The Federal Emergency Management Agency is moving ahead with a plan to build homes on Maui for wildfire survivors.

FEMA intends to develop 214 homes in Kaanapali, about 3 miles from the ruins of Lahaina where more than 3,000 homes were destroyed in the Aug. 8 disaster. The agency also is considering two other sites for new homes in Waikapu and on undeveloped land in Lahaina.

The agency recently published a draft environmental assessment for the Kaanapali project, which would be on 63 acres of fallow agricultural land zoned for residential use as part of a more than 20-year-old plan to expand the resort- dominated Kaanapali community.

“Development at this site would allow displaced residents to remain within relative proximity of their damaged dwellings and communities,” FEMA said in the assessment. “Disaster survivors would retain access to reasonable commuting times to their workplaces, schools, childcare, places of worship, familiar food and shopping services, laundry facilities, playgrounds, and pet areas.”

Agency officials were not available for comment Tuesday to provide more details, including an anticipated time frame for delivering the homes if approvals are obtained without difficulty.

Major construction is needed to prepare the site for use as a residential community for fire survivors, including clearing the site of vegetation, grading the land, putting in utility infrastructure and building roads.

The Kaanapali project represents an alternative to temporary disaster relief housing traditionally deployed by FEMA, which usually delivers transportable trailer or modular homes to disaster recovery sites on the mainland.

On Maui the 214 planned FEMA homes will be part of a mixed approach to find temporary housing for what initially had been around 8,000 fire survivors staying in more than 30 hotels where many survivors have had to repeatedly move between rooms and hotel properties while also going without normal living routines such as cooking meals.

“We all know that it is too challenging to continue to live in hotels,” Gov. Josh Green said during a ceremony earlier this month on Maui presenting other temporary housing plans. “We need to get people into stable housing so that they can move on with their lives.”

FEMA, state officials, county officials and nonprofit organizations have worked to pay for and place many survivors into homes rented from private owners or shared with other residents, mostly on Maui.

Green has also declared that he will temporarily prohibit short-term vacation rentals in West Maui if he does not get enough property owners to voluntarily convert vacation rentals to long-term housing by March 1 for use by fire survivors at above-market rates paid for by FEMA and the state.

There are also at least a few plans or projects in progress to build modular housing on Maui, including an 85-unit project called Ohana Hope Village in Kahului led by the nonprofit Family Life Center and a 34-unit county project at Maui Lani in Kahului.

As of earlier this month, there were still around 2,400 households with 6,000 individual survivors living in hotels while about 1,500 survivor households were living in mid- to long-term housing.

FEMA said in its Kaanapali project environmental report that as of Jan. 19 the agency had secured 1,029 privately owned housing units for direct lease to survivors. The agency also said 1,194 survivor households are willing to lease such homes through FEMA but that a significant percentage won’t be able to because of circumstances that include pet ownership.

“The need for the project is to provide the remaining eligible unhoused households in Maui County with temporary housing,” the agency said in the report.

FEMA anticipates that the planned Kaanapali homes can be used for 18 months or possibly longer.

The agency evaluated 25 sites for developing temporary housing on Maui but dismissed 22 for reasons that included topography, willingness of landowners, utility connection proximity and engineering feasibility, according to the report.

The other two sites still under review are Leiali‘i in Lahaina and Waikapu Country Town in Central Maui where master-planned communities are envisioned.

The Kaanapali site in West Maui is part of a 1,154-acre master plan to add 2,810 homes, a golf course, hospital, school, retail, parks and other amenities on the hillside above Kaanapali resort.

FEMA said homes developed for the site would be removed after the need for disaster relief is over and possibly could be reused elsewhere in Maui County, while roads and utilities could remain for use in future development plans for the area.