Old Lahaina Town Utterly Destroyed - Recovery & Relief Efforts

[My 2 cents]

I got a call from a friend in Lahaina the other day.  The house he has been renting didn’t burn, but he is being evicted.  Why?  Because there is a moratorium on rent increases, and the landlord wants to cash in on the big FEMA bucks by renting to a displaced fire victim.  According to my friend, the house he is in will fetch a nice, tidy $9,000/month payout from FEMA if it’s rented to a fire victim, which he is not.

The governor is blaming the vacation rentals for the housing shortage.

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/202...ng-crisis/

One would think that this FEMA incentive would be enough to get the vacation rentals to open up to long term renters.  But the risk remains the same, in fact it’s probably even stronger now on Maui.  An undesirable tenant is very difficult to get rid of.

The landlord/tenant laws (imo) are a huge factor in the rental housing shortage across the state, not just on Maui.  I have yet to see this factor addressed by any reporters or government officials, and probably won’t.

[HiloJulie]

Evicting tenants to “grab” FEMA money is forbidden. Well, forbidden in the sense that if the landlord evicts your friend and allows a fire victim(s) to move in under a FEMA Direct Lease, gets reported and caught, will be in a world of hurt. Financially. 

https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240215/fema-direct-lease-program-says-no-rental-properties-illegally-kick-out#:~:text=the%20.gov%20website.-,FEMA%20Direct%20Lease%20Program%20Says%20No%20to,That%20Illegally%20Kick%20Out%20Tenants&text=HONOLULU%20%E2%80%93%20Although%20FEMA%20is%20leasing,rents%20from%20the%20FEMA%20program.

[My 2 cents]

Right.  It doesn’t help much if you’ve already been evicted.  My friend will be fine.  He is fortunate to have plenty of options, the least desirable being a legal battle with his landlord. 

The FEMA money is doing it’s job to some degree in providing housing to the displaced fire victims.  The collateral damage is to anyone who doesn’t qualify as a fire victim but still needs to rent a home.  The influx of FEMA money has as much if not more to do with the high rents as the vacation rentals.

And I still say that the state-wide lack of long-term rental housing would be improved considerably if the laws were changed to give the landlords some power to quickly and easily remove undesirable tenants from their property.

[terracore]

The landlord/tenant laws (imo) are a huge factor in the rental housing shortage across the state, not just on Maui.  I have yet to see this factor addressed by any reporters or government officials, and probably won’t.

Is Hawaii County allowing it's officers to perform evictions again?  Or are landlords still required to pay out of pocket to bring Maui PD over to do it (over $10k)?

Whether the answer is yes or no, it still backs up your opinion. 

I'm surprised that after the government forcibly privatized government housing during COVID that anybody would want to be a landlord.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Maui County, whose mayor was AWOL as the Lahaina fire intensified, among other incompetent emergency responses, is suing cellular phone service providers because phone carriers did not notify the county that their cell towers didn’t work, (because the county response made them inoperable?) and residents did not receive emergency messages.  

https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-maui-w...084b94491b

[randomq]

Everyone sues everyone, it takes years to untangle it all, and meanwhile the responsible parties get to move on, retire, collect pensions, etc.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Another report on the causes of the Lahaina fire:

1) A single downed HECO electric wire
2) Kamehameha Schools had been ordered by the Maui Fire Department to cut a fire break through overgrown weeds on their property.  They didn’t do it.

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/video/2024...re-spread/

So after all of the finger pointing, Oprah did it, The Rock did it, blue space rays, land speculators… it turns out another entity entrusted to further the perpetuation of the Native Hawaiian people, the wealthiest organization in the state couldn’t spend a few dollars to mow the weeds on their almost tax free land holdings. We can hope they contribute to rebuilding the homes of Native Hawaiians who lost everything in the fire.

Astronomy hasn’t burned down a town as far as I know.

[Rob Tucker]

Don't forget Herman Andaya. He got his pension.

"Herman Andaya, the director of Maui's Emergency Management Agency, just resigned citing 'health reasons'. Andaya was under fire for alleged lack of field experience and for not activating the island's warning sirens prior to that deadly wildfire."

[HiloJulie]

"Kamehameha Schools had been ordered by the Maui Fire Department to cut a fire break through overgrown weeds on their property.  They didn’t do it."

Par for the course in pretty much all things Hawaii.

[randomq]

Oligarchs gonna oligarch.

And now the settlement is in limbo and the Maui Strong fund is sitting on a pile of cash they don't want to spend...

Obviously what we need now is listening sessions!