Shahzaad Ausman was born on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar, and he fell in love with Hawaii Island because it reminded him of home.
Speaking with Joe Kent of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii during an October episode of “Hawaii Together” broadcast on ThinkTech Hawaii, Ausman said his dream to own property on Hawaii Island became a reality in 2021 when he found and purchased a small property near the coast in Milolii, about an hour south of Kona.
“It just reminded me so much of my childhood memories at that point, and it was an attempt to maybe recreate that or get as close as possible to that,” he said.
That dream, however, has turned into a permitting nightmare. One that has left him — in his words — in total dismay.
Hawaii is known for permitting delays, but Ausman’s case isn’t just about delays — his story features mind-boggling twists and turns, and there might be thousands of others in a similar situation.
Ausman said the property he bought was built in the 1980s and came with a set of renovation permits. So in early 2022 he started rebuilding the deck and stairs. He called the County to inspect the completed work and heard nothing until June of that year, when he was told his permit had expired the previous day — but not the renovation permit that was supposed to be good for five years, rather the original building permit issued in the 1980s.
“I’m like, ‘How can that permit expire like 30 years down the road? That doesn’t make sense,’” Ausman recalled.
Ausman learned that when Hawaii County rolled out its new Electronic Processing and Information Center system, the system canceled his permit because there was no record of a final inspection being performed or electrical and plumbing having been completed.
“But weirdly enough,” he said, “in August of that year, they issued me an electrical permit to power the house … and HELCO surveyed the property, and then the county was able to power the house, and they conducted one inspection, [an] electrical inspection.”
He said that made him hopeful that his permit situation had been resolved. Two months later, though, he got a letter saying that all his permits had been canceled because they had been issued in error. Now he risks being fined if he lives in the unpermitted structure. And there apparently is nothing the county is willing to do about it.
Ausman said he was advised to pull “brand-new as-built” permits to fix the house, but explained how that’s an unrealistic option because the home is too close to the shoreline to get approval to build in a Shoreline Management Area. Even without that issue, Ausman noted that the cost to bring a 1980s house into compliance with modern building codes would be huge.
After an entire day of providing testimony and pleading his case to the County’s Board of Appeals, even that layer of bureaucracy ruled against him, unable to find that the County’s decision to terminate the original permit was careless or arbitrary. He’s now awaiting oral arguments after appealing that decision in circuit court, but isn’t exactly optimistic.
“I still don’t know if this is the path that can remedy what’s happened — can remedy my wrong,” he said.
According to Ausman, there are many other Hawaii Island property owners might have also had their permits canceled when the EPIC system went online, but many of the “just can’t come forward” or “maybe don’t even know that they have that problem right now, so I’m hoping that this will be an eye-opener for the County.”
Ausman said local governments have a special power that should be used for the greater good, not to create burdens for people.
“We vote for them to fight for our rights, we vote for them to be our defender,” he said. “But here, it seems like we vote for them, and then they make it more difficult for you or they just do nothing.”
To watch the 30-minute conversation, click on image below. A complete transcript follows.
10-31-24 Joe Kent with Big Isle homeowner Shahzaad Ausman on ThinkTech Hawaii
Joe Kent: Aloha and welcome to the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. I’m Joe Kent, executive vice president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, and today we’re going to talk about an important topic of building delays.
Building permit delays are a major headache in Hawaii, and delays prevent homeowners from renovating and businesses from opening. But problems with building permits can do more than just delay a project.
Shahzaad Ausman, a resident of the Big Island, knows this very well. A County policy change led to the mass cancellation of thousands of permits, and Mr. Ausman got stuck in the middle of this.
So, I’ll let him tell the story. But Shahzaad, I want to welcome you to this — to the program today.
Shahzaad Ausman: Thank you, Joe.
Kent: Well, I want to let you tell your story. Basically, let’s start at the very beginning. What happened, and what was the genesis of you, I guess, purchasing this property and getting in the middle of this?
Ausman: Sure. So, I purchased this property in 2021, so we were just in COVID. And at the time when I purchased it, it came with a set of permits to renovate the property — that is, do a bathroom, do a kitchen, do some windows, doors, a septic and a solar water heater.
