The problem it was aimed at

Hawaii has an unusually high proportion of non-resident condominium ownership, and the association’s statutory duties are notice-shaped. Consider what a board has to deliver, and to where:

• § 514B-121(d) — association meeting notice no less than fourteen days in advance, by hand delivery, prepaid U.S. mail, or email at the owner’s written option.
• § 514B-144 — written notice of maintenance fee increases at least thirty days prior.
• § 514B-146(h) — sixty days’ written notice to the owner and the first mortgagee before terminating a delinquent owner-occupied unit’s access to common elements and services.
• § 667-92 — in an association nonjudicial foreclosure, a notice of default that must be served, with a cure period of “within sixty days after service.”

Every one of those runs to an address the association holds. An out-of-date mainland address is not a minor administrative issue; it is a defect in the process that follows.

What the statute already gives a board

Less than the bill would have, but not nothing.

§ 514B-153 requires the association to keep a membership list, and releases it only on a duly executed and acknowledged affidavit that it will be used “only for the purpose of soliciting votes or proxies or providing information to other owners with respect to association matters” and “shall not be… furnished to anyone else for any other purpose.” A board may prohibit commercial solicitations.

§ 514B-145 allows collection of unpaid assessments from tenants and rental agents — which is the existing partial answer to an absentee owner who has a tenant in place.

What is missing is any obligation on the owner to supply a current, local point of contact. That is exactly the gap SB 2396 addressed, and it remains.

The dropped provision that matters to boards

The bar on designating a tenant as the agent. That prohibition existed because the obvious workaround defeats the purpose: an owner who names their own tenant as the local agent has created a channel that closes the moment the tenancy ends, and has put the person on the other side of a landlord-tenant relationship in charge of receiving the association’s notices.

The penalty structure was also dropped in the House draft. A registration duty without a consequence is a duty that the owners least likely to comply will least likely comply with.

What a board can do without legislation

• Ask, in writing, annually. There is no statutory command to answer, but many owners will. Pair it with the § 514B-121(d) email-option election, which does have statutory force once the owner makes it in writing.
• Put the request in the resale package. The moment of purchase is when a new owner is most likely to provide a complete contact record.
• Keep the certified-mail trail. Where a notice matters — assessment increase, delinquency, foreclosure — the record of where it was sent is what the association will be defending later.
• Do not use the membership list for anything outside § 514B-153. The affidavit condition is not a formality.

What to watch

Whether the idea returns in 2027 with the tenant bar and the penalties intact. It passed one chamber unanimously and died on the calendar, not on the merits — which is the profile of a bill that comes back.