Maui Fires: Money For Victims, Housing For Survivors Are Hawaii Governor's Priorities

The state will pay West Maui property owners up to $11,000 per month to rent homes to fire survivors, Gov. Josh Green said Tuesday, outlining a new phase of a multi-faceted initiative to help victims of the Aug. 8 fires that killed 101 people and destroyed much of Lahaina.

The governor’s renewed appeal to property owners came as he unveiled a long-anticipated legal settlement fund for people killed or injured by the fires. The $175 million fund will provide $1.5 million each to families of those who perished.

While details of the settlement fund headlined Green’s presentation, the governor used the occasion to provide an update on housing for fire survivors. FEMA and the state have made progress in finding homes for thousands of households displaced by the fires, including people who have been living in hotel rooms for months.

FEMA has secured just under 1,500 units under a program where it leases properties to be used by fire victims. But only a third of the units are in West Maui, where people work and have children in school. As a result relatively few places elsewhere on Maui have been moved into.

As a consequence, Green said he’s seeking to secure 850 additional units in West Maui from property owners now using the properties as short-term rentals for tourists. The state will pay up to $5,000 per month for a one-bedroom home, $7,000 for two bedrooms, $9,000 for a three-bedroom home and up to $11,000 for a home with four bedrooms.

Along with this inducement, Green issued a threat, saying if the 850 homes were not secured by the end of March, he would issue a moratorium on short-term rentals in West Maui until the state had secured the homes it needs.

“I’m not playing around,” he said. “People have been in hotels quite a long time. And it’s very difficult.”

Even before the Maui fires, Green had stressed the need for more housing in Hawaii, running on the housing issue as a candidate and issuing an expansive emergency proclamation on housing as a bold, early step in his tenure.

The wildfires have further highlighted the problem, Green said.

A campaign to convert short-term vacation rentals for tourists into long-term homes for residents is now at the top of his agenda.

“Housing is at the core of our problems in the state of Hawaii,” Green said. “We have too many short-term rentals owned by too many individuals on the mainland, and it is bullshit. Our people deserve housing here.”

In the meantime, the One Ohana Maui Recovery Fund will go live on Friday. The idea is to expedite recovery for victims by letting them apply for $1.5 million payments in exchange for settling wrongful death claims. The fund will also be available to survirors who suffered serious injury.

The state has contributed $65 million, Hawaiian Electric Co. $75 million, Kamehameha Schools $17.5 million and Maui County $10 million, while Hawaiian Telcom, West Maui Land Co. and Charter Communications have each contributed $2.5 million.

Ron Ibarra, a retired state court judge, will administer the fund as a volunteer. Ibarra described the fund as an alternative to litigation that will guarantee recovery with no risk and far less cost than litigation.

Green has said the fund is “deeply personal” to him as a way to help people obtain financial support and move on with their lives. While he said “some people will find it’s better to litigate,” he said, “We have a moral obligation to help people heal.”

Green also addressed questions of why he’s announcing the fund now.

“I have to continue to move us forward,” Green said. “We just can’t wait. If we don’t address this crisis in a smart way, litigation will take us down, costs will take us down, companies will fail, and that will hurt all of us.”

Land Trust Floated As One Idea For One Ohana’s “Phase Two”

A major issue facing the state and other wildfire defendants is that the wrongful death and serious injury claims represent a fraction of what the property damage claims might be — some estimates put those at $5 billion.

While the One Ohana Fund’s first phase for death and injury claims has gotten most of the publicity, Green said political and business leaders have been discussing a second fund to address property damage claims.

“Phase Two is the broader effort to help people heal if they lost their land or their business,” he said in an interview. 

Lawmakers who have balked at the state paying $65 million into the victims fund presumably would hesitate more at the prospect of paying many times that amount into a fund for property settlements.

But Green said there are potential solutions that don’t require cash. One idea involves the state and perhaps other parties donating land near Lahaina to victims as compensation to settle claims, he said. 

“We could construct a model where there are thousands of parcels to help families recover,” Green said, but stressed that the notion of a land trust was just one idea being discussed.

Regardless, Green said, the overarching idea is to provide relief to victims as quickly as possible. 

“The better job that we do as a team inside the state,” he said, “the less litigation there will have to be.” 

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by grants from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.