And at that time, I did all the due diligences on the permits by calling the County, asking questions about the permits. And also we had an appraiser look at the property. We had the home inspector look at the property, where they all did not flag that there was a permitting issue. OK?
So the property was built in the late ’80s in a remote part of the Big Island, a place called Milolii. It’s known as the last fishing village, and there is a development just next to it called Milolii Beach Lots, and that’s where the house is located.
And the — so, come ‘20, end of 2021, beginning of 2022, and COVID was started to ease down, I started like putting my hands on the house and doing the remodeling.
So we started right around February of that year, and there was a little piece that had to be demoed and rebuilt, which was a deck and stairs. So I started with that. Demoed it, rebuilt it according to the approved permits that had been issued in January of 2020, I believe.
We completed that. It was probably six, seven weeks to do that. And then I called the County and I said, “Hey guys, I’m ready to do the first inspection,” and the County just like never showed up. They never came. They didn’t come. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Then, come June 2 of 2022, I get a call from the building inspector, and he says to me, at that time, he says, “Hey, I will not be able to do an inspection of your house because your permit expired yesterday.”
And I said, “No, I’m looking at the permit right now and it’s five years from issuing, so it’s 2025. It was issued 2020.” They said, “No, not that permit. The original building permit from 1987 expired yesterday.” And then I’m like, “How can that permit expire like 30 years down the road? That doesn’t make sense.”
And the County, when I had checked with the County, there were no issues with that permit. And then he said he couldn’t find records of a final inspection, records of electrical and plumbing; therefore, the permit was expired.
Kent: So he said because he couldn’t find the certain permits for electrical and plumbing, and then therefore, it was expired or the system expired it in a way?
Ausman: Yeah. So the [Electronic Processing and Information Center system] had come live the day before, June 1. So technically, it seems like when the EPIC went live, it canceled that permit from the late ‘80s.
When you look at that permit, there’s no expiration date. Those permits didn’t come with an expiration date. OK. But also, for the County to have been able to issue a remodeling permit, you’re going to, like, logically thinking that they did due diligence in 2019 on the status of the building and the permits that were issued prior to issue a remodeling permit, because it was very extensive to get that permit issued; it included putting a septic in. And all the departments signed off — zoning, planning, Department of Health — on the permit.
And so that’s kind of like when my battle started. And now, I was with a house that basically where it’s at, you can’t get a permit.
Kent: I want to get to that. But I wanted to go to that moment though, when the permitting inspector said to you that your permits expired the day before. Was he at your house or was this over the phone, and what was your reaction?
Ausman: So that was over the phone, and I was just in total dismay. I mean, at that point I’m trying to, like, rebuke this. I’m like, this can’t be expired.
I mean, you must have made a mistake because the house has been there for some 30 years, and you must know that there’s a house there. It’s not possible that 30 years later, you’re going to cancel my permit. That makes zero sense whatsoever.
But he said no, he can’t do anything about it, and he’s going to push it up.
So he was just a building inspector. He pushed it up to the building chief, and the building chief, she did not do very much. She also was very — she just kept promising, “OK, we’ll find a way to resolve this. We’ll find something, a resolution somehow.” But she was just basically a delay tactic that began by then.
So June, from June to October of that year, I kept asking them, “Hey guys, give me a status here. Hey guys, give me a status here. Like, I need to be doing work on this house. I can’t just leave it like that because this is like a construction zone at that point.” I heard nothing, zero.
But weirdly enough, in August of that year, they issued me an electrical permit to power the house through [Hawaii Electric Light Co.]. So the house had HELCO power, and at some point in time it was disconnected. The reason, I don’t know. But the people I bought it from did not live in the house, so maybe it was disconnected at that point through them, I don’t know.
But the County issued an electrical permit, and HELCO surveyed the property, and then the County was able to power the house, and they conducted one inspection, electrical inspection. And so when that happened, I said to myself, “Probably they figured it out,” right? They found all permits, it was somewhere in an office, in a box somewhere. They got something.
Kent: I see. So you were hopeful that this was a sign.
Ausman: Yeah, I was hopeful this is a sign that we’re going to be able to move forward. But came October, I got a letter from their building chief, and she said to me, “All the permits are canceled.” And at that point, I’m like, “OK, well, what do I do?”
Kent: When you say all the permits were canceled, meaning even your permit to remodel and like all of the, all of your permits were canceled at that point.
