Maui Locals Concerned Hawaii Wildfire Rebuild Could Squeeze Them Out of Their Homes

As the community of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui looks to rebuild from devastating wildfires that killed at least 93 people and destroyed thousands of homes, long time locals are concerned that big developers catering to wealthy out-of-towners will squeeze them out.

The Lahaina wildfire, which began burning on Tuesday, destroyed over 2,200 structures and burned over 2,100 acres of land, according to FEMA, which estimates that the cost to rebuild the torched community will cost north of $5.5 billion.

Rich Palalay, 25, of Lahaina told the Associated Press he thinks the process of rebuilding Lahaina will turbocharge that trend.

“I’m more concerned of big land developers coming in and seeing this charred land as an opportunity to rebuild,” he said.

Palalay had his connection to his hometown permanently engraved into his skin as a teenager. When he was 16 he had “Lahaina grown” tattooed on his forearms.

Hotels and condos “that we can’t afford, that we can’t afford to live in — that’s what we’re afraid of,” he said.

The island couldn’t function without the blue-collar workers employed by the island’s hotels and golf courses, and those workers had difficulty finding housing before the wildfires, Leslie Wilkins, president of the Maui Economic Development Board, told the New York Times.

“We already had a housing crisis,’’ she said. “This grossly exacerbated it.”

Before the wildfire, housing was already unaffordable on most of Maui. According to the real estate website Redfin, homes on the island sold for a median price of nearly $1 million in June, out of reach for island residents who work in the tourism industry.

Housing prices on the island have gone no way but up in recent years, rising 35% between 2019 and 2022, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The rental market offers little relief for Lahaina residents priced out of home ownership.

Average monthly rents in the town were between $2,150 and $3,200 prior to the wildfires, according to Rent.com.

Second home buyers and out-of-staters have been displacing native-born Hawaiians for years, according to various media reports.

Property in Maui has sold for eye-popping sums in recent years.

Media mogul and talk-show host Oprah Winfrey bought 870 acres of farmland for $6.6 million earlier this year, according to Maui Now, which cited property records.

Tech entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel also have homes on Maui.

Hot and arid conditions accelerated by climate change means anyone who stays on Maui will face possible future wildfires. Accounting for that possibility will further inflame the cost of housing on the island, Jesse Keenan, a professor of sustainable real estate at Tulane University, told Bloomberg.

“The bottom line is the reconstruction is going to have to account for wildfire risk that it hasn’t in the past,” she said. “It will require new building materials and techniques that’s going to add to the overall cost of the already inflated housing construction market.”

Efforts to build affordable housing were thwarted by local opposition and bureaucratic red tape, Justin Tyndall, assistant professor of economics at the University of Hawaii’s Economic Research Organization, told the Times.

At the same time the housing stock was depleted by demand for vacation rentals, he said.

The fire damage “is going to cause a lot of people to confront our demons in terms of housing,” Tyndall said.

As of Sunday morning, the official death toll stood at 93, but that figure will almost certainly rise as the search of Lahaina’s charred remains continues.