Oʻahu voters will not be weighing in on a hotly debated empty-homes tax this fall after the Honolulu Charter Commission voted to keep the proposal off the ballot. In an 8-5 decision, the commission fell one crucial vote short of the nine-vote supermajority required to place the question on the November ballot, effectively punting the issue back to the City Council with a tight clock ticking.
Commissioners who voted no argued that the charter is the wrong place to hardwire such a complicated tax program, while others zeroed in on the practical headaches of enforcing it. Commissioner Diane Kawauchi said bluntly that "this is a matter that rests with the City Council," a sentiment that did not sit well with housing advocates who wanted a direct public vote. Housing Now! supporter Ellen Godbey Carson said she was disappointed that residents would not have a chance to decide for themselves, as reported by Honolulu Civil Beat.
How the council could still act
Despite the commission's decision, the idea is not entirely dead. City Council Chair Tommy Waters still has the power to revive Bill 46, the underlying legislation that would set up the empty-homes tax. He could push it to a final vote or even call a special session, but any move would have to beat looming procedural deadlines.
Bill 46, introduced in 2024, spells out a new supplemental real-property tax category for dwelling units deemed vacant. It also outlines who would be exempt, what penalties owners could face, and gives the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services authority to adopt detailed rules. Those mechanics are laid out in Honolulu City Council records.
What the study found
Before the political drama heated up, the city hired Ernst & Young to test whether the tax could actually work. Early findings presented in 2025 suggested the program might generate roughly $30 million to $55 million a year under certain tax rate scenarios, with annual administrative costs projected in the low millions.
The consultants also estimated that, depending on how exemptions and rates were structured, anything from the high hundreds to a couple thousand empty homes could trickle back onto the market over about a decade. Those figures appeared in coverage of the firm's initial presentation by Civil Beat.
Pushback and legal risk
Critics have been warning from the start that the tax might be a bureaucratic nightmare. Tracking vacancy in multi-family buildings can get messy, they argued, especially when you cannot rely on simple stand-ins like single-unit water meters. Opponents also raised alarms about extra paperwork for kupuna and for families who own modest second homes that sit empty part of the year.
The legal backdrop is not exactly comforting for supporters either. In 2024, a Superior Court judge tossed out San Francisco's own vacancy tax after property owners sued, a ruling that Honolulu skeptics repeatedly brought up during Charter Commission debate. At the same time, neighborhood boards from Downtown-Chinatown to Kailua have passed resolutions urging the council to move ahead with some form of empty-homes tax, keeping the grassroots drumbeat going even as the legal questions swirl. Local roundups and archives have tracked both the study's cancellation and the ongoing fight over the proposal, including coverage from All Hawaii News, SFist and Pacific Watch.
What happens next
For now, the big question is political, not technical. Will Waters roll the dice and schedule a final council vote before this version of Bill 46 expires, or will supporters have to retreat, rewrite and gear up for another bruising round of hearings later on?
The Charter Commission's decision also lands in the middle of a broader reshuffling of what voters will see on the November ballot, as other potential charter amendments jockey for space. For a deeper look at that timeline and the other proposals still in play, see reporting from Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