Ausman: All of the permits: the building permit from the ‘80s, the remodeling permit from 2020, the electrical permit from 2022, everything. And basically, they said that they issued them in error.
This was kind of like a card that fits everything, you know. The moment something happens and they don’t want to deal with it, they’re like, “We gave this in error, and that’s it. This is not my problem now, it’s a you problem.”
And it wasn’t a me problem. Because in the same letter, she said that if I occupy the property and I live there, it’s against County code to live in an unpermitted dwelling, so she could fine me. That was one.
Number two: She gave a way to maybe work around this. It was nice to give that, but it was just non-realistic.
This is what they asked me to do. They asked me to pull brand-new as-built permits. But that was just not possible, because where the house is, to get this new as-built permit, I would first have to do an SMA, because it’s close to the ocean.
Kent: It stands for Shoreline Management Area, or Special Management Area, and it concerns the geographic location between the ocean and, you know, some miles inward towards the road. The regulations make it such that it’s much more difficult to build there. There are a lot more restrictions for getting things like building permits and so on. So your property was in SMA, meaning it made it that much more difficult to get a permit, OK?
Ausman: Correct. So at the time [in the 1980s], this SMA certification was not required, but now it is. And anything built within 40 feet to the shoreline cannot get an SMA, and I am about 27 feet. So I cannot get an SMA because of that. So without the SMA, I cannot get as-built permits.
Then to bring this house built in the 1980s to current code is basically like building a brand new house. The cost will probably outdo all of it. The cost to bring an old house to current code is just, would be just extreme, and also you need to find the people that can do that.
And in my case, since it’s in such a remote part of Hawaii, it’s not very easy. I mean, getting people to work and getting materials there was already difficult.
But their workaround was basically just not a workaround.
So I called her, the building chief, and I told her and I asked her about this SMA. I said, “Hey, I am in the SMA. I can’t get an SMA certificate.” And weirdly enough, she said to me, “Well, you can still try. Maybe they’ll just look away.”
And I was like, “What? But you are not looking away. I have good permits. But you think the zoning department is going to do this? I just don’t believe this.”
At that time, when I got that letter, this was a determination from their Department of Public Works. So if I had to do something, the clock started ticking now. Because once you did that determination, I believe it was 30 days to appeal it.
If you don’t appeal it, goodbye. You don’t have any administrative power to basically say, “Hey, this is wrong.”
So I started that process. Within the 30 days, I filed an appeal with the Board of Appeals. The Board of Appeals is an administrative board. The members that sit on the board are appointed by the mayor of the County of Hawai‘i. They basically try to administratively resolve issues when County directors cannot resolve the issues.
So we went there at their Board of Appeals, and I was there the whole day. We were just unpacking at the events one after the other. What was going on? What was …
Kent: Are you saying that you were there all day for your case or for other people’s cases?
Ausman: I was there the whole day pretty much for my case.
Kent: I see. Yeah.
Ausman: Yeah. It was, there was just so much to unpack because we have to go in the history of that property from the 1980s to now. And also we have to talk about the permit in the ‘80s, the permits from 2020.
And the Board of Appeals is very limited in what they can do. They can only reverse it if they believe that the director of public works, if his decision was capricious. It’s a very difficult standard to meet to understand, you know, is this even, was that a capricious decision?
So I was not able to meet that standard according to them on that day, and they affirmed the director’s position that all my permits were expired or canceled.
So at that moment, I was like, I mean, there’s very little you can do, you are just in full dismay. You are like, “Well, I was hoping this is like a good shot. I’m able to prove that, you know, the house is there. It’s been there for 30-plus years. I’m remodeling it. I’m making it better. And I intend to be in that house, to live there, and suddenly, I can’t do this.”
Kent: And can I go back for a moment to your intentions with this house originally. You saw this house, you wanted to live there. What were your intentions with this house and basically your dream?
And also, maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself. I know it’s late in the conversation now, but just for our viewers to learn a little bit more about you.
Ausman: Yes. So I was born on the island of Mauritius. The island of Mauritius is an island in Africa. It is close to like South Africa, but it looks just like Hawaii.
