Editorial: Make housing policies to help Mauians

Thousands of people lost their homes and at least 100 people lost their lives when wind-whipped fire swept through Lahaina on Aug. 8. Within West Maui, which closed to tourism in the aftermath of the disaster, a huge inventory of hotel rooms was made available for housing the displaced.

About 6,800 fire evacuees continued to shelter in Maui hotels as of Nov. 6, Gov. Josh Green said last week. But uncertainty over how long hotel rooms will remain available and fear of further displacement as hotels return rooms to the tourist market have been growing.

Moving forward with longer- term solutions must be a priority. Converting a portion of Maui’s abundant short-term rentals (STRs) to long-term rentals (LTRs), at least for a period of time that serves fire survivors, should be one of them.

As a bridge step, Hawaii and Maui County must lock in extended relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to continue hotel housing. FEMA shoulders much of the expense of housing the displaced, and through October, it has provided nearly $250 million in federal assistance for Maui. The current aid period expires Feb. 10.

Hawaii’s U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz has been laying the groundwork for such an extension, conveying the stakes for Maui to Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA. Without continuing assistance, Maui fire evacuees and residents could be forced to leave the island because of the housing shortage, Schatz told Mayorkas, at a Nov. 8 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. “I just want to flag that for you as a bad outcome,” he said.

On Maui, both the governor and Maui Mayor Richard Bissen are involved in the hunt for available housing units, and in vetting options for creating more units quickly, on an emergency basis. But with housing availability already at crisis levels statewide, move-in-ready LTR units are rare.

Schatz and others have said that it will take between two and five years to rebuild and replace housing in Lahaina. To start from scratch and install housing and infrastructure on a property also can take one to several years, even if emergency proclamations cut through the state and Maui County’s thicket of rules and zoning restrictions.

That leaves STRs. “One of the things we have on Maui is, we have lots of inventory,” Bissen said. “The issue of, ‘Is there enough homes on Maui?’ Oh, there are plenty of homes on Maui — empty homes on Maui.”

People from around the world own homes on Maui that are often vacant, the mayor noted. Their owners hold them as personal vacation homes or to use on the lucrative STR market.

The high proportion of STRs on Maui has been a source of contention over the years — and the current status quo strikes an uneasy balance, with certain STRs allowed to operate without permits, either because they are built in an area zoned for STRs or because they operated continuously as STRs before zoning or permit rules were established. These STRs are included on an official “Minatoya list,” referring to the opinion by then-Deputy Corporation Counsel Richard Minatoya that declared them legal.

On Maui, 15% of the housing stock islandwide consists of vacation rentals, a proportion that pushes sale prices of units ever higher. And in Lahaina, STRs took up a whopping 40% of the housing stock before the wildfire. For comparison: On Oahu, STRs make up 2% of the stock — yet the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization estimates that percentage alone has raised the price of housing on Oahu by an estimated 5%.

Lahaina Strong, a grassroots organization focused on Lahaina’s recovery, is calling for emergency action by the mayor and governor to place fire survivors in STRs, and has started a petition (bit.ly/lahainastrong) calling for STRs that operate in West Maui under the Minatoya list to be converted into LTRs “for a minimum of one year” to house displaced Lahaina residents. The organization estimates that West Maui contains more than 2,000 units on the list.

So far, both Green and Bissen have focused on recruiting voluntary offerings of units. But the officials’ incremental approach comes at the cost of continued hotel housing. At a news conference last week, the governor said fire evacuees would likely be housed in hotel rooms for as long as another two years — well into 2025.

While a wholesale conversion of “Minatoya” STRs may be legally fraught, the push is worthy of notice. There are steps between forcing conversions and accepting the status quo that could serve the needs of fire survivors — and other Maui residents in need of housing. One strategy that’s been discussed is to combine tax incentives for those who convert units with higher taxes on STRs. Other public incentives also must be considered — as the Lahaina fire forces Maui to confront the striking imbalance between homes for residents and trophy investment properties for off-state owners, an imbalance that Maui has allowed to flourish.