Kalawao County: Hawaii’s Smallest and Most Unusual Jurisdiction
Kalawao County is not like the other Hawaii counties. It is not like any other county in the United States. It has no city hall, no elected officials, no commercial housing market, no Walmart, no bank branch, no gas station, no courthouse. Its population is approximately 82 people spread over 12 square miles, most of them either elderly Hansen’s disease patients finishing out their lives under the care of the Hawaii Department of Health, federal employees assigned to Kalaupapa National Historical Park, or community members descended from the people who lived on the peninsula before it became an isolation colony. It is the smallest county in the United States by land area and the second-smallest by population. It exists primarily because the Hawaiian Kingdom made a decision in 1866 to forcibly exile people with leprosy to a peninsula that is physically cut off from the rest of Molokai by thousand-foot sea cliffs, and because the State of Hawaii made a subsequent promise that the survivors of that exile could live there in peace for the rest of their lives.
A Brief History of the Settlement
From 1866 until 1969, the Kingdom of Hawaii, the Republic of Hawaii, the Territory of Hawaii, and the State of Hawaii used the Kalaupapa Peninsula as a place to exile people suffering from Hansen’s disease — a mycobacterial illness that was incurable until the mid-20th century and that was believed, incorrectly, to be highly contagious. Over the course of those 103 years, more than 8,000 people were forcibly removed from their families and sent to Kalaupapa. Many were children. Families were shattered. The Native Hawaiian term for the disease, ma‘i ho‘oka‘awale ‘ohana, translates as “the disease that tears families apart,” and that is precisely what the isolation policy did. Those exiled arrived to primitive conditions, but over time built a remarkable community with its own institutions, traditions, churches, and leadership. The arrival of Father Damien de Veuster in 1873, and later Mother Marianne Cope and Joseph Dutton, brought meaningful improvements in medical care, sanitation, and dignity. Father Damien himself contracted Hansen’s disease and died on the peninsula in 1889; he was canonized in 2009.
The development of sulfone antibiotics in the 1940s made Hansen’s disease fully treatable, and the Hawaii Legislature repealed the isolation law in 1969. By that point, many residents had lived at Kalaupapa for decades — some their entire adult lives — and had no home or family to return to. The State made a commitment to permit them to remain for life with full state support, a promise that has been honored for more than fifty years. In 1980, at the request of the patient residents themselves, Congress established Kalaupapa National Historical Park, encompassing the entire peninsula, to preserve its cultural, historical, and natural resources and to ensure that the story of the exiled community would not be forgotten.
Why Kalawao Is a County at All
Kalawao County was established in 1905 by the Territorial Legislature as a direct consequence of the isolation policy. The legal authorities governing the settlement needed formal jurisdictional mechanisms — to issue death certificates, process probate, register births among residents, maintain records — and creating a county was the legislative solution. HRS Chapter 326 (§§ 326-34 through 326-38) is the operative statute today. It is unusual in that it explicitly removes Kalawao County from the ordinary Hawaii counties framework: the chapter specifies that, except as provided in §§ 326-34 to 326-38, no provisions of the Hawaii Revised Statutes regarding counties apply to Kalawao. In practice, this means Kalawao has no property tax, no county zoning code, no planning commission, no building permit process in the ordinary sense. The Department of Health administers what governance exists. The DOH Director is, by operation of statute, the Mayor. There are no elections, no council meetings, no county budget process. A local resident serves as sheriff on DOH appointment.
What Landlord-Tenant Law Looks Like in Practice
As a matter of strict legal doctrine, the Hawaii Residential Landlord-Tenant Code (HRS Chapter 521) applies to every residential rental in the State of Hawaii. Kalawao is in the State of Hawaii. Therefore, in theory, Chapter 521 governs any residential tenancy in Kalawao. As a matter of practical application, however, there are no commercial residential tenancies in Kalawao County. The land is almost entirely publicly owned. Patient residents live in DOH-operated facilities under HRS Chapter 326’s statutory framework, not under private lease agreements. DOH and NPS employees occupy government-provided housing as a condition of employment, not as private tenants of private landlords. The net result is that a summary possession action has not been filed in Kalawao County in living memory. The District Court’s annual case statistics for the Second Circuit contain no Kalawao County civil filings of any kind in recent years.
This is not a policy preference or a regulatory carve-out — it is simply a reflection of the fact that no rental housing market exists. If a private residential tenancy were to arise — for example, if NPS were to formally lease a residence to an employee on market terms, or if private land were to change hands and be rented to a third party — Chapter 521 would govern it, with all of the usual substantive and procedural rules: one-month security deposit cap, 14-day return, 5-business-day nonpayment notice, 45-day month-to-month notice, self-help eviction prohibition, disclosure obligations. Act 278’s mandatory mediation requirement (effective February 5, 2026) would presumably also apply, though no mediation center has specifically been designated to serve Kalawao. Any dispute would be heard in the Maui County Second Circuit District Court.
The Future of Kalawao County
The remaining Hansen’s disease registry patients are all elderly. At some point, the State’s commitment to provide lifetime care will have been fully honored because there will be no living patients left. When that happens, the Department of Health’s operational role on the peninsula will end. The Hawaii Legislature introduced a bill in 2025 to begin formal planning for the transition. The current expectation is that the National Park Service will assume primary operational responsibility, DOH will continue to oversee environmental cleanup of old facilities, and the peninsula will continue to exist as a federal park with state interests. The future of Kalawao County as a legal entity is a separate question that will likely require new legislation. It may continue to exist on paper as a county with no residents. It may be formally consolidated with Maui County. These are choices for a future legislature to make.
For now, the county functions as it has for more than a century — administered by the Department of Health, preserving a place, a history, and a community that represent one of the most painful and most redemptive chapters in Hawaiian history.
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