It is, there has the similar beaches, it also has a volcano there, though it’s dormant. It’s also green. It reminded me so much of Hawaii. Every time I go to Hawaii, I’d say to my family [in California], Hawaii is like where we are from. Just that where we are from is 30-plus hours away by flight, and Hawaii was like five hours away.
So I was started to think that, hey, like every time I go to Hawaii, I feel so much like I’m at home. This feels like my original home where I was born. And therefore, when I saw that property in 2021, I said, “I need to see this because this is like old Hawaii. This is not like built up everywhere, and it’s on the ocean.” And where I’m from, we used to go to the ocean all the time.
And I went to see it and I was like, “Yes, this is it.” Like I want to live there. It just reminded me so much of my childhood memories at that point, and it was an attempt to maybe recreate that or get as close as possible to that.
And when I saw the property, I was like, “Needs a lot of work, but I can do it.” The permit, I have five years. I mean, I can definitely make that happen in five years. And that’s when I said, “Yeah, we move forward to close my escrow. And you know, then I can get to work on getting the house back up and running.”
But that was just not the case. It was like, I mean, we are two and a half years later, three years later, and I’m still not even at square one.
Kent: This was going to be your dream house, though. Do you have a family that was going to live there with you or were you living there alone?
Ausman: Yeah, I was going to live there with my family. And, of course, they are very supporting of what’s going on. They know the whole story, all the ups and downs that I’ve had. And so they just push me to just never give up. Like I can’t give up, I’m too far into this, and I’ve been wronged so much.
I mean, three years, I can’t like — like literally every time I’m there, I try to spend time there, but I’m always thinking, “Is this too much time I’m spending there?” Because maybe the County is going to come and be like, “Hey, you can’t be there, this is an unpermitted house. You can’t live in this.”
But also, I’m scared that they’re going to cut my power because now they’re saying the power is also issued in error.
Kent: Let’s go back to the story then. So after the Board of Appeals basically gave a rubber stamp to the, to what you view as an erroneous decision, then what happened next?
Ausman: So when the Board of Appeals affirmed the director’s position, I had 30 days to file an appeal now in court. So now, we are going in circuit court. I definitely didn’t want it to go that far, because I was hoping deep inside of me that somebody within the administration was going to fix it.
I had knocked on pretty much every door, including the door of the mayor at that point, saying, “Please help, this is happening. Please help me here. Please help me.” But the mayor basically said — he closed the door in my face. He said, “Can you talk to one of my deputies,” who also closed the door in my face. So nothing happened there.
And then I said to the County, “Hey, we have 30 days, let’s find a resolution.” Nothing came.
So come the 30 days, I had to hire an attorney to file at their circuit court. And that process was also very difficult. The Big Island is a big island. There are not a lot of attorneys there. It’s difficult to even find that.
Then when you find an attorney, they have to do a conflict check. Since it’s such a small place, everybody has a conflict with everybody because maybe they’ve worked with one of the clients, one of the interests that you’re going to sue, and they can’t take you.
So that adds another layer of complexity in trying to find representation. And it took me a while after knocking on so many doors and, like, pleading, please help me, I need an attorney for this.
Then I found my attorney finally, and his name is Patrick Wong, and he’s with Carlsmith Ball LLP. It’s a very old and prestigious law firm on, I think, all the islands. And he ran the conflict check, and it came out clean, so he could take my case.
So I was happy. But at the same time not happy, because I don’t have a resolution. I don’t have a remedy. All I was looking for is give me a remedy, give me something so I can, like, live in my house full time — like be there as much as I want without thinking, “OK, maybe the County can do something against me, or maybe I have a bad neighbor that’s going to come after me, and they’re going to be like, ‘This is an unpermitted house, and you can’t live there.’”
Because sometimes your neighbors, they come to you as friends, but they are thinking other way. They come to you as, you know, with the aloha spirit, and you think, “This is nice,” but in reality, they’re are just like sussing out what’s going on.
Kent: Did you ever, by the way, hear of any other people on the Big Island who also had this similar type of story, where they had something that they thought was permitted, then on, what is it, June of 2020 or 2021, whenever that was, the system deleted all of those permits? And now, what? I think there’s tens of thousands of people in that boat.
Have you ever talked to anyone like that?
