. So can you remind me and the listeners once again, just those bills, which ones they are, you’re just referred to?

Helton: Yes. So Bill 105 …

Miro: OK.

Helton: That would address the non-conformity issue.

Miro: OK.

Helton: For people rebuilding after the fires.

Miro: And the …

Helton: Bill 104 would allow more homes per lot.

Miro: OK.

Helton: And Bill — or excuse me, that was Bill 103 that will allow more homes per lot, and then Bill 104 will allow more kitchens per home.

Miro: All right. Copy that. So get on it if you wanna investigate more on that. He gave you the bills that he was referring to. 

What about the bills at the state Legislature, Jonathan, any big housing reforms there?

Helton: Oh, yes. The state Legislature, it’s in full swing. So we’ve probably testified on more than two dozen things already. Lots of housing reforms that lawmakers are considering. 

You know, it’s too early to tell which one will become law and which one won’t. But two really important things that I will highlight. Number one is historic preservation laws. So there’s probably half a dozen bills that would try to speed up the historic preservation review process. 

You know, if you talk to someone who’s looking to build, often their permit will get, you know, it will get referred to the State Historic Preservation Division, and it might sit there for months before the division, you know, issues a recommendation on the permit. And, you know, that, in those months, maybe your cost of materials has gone up. 

So the bills that are looking to address that. As I said, there’s probably six or seven of them, so too soon to tell which one will pass, if any of them. But that’s important.

The second issue that I think is really important this legislative session is impact fees, and specifically school impact fees. 

So if you’re building a home in certain parts of the state, the Department of Education will ask you to pay a fee of — it could be $3,000, could be $5,000, depending on where you live — to allegedly, the fees would go to help build more schools. 

The problem is that the Department of Education has never used any of this money from its school impact fees to actually build a school. So it’s been collecting money for years but hasn’t ever spent any of it. 

So are, you know, some of these bills would simply repeal these impact fees and then move all of the money the Department of Education has to a place where it could actually use it to be spent on schools. 

And Grassroot is looking to publish some research on that in the, you know, in the next couple of weeks, maybe the next month. So be on the lookout for our paper on impact fees.

Miro: So you did the research and found out that that money that is being charged isn’t being utilized for schools, the Department of Education or?

Helton: I can’t take credit for that. That was actually the state auditor who did that research.

Miro: State auditor. OK. OK. OK.

Helton: Yeah.

Miro: Yeah, I haven’t heard too much about that. Wow. That’s surprising. 

All right, by the way, the initial story we were talking about was for the plumbing and the fixture-unit policy, and you can find that story or the op-ed by Jonathan at Maui Now, “Maui Plumbing Rules headed for Much Needed Update.” 

And if you want to get a little bit more into the specifics on that, his op-ed is there at mauinow.com still, came out on January 29th. Still very, very relevant. Only a week old. “Maui Plumbing Rules Headed for Much Needed Update” — the op-ed by policy researcher at Grassroot Institute, Jonathan Helton. 

And finally, anything else to add to this interesting discussion here, Jonathan?

Helton: Yeah, I think what I would add is that if anybody is interested in housing reform, you know, get in touch. You can find our research at grassrootinstitute.org. You can contact me directly, which my email is J, the letter J, H-E-L-T-O-N @grassrootinstitute.org. 

Now, I would love to talk about housing. As I said, we’ve testified on a lot of bills. You know, I mentioned historic preservation, I mentioned impact fees. There’s a whole lot more at the state Legislature that they’re talking about. 

And even at the county level, you know, there’s some other proposals that they’re considering. A lot of stuff to follow. And so if you’re interested in this, I’d love to hear from you.

Miro: Very informative as usual, Jonathan Helton. Thanks for joining us, and enjoy the rest of your Sunday. We’ll be talking to you soon. And a great team member of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Jonathan, thanks so much.

Helton: Yeah, thanks for having me on. And wish everyone who’s listening a great day.