Everyone involved in Hawaii’s housing conversation should be able to agree on something important: stable housing matters. Residents benefit when they can put down roots, children can remain in their schools, and families do not have to wonder unexpectedly whether they will need to move. Rental housing providers benefit from stability too. Turnover is expensive, vacancies create uncertainty, and most housing providers would much rather have a successful long term resident than repeatedly start over. That shared goal is why the growing conversation about Good Cause Eviction deserves a closer look.
Good Cause, sometimes called Just Cause, generally changes the traditional relationship between the expiration of a rental agreement and a housing provider’s ability to regain possession of the property. Rather than allowing a tenancy to end after the required notice, the housing provider must establish one of the reasons permitted by law. Those reasons can include nonpayment of rent, significant lease violations, owner occupancy, renovation, sale, or removal of the property from the rental market, depending on how a particular law is written.
The idea is intended to address a legitimate concern. Tenant advocates argue that residents who are paying their rent and following their rental agreements should not face arbitrary displacement simply because a housing provider chooses not to renew a tenancy. New York’s Good Cause law, for example, now restricts nonrenewals for many covered properties and establishes specific permissible grounds for ending those tenancies. It also places restrictions on rent increases in certain circumstances.
Hawaii has considered similar legislation. HB 466, introduced in 2025 and carried over into the 2026 Regular Session, proposed restricting termination of certain tenancies without cause. It also proposed specific circumstances for no fault termination and, in some situations, relocation assistance or waiver of the resident’s final month’s rent. HRHPA is generally against good cause or just cause evictions because these policies interfere with legitimate contracts between parties. Additionally, the circumstances surrounding rental agreement termination for small, independent housing providers vary wildly, and good cause/just cause policies may disproportionately affect them and their properties. That being said, we agree that the discussion cannot end with whether an eviction has a legally recognized cause. We also need to ask what happens long before anyone considers terminating a tenancy.
Many of Hawaii’s rental homes are not operated by large professional management companies or owned by institutions with compliance departments and attorneys. They are owned by individuals and families who may own one house or condominium. These small independent housing providers need to understand screening requirements, rental agreements, security deposits, notices, repairs, fair housing obligations, reasonable accommodations, inspections and the many other responsibilities that come with providing someone’s home.
When housing providers do not understand those responsibilities, small problems can become large ones. A poorly written rental agreement can create confusion or a repair request handled badly can damage the relationship between a resident and housing provider. Missed communication about unpaid rent can become a court filing when an earlier conversation might have produced another solution.
Education changes that dynamic. Research on eviction prevention increasingly recognizes the role rental housing providers can play before a dispute reaches the courthouse. The Urban Institute has identified transparent rental agreements, clear communication throughout a tenancy, early connections to assistance and flexible problem solving as practices that can strengthen resident stability. The same research recognizes that preventing eviction can benefit both sides of the rental relationship.
If our goal is fewer unnecessary displacements, we should be asking how we create successful tenancies from the beginning. A housing provider who understands Hawaii’s Landlord Tenant Code is less likely to make an unlawful decision. A provider who understands notice requirements is less likely to create an avoidable dispute. A provider who knows where to send a resident experiencing temporary financial trouble has another option before filing for possession.
Education does not eliminate the need for tenant protections, and it does not mean every tenancy can continue indefinitely. There will always be circumstances in which a rental agreement must end. The question is whether our housing policy concentrates primarily on regulating the final stage of a failed tenancy or also invests in preventing that tenancy from failing in the first place.
Good Cause policies also raise legitimate questions for small housing providers. What happens when an owner has lost confidence in a rental relationship but cannot fit the circumstances neatly into a statutory category? How much documentation will be required? Will an owner need legal counsel simply to recover possession when a rental agreement expires? Could additional risk cause some individual owners to become more cautious about entering the rental market? Those questions should not be dismissed as opposition to tenants. They are questions about how people respond to risk when deciding whether to offer privately owned housing for rent.
The research on Good Cause laws is still developing. Preliminary research from the University of Minnesota found no evidence that enactment reduced housing production in the states it examined. A separate 2026 empirical study examining holdover evictions in Albany found that housing already subject to Good Cause type restrictions did not necessarily experience a lower proportion of holdover eviction filings. Neither finding settles the broader policy debate. They remind us that housing stability is complicated and that legislation should be evaluated by what actually happens after implementation.
Hawaii Rental Housing Providers Alliance believes there is an important opportunity to approach housing stability earlier. Teach housing providers the law before they unintentionally violate it. Give them practical tools for managing difficult situations before those situations escalate. Connect residents and housing providers with mediation and community resources while there is still an opportunity to preserve the tenancy.
A successful rental relationship should not be measured simply by whether an eviction was prevented. Success is a resident who has a safe and stable home and a housing provider who feels confident continuing to provide that home. If Hawaii wants more housing stability, informed and educated rental housing providers should be part of the solution.
