The kooky chick who dropped the F-bombin last week's Kauai County Council meeting was apparently trying to scam people with a fake long-term rental after county planners shut down her illegal Anahola homestay.
An alert on Craigslist warned prospective tenants:
DO NOT PAY A $2500.- DEPOSIT ON THE LISTING WITH THE ABOVE TITLE, THE PERSON WHO PLACED THE AD FOR THIS PROPERTY IS NOT THE OWNER AND HAS NO PERMISSION TO RENT THIS HOME. IT IS CURRENTLY IN ESCROW AND BEING SOLD.
So who is behind the Treehouse? None other than Sean — aka "Crazy Suzy” Brown, aka “the fuck girl at the B&B hearing,” as one reader described her — Tesla. Perhaps this will help the Council understand why Sean/Suzy was evicted, and it's not because of those big bad meanies at the planning department.
On the wegoround.com website — it boasts some 1,701 vacation rentals on Kauai, though just 455 legal TVR certificates have been issued — Sean identifies herself as the “very cool hostess” of the Treehouse in a long-winded spiel that asserts:
Sometimes people stay elsewhere, but they hang with me : -) because I take them to cool places and local happenings. I also have some local friends who offer private hikes that aren't open to the public and private surf lessons in uncrowded places, and the list goes on and on...
No matter what, I assure you that staying with me on Kauai will be a most memorable vacation for you and your loved one or guests.
No doubt. Especially if you get on her bad side. As the reader who tipped me noted:
After being shut down by planning , this piece of shit person is now trying to fleece long term renters. She's continuing on her scammer path and is a great example of why the county cannot let the visitor industry be run by individual in-house rentals.
Indeed.
I recall Sue Kanoho, executive director of the Kauai Visitors Bureau, telling me once that most of the complaints she gets involve TVRs, an accommodation over which she – and apparently the county — has no control.
Which is why we've got people offering vacation rentals like this in Wainiha:
CAMPING ECO DREAM UNIT - GREAT VIEWS, PRIVACY, FREE WIFI, MICRO-CELL, ELECTRICITY & WATER AVAILABLE. MUST TAKE CARE OF YOUR WASTE! ONE PERSON ONLY. AVAILABLE FROM 06/15 TO 08/15 @ $ 540 PER MONTH.
Sigh.
Returning to Sue, though she was pummeled a bit in comments recently, I've had several people tell me that she is one of the few influential people on the island, and perhaps the only person in the visitor industry, who is openly talking about carrying capacity and setting limits.
But ya know, that is a message that so many folks in government and tourism just do not want to hear. As one commenter so astutely noted:
Tourism, including TVRs, B&Bs, hotels, timeshares, airlines, car rentals, guidebooks, restaurants, helicopter companies, tour boats, and on and on, is our economic oxy. Real estate, which depends on tourism to feed its demand, is our economic meth. We're hooked and we'll keep taking more and more until we OD.
And sadly, there's still no residential treatment center on-island.
Before her meltdown, Sean/Suzy/Scammer told the Council:
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And I implore you to look at how the County of San Francisco is handling this on a bigger scale.
This caught my eye, because I recently saw San Francisco being touted as a model for controlling vacation rentals in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Business Insider estimates that 23 percent of San Francisco's available rentals were removed from the longterm rental market by owners using Airbnb. In some neighborhoods, 40 percent of the homes are occupied by Airbnb tourists on any given day. In response, San Francisco may limit property owners to just 60 days of short term rentals per year, which would reduce their profitability and encourage some landlords to rent the units longterm to city residents.
That's not a bad approach – especially compared to Kauai, where folks get a vacation rental permit for life, so long as they send in the annual registration.
But again, enforcement and political will are the key. And on Kauai, both are so frequently lacking.