The owner of a home in Milolii Beach Lots is suing Hawaii County, claiming its Electronic Processing and Information Center system — known as EPIC — has trapped him in a permitting Catch-22 that only will allow him to demolish his house, not to remodel or live in it.
Specifically named in the lawsuit is the Board of Appeals and Public Works Director Stephen Pause.
Shazaad Ausman is a principal of 88-129 KAI LLC, the plaintiff, a limited liability corporation that uses the name of the home’s address, 88-129 Kai Ave.
County tax records indicate that Ausman purchased the 336-square-foot beachfront cottage — which was granted a building permit in 1987 and completed in 1989 — on May 6, 2021, for $275,000.
The original building permit, issued on Dec. 10, 1987, is listed as expired, while an alterations permit issued to the previous homeowner on Jan. 8, 2020 — just prior to the novel coronavirus pandemic — appears to be on hold, with its status listed as “incomplete visit.”
“When I bought it, they sold it to me with permits to remodel the home and bring the remodeled parts to code. It was kitchen, bathroom, solar, deck, stairs, electrical, plumbing, catchment — that kind of stuff,” he said.
“And when I bought it, I did all the due diligence. I called the county to check all the permits. Everything was OK in 2021. Fast forward, I started the work in 2022, because in 2021, everything was kind of, like, locked. I called the county for inspection in March. They never came. They’d call to push it. They’d say, we’ll come in a week or two, and then, they’d never show up.”
Ausman said a building inspector “eventually showed up” in June 2022.
“He looked at me, and he said, ‘Your permit has expired,’” Ausman recalled. “I said, ‘How come? It’s supposed to expire in 2025.’ He said to me, ‘No, it expired yesterday, June 1, 2022.’ They said the day the EPIC system went live, it expired.
“I showed him the permit, and he said, ‘No, not the remodeling permit. The building permit doesn’t have a final (inspection),” he continued. “I said, ‘That’s not possible. If the building permit doesn’t have a final, you would not have issued me a remodeling permit.’
“And in October of 2022, I got a letter from the Department of Public Works saying that the entire house is unpermitted because they cannot find the records of a filed permit, of a final inspection for the permit of ’87. It says I have to pull all new permits, bring the house to current code, lift it and move it out of the (shoreline management area) and all that — basically, asking me to tear the house down.
“And I’m like, ‘No, I can’t do that. It’s just not possible.’”
Ausman then went to the county’s Board of Appeals where, in his words, “I lost.”
“At the Board of Appeals, they said that the director, Pause had been right in canceling all my permits, because my permits had been issued in error,” he explained.
“There’s nothing I can do. I can’t move the house. I can’t bring it to current code. And they don’t want me to live in the house. They have not offered any reasonable accommodations, nothing. They’ve just been like, ‘no’ the entire way, except, move your house, pull your permits — which I’m not going to get, because I don’t have an SMA permit.”
The alterations permit, which was issued to the previous homeowner — Walter Fullerton of Washington state — also was revoked, in an Oct. 6, 2022, letter from DPW to the current homeowners’ real estate attorney.
Kailua-Kona attorney Patrick Wong filed an agency appeal lawsuit on behalf of Ausman in October 2023, seeking immediate reinstatement of the original building permit, stating that his clients’ good-faith expenditures of money and reliance on the building permit’s validity “clearly outweigh the irregularity in DPW’s permitting process dating back some 33 years ago.”
“DPW cannot point to any evidence to substantiate its contention that (the 1987 building permit) expired without completion or final inspection,” the lawsuit states. “DPW’s own records indicate that (the permit’s) expiration date was ‘not available’ … . Meanwhile, DPW issued several notices claiming to extend ‘permit application cancellation amnesty’ to the general public.”
The Office of Corporation Counsel, the county’s civil attorneys, said Thursday it “does not comment on pending litigation.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.