Aerial photos help fight Hawai'i County tax scofflaws

[KaraBenNemsi]

" I don't care if you have a med pakalolo licence or not, you don't need to be smoking it while working on plumbing."

Had that happen with my roofers! From Reefer to Roofer Madness...

[JungleWahine]

Originally Posted by KaraBenNemsi

" I don't care if you have a med pakalolo licence or not, you don't need to be smoking it while working on plumbing."

Had that happen with my roofers! From Reefer to Roofer Madness...

Wow, that's a little scary. The worst that was going to happen to the plumber would be dropping his blunt in a toilet or getting water spray to the face, thus extinguishing the blunt.
Watch the dummy get stoned, fall off the roof, then try to sue you for having a slanted roof. Hey if an old lady can sue for hot coffee, why not?

[whtviper1]

Dang Junglewahine, what a bummer you can't permit a house, get licensed workers who don't do drugs, have inspectors who don't take bribes, or get jobs more than $7.25/hr. Sounds tough out there. Hang in there!!!! Aloha.

[Fredesch]

Someone on PunaWeb asked whether the county will find their unpermitted ohana. I believe the answer is, if the county wants to find them, they will find them.

I looked at orchidland and Hawaiian Acres using bing maps birds eye view and it is easy to find properties with the following characteristics- one driveway, two houses (usually one is smaller) separated by a lawn(?) and a few trees. Sometimes both houses have a car parked by them. And generally these lots are have lots of trees and no sign of commercial ag. The worst case I found in my 10 minute session were 3 houses side by side. Someone who is familiar with ag on the big island would be quicker and find more ohanas.

If you have an unpermitted ohana and want to hide it from the county, I suggest you rip off the sides and park a tractor inside.

[OpenD]

There are two aspects to the issue of unpermitted additions... the health and safety concerns which are addressed by building codes, and the county revenues which go uncollected when tax rolls are incomplete.

The first mentions of the use of satellite and aerial photography for tax and building code enforcement that I recall, maybe a dozen years ago in Connecticut, made it seem like a no-brainer. The costs of the enforcement effort were more than self-liquidating, they actually created a significant revenue surplus to help with the overall budget crunch. And in the process they drove higher compliance with the laws, and arguably increased safety from shoddy construction.

So I've been curious why these tools weren't being used by County of Hawai'i. But this story and others have pointed out that bootstrapping such an effort wasn't realistic with the smaller incremental revenue to be expected from the properties in most question. It wasn't until a federal grant to the HPD to acquire the Pictometry system for law enforcement purposes also made it possible for County tax and planning departments to access the data that the idea became practical to implement.

But even now the emphasis is on tax collection, rather than on code enforcement, for several reasons. The first is that increasing property tax assessments is the gift that keeps on giving, obviously. But maybe just as significantly, the tax people are much more effective at enforcement than the planning and building folks are.

Let's face it, there are egregious violations of the building codes right out in plain sight all over Puna, where you don't need an overflight to see them. Some have even had multiple complaints made about them by neighbors, and some complaints have dragged on for years. But there are no teeth in the regulations, and there's no available staff to pursue legal actions, so nothing much really happens. At least not so far.

So I don't think people living in unpermitted structure in less populous areas have a lot to worry about at the moment. Although the tax bill might go up, and probably will go up sooner or later, any actions to enforce changes to the buildings seem years away at best.

[mdand3boys]

High-res photos have been used for 30+ years by mainland counties to locate unpermitted improvements. The details are incredible. They can (as another poster mentioned) even spot while farmers have laid tile in fields. They can also very easily measure the size of your unpermitted shed and send you the dreaded notice in the mail. The county I last lived in, had giant poster-sized pictures that were so detailed, it was scary.

They do not use google maps or Bing maps.

[imagtek]

People building unpermitted structures are not motivated by the tax issue at all. Most people building unpermitted structures do so for the simple reason they cannot qualify for a mortgage on a pre-built house, and cannot afford the high cost of contracting a permitted house. For many, it is buy cheap land and build your own home, or go on some form of public housing assistance. Many are too proud to do the latter. Once the house is built, I'm sure most people would be perfectly OK with having their property assessed and taxed by the county if it will simply leave them in peace otherwise.

That said, who in their right mind is going to voluntarily go to the county and inform them they are living in an unpermitted structure? At that point an increased tax bill would become the least of their worries. I have heard horror stories of the BS some of these 'inspectors' have put people through. Some of these inspectors sound like they are mean-spirited control freaks more interested in screwing people over than simply ensuring the housing stock is built to reasonable standards of durability and safety. It really is a form of tyranny.

Given the large number of unpermitted structures on the BI, my feeling is the state should certainly use the technology available to assess them from the air and tax them at the new assessed rate. If the homeowner has a problem with their assessment, they can take it up with the property tax people. Frankly, most will simply pay their new tax bill with a sigh of relief.

The idea that there should be some sort of massive eviction of poor people from their homes to satisfy bureaucratic control freaks obsessing over construction minutia, especially on remote rural properties on acreage, is simply wrong. Others may disagree. That is fine.

[hotzcatz]

You can build your own home with a permit. It is called "owner-builder" and the Building Department says you have to live in it for either three or five years after it's built before it can be sold to anyone else.

Permits have nothing to do with taxes. THE TAX DEPARTMENT TAXES UNPERMITTED BUILDINGS. They've been doing it all along, most if not all of those unpermitted buildings out there are already being taxed. That's probably one of the biggest reasons why the County doesn't really try real hard to enforce the building permit issue. There's no extra money in it for the County since the buildings are already being taxed.

Just because folks are paying taxes on it doesn't make it legal, either.

"The idea that there should be some sort of massive eviction of poor people from their homes to satisfy bureaucratic control freaks obsessing over construction minutia, especially on remote rural properties on acreage, is simply wrong."

Well, the proper word might be "incorrect" instead of "wrong". It is rather rare for someone to be evicted due to lack of building permit. If you don't have a permit, then no electricity after awhile, no insurance, no mortgage. But actual eviction because of a lack of permit? That is rare and usually because of some sort of hazardous construction method.

If you want to worry about something, worry about the new idea of taxing agricultural lands at the residential tax rate if there's no ag happening on the land. That's what's gonna put the squeeze on a lot of folks who just built a house on ag land and don't do any ag at all.