The Lahaina Community Land Trust (LCLT) is just getting started, but its ambitions are bold: to keep longtime residents in the West Maui community where they had a foundation before the disastrous Aug. 8 wildfires.

Born as the ashes of the Lahaina fire were still settling, with a founder who lost her home in the fire, the land trust is amassing a fund for this purpose. LCLT money will be used to aid Lahaina fire survivors who need help to rebuild, so they can stay. It will also be used to buy properties that go up for sale because the owners want to leave, placing those properties in a perpetual trust so that the homes can be reserved for kamaaina, long-time residents of Maui.

LCLT’s urgent goal of maintaining Lahaina as a community of kamaaina is shared by the state and county, but government can only do so much to make it happen. The future of Lahaina is truly in property owners’ hands, and LCLT’s entry into the fray makes this outcome more possible.

The community — public and private grantors, individual donors, fire survivors who must sell their property, and out-of-state owners who can choose to transfer their property to the trust — must now show just how strong support truly is for this cause, by supporting LCLT.

Maui County has partnered with the nonprofit to fund grants for residents who need help covering costs to rebuild and remain in Lahaina, and for purchasing land to preserve for shoreline setbacks. Much more funding is needed, given the high cost of land here.

A report released in March by the Hawai‘i Land Trust considered the threat of lost “identity and character” to Lahaina, should real estate investors drive up prices for local properties to costs locals cannot afford, developing high-priced homes to turn a profit. The analysis, titled Aina Retention for Lahaina, compared real estate transaction patterns in pre-disaster Lahaina with patterns that developed in other disaster-affected areas to estimate that Lahaina could see a 20% turnover in ownership of residential properties over a three-year period, with at least $360 million in property changing hands.

The analysis warns that loss of local ownership would have deleterious effects — exacerbating existing problems including “housing availability, mental and physical health, education, economic resilience, and the existing diaspora of longtime residents.”

There is an alternative: “preserving and growing community ownership through land trust expansion,” which the report calls “one of the few proposed post-disaster solutions that may help Lahaina’s longtime families.”

In LCLT’s case, the land trust either maintains ownership of the land involved, or works with property owners to whom it provides aid to attach a “kamaaina easement” to the land, requiring the property be sold only to Lahaina residents if it changes hands. Both of these techniques constrain the sale value of a property — and that is also an LCLT goal, because it increases affordability.

Though some criticize the land trust strategy for tamping down potential real-estate profits, in fact the reduced cost to buyers opens the prospect of accumulating wealth in ownership to a far wider swath of the community — including residents of more limited means, who might never afford a home at $1 million or more.

So far, the trust has made five purchase offers and signed one contract. The pace of activity can be expected to ramp up as LCLT grant applications are decided, and approved funding is delivered.

And LCLT intends to campaign among Maui real estate agents for support, asking that agents inform would-be sellers of the land trust’s interest in their properties, and in keeping Lahaina’s housing stock in local hands.

LCLT executive director Autumn Ness told the Star-Advertiser that, with adequate resources, LCLT could leverage its aid to permanently reserve 10% to 20% of Lahaina’s residential land base for local households, “keeping Lahaina lands in Lahaina hands.” It’s now incumbent on Lahaina’s property owners, and LCLT’s supporters, to decide Lahaina’s future.