Hawaii Squatters Rights: Adverse Possession and How Removal Actually Works

Hawaii requires 20 years of actual, open, notorious, hostile, continuous, and exclusive possession under HRS § 657-31.5, and uniquely demands that the possession be held in good faith. The Hawaii Constitution (art. XVI, § 12) limits adverse possession claims to parcels of 5 acres or less and allows a claimant to assert the doctrine only once every 20 years. These 1978 reforms were aimed at protecting native and family land from serial adverse-possession claims, making Hawaii one of the hardest states in which to perfect title by squatting.

Hawaii has enacted no expedited squatter-removal law -- bills to create one (including HB 1398 in 2025, an expedited removal procedure, and HB 225, an Attorney General working-group study bill) were introduced but had not passed as of August 2026. Police will remove a clear-cut intruder under the criminal trespass statutes such as HRS § 708-813, but once an occupant claims to live there or produces anything resembling an agreement, officers typically call it a civil matter. The owner's real route is court: a summary possession action under HRS Chapter 666 where a landlord-tenant relationship arguably exists, or an ejectment action where the occupant is a pure trespasser, ending in a writ of possession executed by a court officer. On Oahu and the neighbor islands this routinely takes months, which is why prevention -- securing vacant property and checking on it -- matters more in Hawaii than almost anywhere else.

Anyone occupying under a rental agreement -- written or oral, including someone whose lease has expired or who has stopped paying -- is a tenant under HRS Chapter 521 and can only be removed through a Chapter 666 summary possession case. Because Hawaii has no expedited squatter statute, the tenant/trespasser line mostly determines which court action the owner files, and any plausible claim of permission usually pushes police toward refusing to act.

Hawaii bars all self-help removal: lockouts, removing belongings, and shutting off essential services are illegal, and only a court judgment and writ of possession can dispossess an occupant with any colorable right. A tenant illegally locked out may recover two months' rent or two months' free occupancy plus costs and attorney's fees, and an illegal utility shutoff under HRS § 521-63 draws damages of three times the monthly rent or $1,000, whichever is greater.

Unlike most states, Hawaii did not join the 2024-2026 wave of expedited squatter-removal laws. HB 1398 (2025), which would have created an expedited procedure to remove non-tenant occupants and criminalized property damage by illegal occupants, did not pass, and HB 225, which would have created an Attorney General working group to study squatting, was carried over without enactment through the 2026 session. Owners therefore still rely on criminal trespass enforcement and court possession actions.

The most common owner mistake in Hawaii is assuming mainland-style squatter laws apply -- they do not, and a lockout that would be lawful under Florida's § 82.036 process is an illegal self-help eviction in Hawaii. The second mistake is overestimating the adverse-possession threat: with a 20-year good-faith requirement, a 5-acre cap, and a once-per-20-years limit, almost no residential squatter can perfect title, so the real cost of squatters here is the months-long court timeline, not losing the property. Secure vacant homes aggressively; the doctrine of laches will not save an absentee owner from a slow removal process.

• HRS § 657-31.5
• HRS § 666-1
• HRS § 708-813