On Aug. 8, 2023, our world stopped. One of the last remnants of the Hawaiian kingdom burned to the ground, stealing more than 100 precious lives, neighborhoods and centuries of cultural treasures.
But there was one beautiful thing that rose from the ashes: desire from people around the world to help. In those early days, it seemed like all you had to do was post QR codes and money poured in — an expression of love for Lahaina.
Still, there was one fund that grew far faster than the rest: the Hawai‘i Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund, which quickly swelled to $200 million.
Today, more than half has been spent, and HCF is weighing the fate of what remains. But when reflecting on decisions made so far, have Maui Strong administrators followed through on their kuleana to ensure Maui’s people have a say in their own path toward healing?
Of nearly $90 million committed for housing programs so far, the largest sum of $50 million pays for the Maui Interim Housing plan, an effort to create 3,000 units with 18-month commitments.
The key word is “interim.” As soon as families move in, displacement is imminent. How much more trauma will that bring?
The other Maui Strong housing projects aren’t likely to help families stay in Lahaina. Especially not the $65,000 grant for conservative think-tank Grassroot Institute to conduct research, which HCF categorizes as “Lodging and Shelter.” For ohana who actually want to stay in Lahaina, neither will $5 million for tiny homes plopped on a formerly vacant lot 20 miles away in Kahului.
What isn’t on Maui Strong’s housing grantee list: organizations led by the Lahaina and Kula residents whose neighborhoods burned. Instead, two-thirds of Maui Strong housing money went to nonprofits headquartered on Oahu. Those organizations didn’t lose everything in the fire. Maui’s people did.
It isn’t too late to make it right. As HCF CEO Micah Kane said recently, “The more responsibility you have, the more thoughtful you need to be.”
Communities know their own needs best. They have generational ‘ike to ensure that disaster relief funding not only heals the past, but also charts a safer future.
Or, the opposite can happen. Disasters usually make the rich richer, and the poor poorer — and the way disaster aid is spent often makes it worse. Studies have found that people of color and renters are worse off after disasters, more likely to be displaced and lose jobs. In contrast, college-educated white homeowners generally see wealth increase.
Take New Orleans, another historic town that existed before the United States of America, where after Hurricane Katrina, $70 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development flowed into the community. Yet in the decade that followed, neighborhoods rapidly gentrified, and an estimated 100,000 Black community members never returned home.
This is what is happening now to Lahaina. Every day, we hear stories of ohana moving away.
Even though millions of dollars have flowed to Maui since that Aug. 8, our hurting ohana aren’t better off. As documented in the recent report, “One year after the wildfires: Rising poverty and housing instability point to ongoing gaps in assistance,” many survivors’ basic needs are still going unmet. An estimated 1 in 3 now live in poverty.
How many disasters do we need to learn from?
We must shift our path so the remaining Maui Strong dollars actually make Maui’s people stronger. And it starts from the ground up. Millions of dollars were raised for Maui’s people who lost everything — so let them, not Oahu’s nonprofit executives, decide their future.
Healani Sonoda-Pale is a citizen and spokesperson of Ka Lahui Hawai‘i and an Indigenous rights and environmental justice community advocate.