Ausman: Yes. So, when the EPIC system went live, I saw a news article that said 40,000 permits had been canceled. And where I am within the development, there were a few other people in that similar boat — where the EPIC system came live, and their permits were kind of like forced expired or forced canceled.
But also when I did the Board of Appeals, we had some public testimony in the beginning, and some people came and said, “This is happening to me as well. Like, please help and do something. Because either we can’t afford to pull new permits or we can’t afford to bring the house to current code,” or, you know, something that would have just an undue burden on them.
It is just too — getting permits in Hawaii is very burdensome. It’s not easy. It takes a long time. And if you don’t hire the right people, you might never get your permits. Just, it’s just a very burdensome part of owning and building in Hawaii.
Kent: So where does this case stand right now then?
Ausman: So my case is we have a, we have our oral arguments next year in February. As of now, the case has been in the courts for that long, and the County has not reached out for a settlement. Though they have said, “We will try to settle this out of court,” they have not.
And so, where it stands is I’m still kind of like square one where I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what’s happening. It’s — the future is unknown. I don’t know, and it’s really stressful because I bought it, I put all this money in it, and now I have to hire an attorney, and then that’s another cost. And I still don’t know if I will succeed there. I still don’t know if this is the path that can remedy what’s happened — can remedy my wrong.
Kent: What are you hoping for, in this case, a resolution just for yourself, or for others, or maybe a systematic fix. What is your biggest dream right now?
Ausman: Well, my biggest hope and my biggest dream is that the County acknowledges and says, “Yes, to everybody that this happened, we made a big mistake, and we’re going to fix it for everyone.” Not just for me. Because just like me, I am one of many that came forward and said, “This is wrong, guys. You can’t do this.”
There are others that just can’t come forward. There are others that maybe don’t even know that they have that problem right now.
So I’m hoping that this will be an eye-opener for the County. I’m hoping that the mayor — this is an eye-opener for him — to see that, hey, this is a big problem. We implemented the system, but the system caused new issues maybe that was not intended, but it is what happened.
Kent: And do you think that there has been built a culture of fear around the permitting process such that, you know, if there are 40,000 other people who are in the same boat, I’m sure a lot of them are watching your case very carefully and happy that you are the tip of the spear here.
But for a lot of people going down a legal avenue is not — you know, is a very daunting thing. So have you heard from anyone about their view of your case?
Ausman: To go back to the culture of fear, so I had spoken to some architects on the Big Island, kind of like, at the beginning when my whole ordeal was started, and I was asking them, “Hey, can you testify at the Board of Appeals?” And they were like, “No, because we work with these people, and if we come and testify, they might not give us permits, and then our clients are going to be upset.”
So there was that for sure, where if you say something wrong or you go and you fight for something that’s right, they might, like, create undue burden for you.
That really was shocking to me that people would think that way, because you think that your local government is here to help you, right? Not to fight you and have like a vendetta against you for what you’re doing.
But then, so other cases that I’ve heard or people that I talked to that are in that similar boat — so of course they are hoping that my case will resolve their issues. That they’ll be able to get their forced canceled or expired permits back on, and then they can finish and final their projects.
And, but so far, as you said, not everybody can do that. I am in a position where I am able to do this. But for most people on the Big Island, especially ones living in, like, remote areas, they, — you now, they’re just at the whim of the government. They can’t — they just wait, and they hope that it fixes itself, but it might not.
Kent: Well, Shahzaad, thanks so much for sharing your story with us today. Is there anything else you’d like to share in the minute or so that we have left?
Ausman: Yes. I think that local government is here to, like, help the constituents because we vote for them to fight for our rights. We vote for them to be our defender. But here, it seems like we vote for them and then they make it more difficult for you or they just do nothing.
In the end, I think that local governments have such a special power, and they should use that for the greater good of everybody. Not expanding their local government to create more burdens and hurdles for everybody, like what’s been going on here.
Kent: Well, thanks so much again for sharing your story, and best wishes to you and good luck on your journey. And thanks to all the viewers for watching the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.
We’re going to probably do a write-up of this and put it on our website at Grassrootinstitute.org. If you’d like to follow our work, we’ll keep in touch with what Shahzaad’s doing.
So go to Grassrootinstitute.org, our newsletter, to stay in touch. And again, aloha, Shahzaad. Thanks so much for sharing your story.
Ausman: Aloha.
