Maui transitional housing for fire survivors proliferating one year after disaster

It’s only a trickle at the moment, but the supply of new homes for transitional use by Maui wildfire survivors is on the cusp of surging one year after the disaster.

On Friday, a year and a day after the Aug. 8 fire that destroyed about 3,500 residences in Lahaina, state officials are scheduled to give house keys to about a dozen households for modular housing planted on vacant state land above one part of the West Maui town that burned.

These initial units are scheduled to be followed by another 40 ready by the end of this month, 70 more in October, 147 in December and 180 by March as part of the 450-unit subdivision named Ka La‘i Ola.

About 7 miles from Lahaina, a grand-opening ceremony for 50 new modular homes is planned for Tuesday by the owner of Kapalua Resort’s golf courses, a company led by Tadashi Yanai, for employees and surrounding hospitality workers displaced by the fire.

In Napili, near Kapalua, the state Department of Transportation is heading up development of 86 modular homes expected to be ready by the end of the year, followed by 200 more in February or March on land provided by Maui Land &Pineapple Co.

Next to Ka La‘i Ola in Lahaina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is developing a project called Kilohana with 169 modular homes targeted for completion by the end of the year on state land.

The total number of new transitional homes currently being built is more than 1,200.

FEMA also is working with what could be upward of 80 households that lost their primary residence in Lahaina to put modular homes on their lots until they can rebuild. State officials are considering the same thing.

Another initiative being pursued by FEMA is leasing around 1,000 residential lots in Lahaina from owners who lost homes that they were renting to others before the fire, and putting modular homes on those lots so renters can return to Lahaina sooner.

“We got a long way to go, but we made a lot of progress in one year,” Bob Fenton, a regional FEMA administrator heading up the agency’s response work on Maui, said Monday in an interview.

Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said in a statement that he is grateful to all partners involved in such projects, which also include the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement.

“It has been uplifting to see families receiving the keys to homes that can help them move toward stability,” he said.

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The lahaina fire, and separate blazes in Upcountry Maui that destroyed about 20 homes on the same day, displaced about 5,400 households, made up of roughly 12,000 people.

In the weeks and months that followed, an estimated 1,000 households left Maui, while many others moved in with friends or family.

The vast majority of survivors, about 3,100 households, began living in hotel rooms under a state program run by the American Red Cross and paid for by FEMA in most cases and the state in some instances.

This initial stage of temporary emergency housing has almost completely been phased out over the past year, and largely shifted to about 1,300 units of existing rental housing, including vacation rentals, on Maui leased by FEMA and then rented to fire survivors who often receive rent assistance through insurance, FEMA or nonprofit organizations.

Yet now, use of FEMA’s direct-lease housing program, which wildly inflated rental housing rates on Maui, has begun to subside as new homes are produced.

Occupancy for FEMA’s direct-lease program is about 1,200 households, down from about 1,250 a month ago as more people move to other accommodations including new units that offer more stability to fire survivors and are less costly for taxpayers.

Lifelong Lahaina resident Carol Ah Puck stayed in a FEMA direct-lease property earlier this year after moving between three hotels in 2023. She opted to leave after being told she would have to pay more than $2,000 a month for the unit because she hadn’t exhausted insurance proceeds.

So Ah Puck, with her husband and daughter, moved into her son’s home in Kaanapali.

“We moved into my granddaughter’s bedroom,” she said. “We’ve been living in a room for four months now.”

Then on July 22 she got keys to a new two-bedroom modular home developed on state land in Lahaina by CNHA after reaching out to the nonprofit’s Kako‘o Maui resource center.

“Now I feel more stable,” Ah Puck said. “I know I can stay here till I get my home built.”

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Ah Puck’s family was one of four households so far to receive keys to the 16-home project called La‘iku, which is on DOT land. CNHA expects the remaining 12 homes to be finished in September.

Residents at La‘iku, where pets are welcome, may stay up to five years. Monthly rent is $1,750.

A similar CNHA-led project, called Ke Ao Maluhia, in Central Maui on county land at the existing Maui Lani subdivision, welcomed its first households in May. To date, nine of 50 units are complete, and the rest are expected to be finished by October.

“We’re trying to fill the need,” said Kuhio Lewis, CNHA’s CEO. “I think it’s critical to build.”

Lewis recalled a family of five who moved into the La‘iku project after seven moves since the fire, and another person who cried upon receiving keys for a home at the Maluhia project.

“This gives them a peace of mind,” he said. “It provided them hope.”

Maude Cumming, CEO of the Maui nonprofit Family Life Center, has received similar reactions from fire survivors who between May and June moved into 10 modular homes built in Kahului as part of a planned 88-unit project called Ohana Hope Village where there is no rent.

One couple with five children who moved into two units said they had their best night’s sleep since the fire, Cumming recalled.

Another resident, an 83-year-old woman, moved five times, including once to Las Vegas, before moving into Ohana Hope Village, according to Cumming.

“For her it’s been just a sense to settle in,” Cumming said. “It’s just been a sense of safety, and a place to rest and heal.”

Family Life Center has had difficulty accessing potable water infrastructure needed to service the rest of its project, though Cumming is optimistic that by the end of October all 88 homes can be in use.

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In Kihei the state is offering new rent-free housing in a former 175-room hotel that welcomed its first resident July 26 and has since welcomed at least seven more.

A state agency bought the property in March from a religious institute under a plan that originated before the wildfire and involved having Maui County turn the building into teacher housing, affordable workforce housing and prekindergarten classrooms.

As of last week 160 “hotel-­style studios” in what is now known as Hale ‘o La‘ie were ready for occupancy after refurbishments that included new TVs, compact-­size refrigerators and microwave ovens but no kitchens.

A longtime Maui musician who goes by the name Armadillo was one of the first to receive keys to a room at the property, which has a swimming pool, gym, game room, soccer field, two laundry rooms and a koi pond.

“It’s a nice place,” said the 32-year Maui resident, who was displaced from a rental home in Lahaina that he shared with seven roommates.

Armadillo also said he feels guilt at receiving a free place to live while so many others are in need.

“I never took a handout in my lifetime,” he said. “But I can’t afford $4,500 a month for my own apartment.”

Exorbitant rents on Maui have been a negative side effect of FEMA’s direct-lease program, which pays vacation rental rates to participating homeowners regardless of whether the property was previously being used as a vacation rental or ordinary rental housing.

In some cases, monthly rent has spiked to $8,000 or even $10,000.

“So whatever (a landlord was) making nightly, now times 30 is how much you’re going to get,” Bissen explained during a July community recovery meeting in Lahaina. “That totally threw off the rental market. … Now, I’m not blaming anybody. I’m not blaming FEMA and I’m not blaming the landlords, but we all know who the loser is in that.”

• • •

Maui County is exploring rent control and trying to phase out short-term vacation use of about 7,000 legal vacation rental properties on Maui. But those efforts might take a long time to implement with uncertain results.

FEMA to date has provided about $26 million in rental assistance to roughly 4,200 households affected by the Maui wildfires.

Fenton said it’s hard to estimate how long FEMA’s direct-lease program on Maui could last. Initial leases run through February but can be extended. Fenton noted that after a 2018 wildfire disaster in Paradise, Calif., the agency’s direct-­lease program lasted a little over four years.

New transitional housing being built on Maui, including FEMA’s 169-unit Kilohana project, is intended to reduce the scope of FEMA’s direct-lease program.

Fenton said Kilohana, which will be rent-free, also will accommodate about 40 households still living in hotels for reasons that include having pets.

The state began accepting applications for its 450-unit Ka La‘i Ola project in Lahaina and the Hale ‘o La‘ie property in Kihei in early July under the Hawai‘i Interim Housing Program administered by the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp.

To date, more than 425 applications have been received.

Priority for these two state projects, which will be rent-free through at least August 2025, will go to households that were displaced from Lahaina or lost income due to the fire and do not receive rental assistance from FEMA or other providers.

Joseph Campos II, deputy director of the state Department of Human Services, which is heading up development of Ka La‘i Ola, said the project featuring modular homes from four manufacturers and ranging from studios to three-bedroom units plus lanai is intended to serve tenants over the next five years, as property owners replace homes they lost in the fire.

Last week, several units were being prepared for occupancy amid sidewalks and gravel. Later, trees and other landscaping are planned along with community buildings for child care, wellness services, a resiliency hub, gathering places for seniors, laundry facilities, post office boxes and other things.

“It’s all designed to develop a sense of community,” Campos said.